Exhibition: Bonaparte and Egypt... Fire and Light

Al Ahram Weekly (Nevine el-Aref)

The 1798 Egyptian campaign led by Napoleon Bonaparte was undoubtedly a military failure, but the battalion of 160 scientists -- and certain brilliant officers -- added up to a force that generated a celebrated episode in history.

Focussing on the French expedition, the theme of Paris's new exhibition "Bonaparte and Egypt... Fire and Light" covers a century of relations between Egypt and France. The symbolic outline of this period is measured by two dates: the birth in 1769 of Bonaparte and Mohamed Ali Pasha -- Egypt's first modern sovereign, who advanced the country to a new era -- and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869.

With the naissance of Egyptology, the unique style, the publication of La Description de L'Égypte, and the expansion of Orientalism: the influence of Egypt in France was preponderant in this period even though the role of France was determined to give Egypt access to modernity.

To set up the exhibition, the Arab World Institute (IMA) assigned a Franco-Egyptian scientific committee that explored the largest museums in Egypt, America and Europe and carefully selected some 400 artefacts that bore witness to the époque for display and could be loaned for the next six months.

The exhibition suggests a new view of the rapport between France and Egypt in the 19th century, especially in the era that followed Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt between 1798 and 1801. This point of historic departure will provide the opportunity for cross observation of the artistic exchanges between both countries.

The chronological limits were fixed between 1770 and 1870 until the end of the 19th century through representations of the Egyptian campaign by French artists. The confrontation of Bonaparte's troops with the Egyptian civilisation, more antique than modern, were a real cultural shock. Chronological events also confounded the French and Egyptian vision of a strong moment in the history of the two countries, one that envisaged rich cultural, political and economic mutual growth.

In fact it was the paucity of Egyptian iconographic representations that permitted the creation of that iconic French collection of illustrations that became La Description de L'Égypte, which will now serve as a parallel guide through the IMA exhibition while the Egyptian texts will constitute the main current.

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