Decorative motifs, artefacts, and designs derived from ancient Egyptian precedents have been known in Western Europe for a very long time: the Mediterranean Sea was a great highway in Antiquity and there were many cultural influences that flowed from Egypt. This tendency became more potent when Alexander the Great conquered that ancient Kingdom, established Alexandria in 332 BC as the centre of Greek culture in that part of the world, and was himself hailed as a deity.
    Thereafter, the deified ruling dynasties of Egypt were Greeks from the time of Ptolemy I until the last of the line, Cleopatra VII (51-30 BC), and Egyptian religion and art became yet more familiar in the Graeco-Roman world. That familiarity increased after the Roman conquest, when the Egyptian deities were absorbed by the familiar process of syncretism, and the Roman Emperors themselves became gods.
    From the time when Augustus brought the first obelisk from Egypt to Rome, Egyptian artefacts began to fascinate Europeans, and quite early in the history of the Empire, Egyptianising objects were made in Europe to satisfy demand for the earliest outbreak of Egyptomania that lasted for the best part of four centuries.
    Sphinxes, lions, objects decorated with bogus hieroglyphics, statues including images of Isis and the Graeco-Roman version of Osiris, Serapis, and many other works in the Egyptian taste were manufactured in huge quantities. Imperial Rome became not only a repository for Egyptian art, but a centre for Egyptian cults and the creation of Egyptianising pieces – objects made to look like Ancient Egyptian manufactured goods. The huge temple of Isis, the Isaeum Campense in Rome, was magnificently decorated with all sorts of statues, many of which were excavated and can now be seen in the Vatican Museums.
    When Hadrian reigned (117-138 AD), Roman enthusiasm for things Egyptian gained new momentum, for the Emperor was devoted to the Egyptian deities, and created a Canopus at Tivoli that included a whole series of Egyptian and Egyptianising statues and ornaments. In its final form the Canopus was lavishly beautified as a memorial to Hadrian’s ‘favourite’ (as he is coyly known), Antinoüs (c.110-130), who drowned in the Nile, and was extravagantly mourned by Hadrian, deified, and commemorated by means of statues, cults, shrines, temples, and festivals. Antinoüs’s Egyptian persona as Osiris is clear from the celebrated statue that was discovered in 1740 – and now in the Vatican – which shows the youth wearing the Egyptian head-dress.
    Roman Egyptomania was quite something, as any visitor to Rome and its museums will appreciate. What is less well known, however, is that Egyptian religion played no small part in the evolution of Christianity. The Goddess Isis herself was assimilated into Christianity in the cultus of the Virgin Mary, especially from the fifth century of our era. It is no accident that the attributes of Isis are also those of the Virgin Mary – roses, lilies, gardens enclosed, fountains sealed – and that both Isis and the Virgin Mary gave birth to superhuman beings without the aid of human male impregnation. So gradually, imperceptibly, and marvellously, things Egyptian were subsumed into Western culture.
    Roman Egyptomania was an all-pervading phenomenon that has left indelible impressions on the West. It was the first of a series of sporadic waves of Egyptomania that broke out from time to time, usually prompted by archaeological discoveries or enquiries. Egypt itself was conquered by the Arabs in 641, and this made travel there difficult or impossible for Westerners, so the land of the pharaohs became inaccessible, mysterious and the stuff of legend.
    Excavation of Egyptian and Egyptianising objects in Rome and elsewhere during the late-Mediaeval and Renaissance periods prompted a new outbreak of Egyptomania. One of the most important sources for Egyptomania from the sixteenth century was the Mensa Isiaca, a bronze tablet found around 1520 which was covered with Egyptianising images and hieroglyphs. It was regarded almost as a prime source for things Egyptian, and much ink and study were expended on trying to decipher its meanings. Published in 1559, its motifs were used by countless artists for two-and-a-half centuries thereafter. But it was actually Roman work of the reign of Emperor Claudius (41-54 AD) and the hieroglyphs were meaningless.
    Many ancient obelisks that had fallen or had been toppled were re-erected under the aegis of Renaissance and later Popes, and these – with their mysterious hieroglyphs – became familiar to pilgrims. Furthermore, there were several pyramids in Rome which would also have been seen by travellers, but today only one, the pyramid of Cestius, remains.
    One of the leading lights in early Egyptian studies was Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680), a German Jesuit, who published much speculative work on hieroglyphs, obelisks, and sphinxes, and who made a special study of the Mensa Isiaca. His theories sparked some creative mythology among Rosicrucians and Freemasons, and certainly provided much material for the murky occultism that was suspect to those of a more rational bent. Kircher’s work was important in one respect, however, for he – astonishingly almost alone at the time – accurately recorded hieroglyphs.
    During the eighteenth century, architects like Piranesi and others drew upon sources such as the Mensa Isiaca for their ‘Egyptian’ motifs, and it was left to a few travellers and observant scholars to provide accurate images of things Egyptianising or Egyptian. In the second half of the century the Comte de Caylus published illustrations of real Egyptian details, and discussed the aesthetics of Egyptian art. More importantly, he argued that Egyptian architecture was primitive, grand, simple, and massive, and therefore was an ideal style for fashionable Neo-Classicism, even purer, restrained, severe, and more primitive than early Greek work. Thus Egyptian elements such as pyramids, obelisks, blank walls, and so on entered the language of progressive architects of the French Academies who sought a new Neo-Classical expression in architecture that was more in tune with the times than the erstwhile frivolities of Rococo architecture.
    Thus the later eighteenth century saw two distinct strands of Egyptomania: one was derived from the images of Piranesi which drew upon Egyptianising sources such as the Mensa Isiaca rather than Egyptian originals; and the other began to explore the purity of Egyptian forms in order to create a severe, stripped architecture, as well as to embrace accurate Egyptian details based upon scholarly study of the real thing.

Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt

However, despite scientific advances, the notion promoted by Kircher and others that hieroglyphs somehow contained the key to the great mysteries of the ancients lingered on. By the end of the eighteenth century, scientific enquiry based on objective principles was well established, but so was a general admiration for Antiquity. In 1798 a French expedition set sail from Toulon to invade Egypt and to investigate its buildings, artefacts, remains, flora, and fauna. Accompanying the expedition were numerous scholars who were to carry out the surveys.
    There were many reasons why Napoleon mounted this expedition: emulation of the heroes of Antiquity was one; and there were aims to expand French influence, French trade, and much else; but submerged in the agenda was the search for the lost mysteries of Antiquity thought to be enshrined in hieroglyphs. If only the key to hieroglyphs could be found, it was imagined, power could be achieved.
    Various scholars contributed to the cracking of the code, but it was Jean-François Champollion who classified the signs and formulated a system by which hieroglyphs could be read, based on his studies of the "Rosetta Stone" and other artefacts. Apart from this huge advance, the French scholars produced lavishly illustrated publications that provided the means for an accurate revival of Egyptian architecture.
    This phase of Egyptomania, fuelled by accurate studies of real Egyptian buildings, led to the use of Egyptian forms for dams, pylons to support suspension-bridges, and railway-cutting retaining-walls. There are associations with Ancient Egyptian expertise in making linen, with the ancient library at Alexandria, and with funerary architecture, so in the Egyptian style there are examples of flax-mills (as Marshall’s Flax Mill in Leeds), libraries (as at Devonport, Devon), cemetery entrances (as Abney Park Cemetery, London), and mausolea (as the tomb of Andrew Ducrow in Kensal Green Cemetery, London). The novelty of the style appealed to those with an eye to commerce, so Bullock’s Museum in Piccadilly, London, and other examples of a not-quite-respectable kind of building employed "Egyptian" architecture to draw in the punters.
    Egyptomania also informed several works for the stage, including Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) of 1791, the story of which drew heavily on the Abbé Terrasson’s book Séthos published earlier in the century and which contained descriptions of "Egyptian" mysteries and trials of initiation that greatly influenced Continental Freemasonic rites. Stage-sets for Die Zauberflöte were often ravishingly beautiful, but curiously, often contained motifs drawn from Piranesi and others as well as from the scholarly Napoleonic publications. Old customs died hard.
    For nineteenth-century painters, from apocalyptic visionaries such as John Martin to painstaking academicians such as Poynter, ancient Egypt provided many stimuli, and there are many superb paintings of the era that incorporate well-observed Egyptian architecture and artefacts. There was a popular side to it as well, for the permanent exhibitions in the reconstructed Crystal Palace in London contained an Egyptian Court which showed the Victorian public what ancient Egyptian architecture looked like. Writers and theorists such as Owen Jones published Egyptian schemes of coloured wall-decorations, and continuing discoveries in Egypt itself influenced the design of some late-Victorian furniture – for example, the Thebes stool marketed by Liberty. So virtually all the way through the nineteenth century, doubtless prompted further by the tours of Thomas Cook to Egypt and the huge amount of excavation and discovery made by various European expeditions in Egypt, Egyptomania could be found in various phases and strengths. Operatic Egyptomania recurred in the nineteenth century with Verdi’s Aida and Massenet’s Thaïs, to name but two exotic concoctions.
    It received a twentieth-century boost in 1922 with the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb. Various buildings such as Adelaide House, London Bridge (1924-5), and the Carreras cigarette factory at Mornington Crescent, London (1927-8), were strongly influenced by the Egyptian style, and much jewellery informed by ancient Egyptian art was manufactured. Films about Cleopatra and horror-films about mummies also prompted a rash of Egyptiana, while numerous cinemas were built in the Egyptian style. The style known as Art-Deco of the late 1920s and 1930s also absorbed many aspects of Egyptian design (not least its bright primary colouring).
    Films such as The Ten Commandments (1956) and Cleopatra (1963) featured lavish Egyptianising sets and costumes, and the display of the treasures of Tutankhamun outside Egypt in the late twentieth century also sparked a further burst of Egyptomania. Within the last few decades there have been some more manifestations, including the pyramidal house of Jim Onan at Wadsworth, Illinois (1980), and the huge, pyramidal Luxor Hotel and Casino at Las Vegas (1993). At the start of the twenty-first century an Egyptianising complex was proposed for Blackpool, Lancashire, which would appear to belong to the same tradition.
    There is clearly much life yet in the phenomenon of Egyptomania.

In a second article Professor Curl will look at the Egyptian influences in Masonic design.

Professor James Stevens Curl, Professor of Architecture, The Queen’s University, Belfast, is the author of many books and studies, including The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture (1999-2000); The Victorian Celebration of Death (2000); Classical Architecture (2001); The Art and Architecture of Freemasonry (2002); and Death and Architecture (2002).