Egyptian Revival architecture

Egyptian Revival is an architectural style that makes use of the motifs and imagery of Ancient Egypt. It is generally dated to the enthusiasm for Ancient Egypt generated by Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt and, in Britain, to Admiral Nelson’s defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of the Nile in 1798. Napoleon took a scientific expedition with him to Egypt. Publication of the expedition’s work, the Description de l’Égypte, began in 1809 and came out in a series though 1826. However, works of art and, in the field of architecture, funerary monuments in the Egyptian style had appeared in scattered European settings from the time of the Renaissance.

The most important example is probably Bernini’s obelisk in the Piazza Navona at Rome. Bernini’s obelisk influenced the obelisk constructed as a family funeral memorial by Sir Edward Lovatt Pierce for the Allen family at Stillorgan in Ireland in 1717, one of several early eighteenth century Egyptian obelisks erected in Ireland in the early eighteenth century. Others may be found at Belan, County Kildare and Dangan, County Meath. The Casteltown Folly in County Kildare is probably the best known, albeit the least Egyptian, of these obelisks.

Egyptian buildings had also appeared as garden follies. The most elaborate was probably the one built by the Duke of Württemberg in the gardens of the Château de Montbéliard. It included an Egyptian bridge across which guests walked to reach an island with an Egyptian swing and an elaborate Egyptian "bath house". The building featured a billiards room and a "bagnio". It was designed by the duke’s court architect, Jean Baptiste Kleber.

What was new in the wake of the Napoleonic invasion was the sudden leap in the number of works of art and the fact that, for the first time, European buildings began to be built to resemble those of ancient Egypt. The first of the Egyptian style builings was a newspaper office. The Courier, a London newspaper, built a new office on the Strand in London in 1804. It featured a cavetto (coved) cornice and a pair of Egyptian-looking columns with palmiform capitals. The most important building of the Egyptian revival in France was the Egyptian Temple in the Place des Victoires, built as a memorial to generals Desaix and Kleber. The cornerstone was laid on 19 Fructidor Year VIII (September 6, 1800.)

An Egyptian Revival building that can still be seen in Paris is the 1812 Fountain of the Fellah, Rue de Sèvres, by François-Jean Bralle. The Egyptian Hall in London, completed in 1812, and the Egyptian Gallery, a private room in the home of connoisseur Thomas Hope to display his Egyptian antiquities, and illustrated in engravings from his meticulous line drawings in his Household Furniture (1807), were a prime source for the Regency style in British furnishings. The cemetery at Highgate, with its Egyptian Avenue, is an example of the popularity Egyptian style continued to enjoy as funerary architecture.

In Russia, this wave — associated primarily with the discoveries of Champollion — produced similar monuments:

• Egyptian Bridge
• Quay (1832-1834) designed by Konstantin Thon in front of the Imperial Academy of Arts building
• Egyptian Gate
• The Regional Studies Museum in Krasnoyarsk

Links

• List of pyramid mausoleums in North America
• Ancient Egyptian architecture

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