Spotlight Lecture: Consuls, Travellers, Spies

The French in Egypt, from Louis XIV to Louis XVI
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This lecture by Dr Philip Mansel provides a brief history of the French in Egypt. Initially, Louis XIV planned to conquer Egypt, if the Ottoman Empire collapsed, as unpublished drawings and maps by his spies and officers in Alexandria confirm. There were similar plans of conquest under Louis XVI. At the same time, French travellers, merchants and consuls could live in Egypt, due to the ancient alliance between France and the Ottoman Empire. M. de Maillet, the French consul, published a two-volume Description de l'Egypte in 1735 with prints of pyramids and mummified human remains. Other French travellers included the coin collector Paul Lucas around 1710, and the artist Louis Francois Casas in 1784. Thus, Egypt was already familiar to some Frenchmen before Napoleon Bonaparte's expedition in 1798. Bourbon interest in Egypt continued after the Restoration. Jean-François Champollion, who deciphered hieroglyphs using the Rosetta Stone, was supported by Louis XVIII, who died 200 years ago in 1824. Then his successor, Charles X, with Champollion's help, created an Egyptian museum in the Louvre Museum in Paris, called the Musée Charles X.
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Dr Philip Mansel's books include lives of Louis XVIII (1981) and Louis XIV (King of the World, Penguin 2019); Aleppo, the Rise and Fall of Syria's Great Merchant City (2016); Levant; Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean (2010), on Smyrna, Alexandria and Beirut; and Constantinople, City of the World's Desire (1995). He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Literature, and a founding committee member of the Levantine Heritage Foundation and the Society for Court Studies. He won The London Library Life in Literature award in 2012 and the Franco-British Book Prize in 2012.