The Convention was made between General Menou and General Hope, on the 31st of August, 1801. |1801, August.| Against this sixteenth article Menou made the strongest remonstrances, but General Hope declined to modify it, otherwise than by agreeing to make a reference, as to the precise extent to which it should be carried into actual effect, to Lord Hutchinson, as Commander-in-Chief.
Between Menou and Hutchinson there was a long correspondence. The French General declared that the Collections, both scientific and archæological, were private, not public property. The since famous ‘Rosetta stone,’ for example, belonged, he said, to himself. Various members of the Institute claimed other precious objects; some alleged, with obvious force of argument, that the care bestowed on specimens of natural history made them the property of the collectors and preservers; others threatened to prefer the destruction or defacement of their collections, by their own hands, to the giving of them up to the English army.
The Negotiations and Services of Colonel Turner.
The correspondence was followed by several personal conferences between Menou and Colonel (afterwards General) Turner, in order to a compromise. Turner, who was himself a man of distinguished knowledge and accomplishments, advised Lord Hutchinson to insist on the transfer of the Marbles and Manuscripts, and to yield the natural history specimens, with some minor objects, to the possessors. The astute Capitan Pasha had contrived to place himself in ‘possession’ of one of the most precious of the marbles—the famous sarcophagus which Dr. Clarke so strenuously contended to be nothing less than the tomb of Alexander—by seizing the ship on board of which the French had placed it, and he gave Colonel Turner almost as much trouble as Menou himself had given.
The French soldiers were, as was natural, deeply mortified when they heard that the captors of Alexandria were to have the antiquities. Every man of them who had had to do with their excavation or transport had vindicated Denon’s eulogy by his pains to protect the sculptures from harm. Now, their excessive zeal and their national pride led to an unworthy result. The Rosetta stone was stripped of the soft cotton cloth and the thick matting in which it had been sedulously wrapped, and was thrown upon its face. Other choice antiquities were deprived of their wooden cases. |Capture of the Rosetta Stone;| When Turner, with a detachment of artillerymen and a strong tumbril, went to the French head-quarters to receive the Rosetta stone, he had to pass through a lane of angry Frenchmen who crowded the narrow streets of Alexandria, and were not sparing in their epithets and sarcasms. Those artillerymen, too, were the first English soldiers who entered the city. When Colonel Turner had gotten safely into his hands the stone destined to mark an era in philology, he returned good for evil. He permitted some members of the Institute of Egypt to take a cast of it, which they sent to Paris in lieu of the original.
The Rosetta inscription had been found, by the French explorers, among the ruins of a fortification near the mouth of the Rosetta branch of the Nile. When they discovered it the stone was already broken, both at the top and at the right side. Of its triple inscription, commemorative of the beginning of the actual and personal reign of Ptolemy Epiphanes—and therefore cut nearly two hundred years before the Christian era—that in the hieroglyphic or sacred character had suffered most. The second or enchorial inscription was also mutilated in its upper portion. The Greek version was almost entire.
The scarcely less famous Alexandrian sarcophagus was found by the French in the court-yard of a mosque called the ‘Mosque of St. Athanasius.’ |and of the Sarcophagus sometimes called ‘Tomb of Alexander.’| Of its discovery and state when found, the following account is given in the Description de l’Egypte:—A small octagonal building, covered with a cupola, had been constructed by the Moslems for their ablutions, and in this they had placed the sarcophagus to be used as a bath; piercing it for that purpose with large holes, but not otherwise injuring it. The sarcophagus is a monolith of dark-coloured breccia—such as the Italians call breccia verde d’Egitto—and is completely covered with hieroglyphics. |Description de l’Egypte, vol. v, pp. 373, seqq.; Plates and Append. (8vo edit.), 1829.| Their number, according to the French artist by whom impressions in sulphur were taken of the whole, exceeds 21,700. Dr. Clarke’s identification of this monument as the tomb of Alexander has not been supported by later Egyptologists.
This sarcophagus, with most of the other antiquities, was sent on board the flagship Madras. |List of the Egyptian Antiquities embarked at Alexandria.| The Rosetta inscription, Colonel Turner embarked, with himself, in the frigate Egyptienne. His own list of the antiquities thus brought, in safety, to England runs thus:—(1) An Egyptian sarcophagus, of green breccia; (2) another, of black granite, from Cairo; (3) another, of basalt, from Menouf; (4) the hand of a colossal statue—supposed to be Vulcan—found in the ruins of Memphis; (5) five fragments of lion-headed statues, of black granite, from Thebes; (6) a mutilated kneeling statue, of black granite; (7) two statues, of white marble, from Alexandria—Septimus Severus and Marcus Aurelius; (8) the Rosetta stone; (9) a lion-headed statue, from Upper Egypt; (10) two fragments of lions’ heads, of black granite; (11) a small kneeling figure, of black granite; (12) five fragments of lion-headed statues, of black granite; (13) a fragment of a sarcophagus, of black granite, from Upper Egypt; (14) two small obelisks, of basalt, with hieroglyphics; (15) a colossal ram’s head. Nos. 10 to 15 inclusive were all brought from Upper Egypt. (16) A statue of a woman, sitting, with a model of the capital of a column of the Temple of Isis at Dendera, between her feet; (17) a fragment of a lion-headed statue, of black granite, from Upper Egypt; (18) a chest of Oriental Manuscripts—sixty-two in number—in Coptic, Arabic, and Turkish.
I have given the more careful detail to this notice of the archæological results of the capitulation of Alexandria, inasmuch as a very inaccurate statement of the matter has found its way into an able and deservedly accredited book. |See the History of Europe, vol. v, p. 596 (last edition).| Sir Archibald Alison, in his History of Europe (probably from some misconception of the compromise effected between General Turner and the French Commander-in-Chief), writes thus:—‘General Hutchinson, with a generous regard for the interests of science and the feelings of these distinguished persons [the Members of the Institute of Egypt], agreed to depart from the stipulation and allow these treasures of art to be forwarded to France. The sarcophagus of Alexander, now in the British Museum, was, however, retained by the British, and formed the glorious trophy of their memorable triumph.’
General Turner’s conspicuous service on this occasion did not end with the transport into England of the Alexandrian Collections. Before the Rosetta inscription was, by the King’s command, placed, together with its companions, in the British Museum, as their permanent abode, General Turner obtained Lord Buckinghamshire’s assent to the temporary deposit of the stone from Rosetta in the custody of the Society of Antiquaries, by whose care copies of the inscriptions were sent to the chief scholars and academies of the Continent, in order that combined study might be brought to bear, immediately, upon the contents. This circumstance makes it all the more honourable to our countryman, Dr. Thomas Young, that by his labours upon the stone a strong impulse was first given to the progress of hieroglyphical discovery.