At that time there were, as we have already observed (See page 78), very few good inscriptions published, and in August he had already advanced so far in hieroglyphics that he was constantly looking about for new texts, in order to copy and afterwards study them. To attain the highest ends he felt that it was necessary to know and own all the inscriptions that had been preserved from the time of the Pharaohs. In Göttingen he had endeavored to obtain both material and intellectual possession of all the treasures of the plastic art of the ancients by making copies of them. Thus also in Paris he wished to acquaint himself with all the monuments of the time of the Pharaohs which had reached that city, and either to transcribe the inscriptions upon them, to copy them by tracing, or to obtain them in the form of impressions taken on paper. Copies of such as were accessible had long lain in his portfolio, but he had heard that there was a magazine in which was stored, in utter confusion, a great abundance of Egyptian monuments, especially the larger ones. Yet it seemed impossible to obtain admission to these hidden treasures. “It is the universal complaint,” writes Lepsius, “that Louis Philippe does nothing in any way for the monuments of antiquity, his taste is all for modern works of art, and he now employs all the artists and officers of the Museum on the historical picture gallery in Versailles. Just now, also, several guardians of the Louvre are occupied there, and therefore they represent that it is impossible to detail a guardian for me in the magazine.” He impatiently awaited the decision from day to day, but it did not come; indeed it was still withheld even after Herr von Werther, the Prussian Ambassador, had interposed on behalf of Lepsius, and had procured him permission to copy the Egyptian collection in the Musée Charles X. But this was of far less importance to Lepsius than what was hidden in the magazine, for there were all the sarcophagi and statues, and an exceedingly rich collection of stelae, besides a hundred and fourteen tablets of plaster casts from the walls of Karnak, and a great number of other matters. The time of his departure from Paris drew near, and it would have seemed almost intolerable to the ardent young investigator to leave France without having seen these extremely important monuments. Just then Alexander von Humboldt came to Paris, Lepsius complained to him of the difficulty, the most influential of all men of that time interceded for him, and he was immediately allowed access to the storehouse, at first with a guardian, but afterwards without one.
Lepsius now spent the last weeks of his sojourn in Paris in taking the most careful paper impressions from all the monuments there. About fifty quires of blotting paper were soon consumed, and many a night of vigil did he spend in making fair copies of the descriptions of the monuments from which the impressions were taken, and of the results of his own measurements. These treasures, so laboriously acquired, were of great service to him later, and accompanied him from Rome to Berlin, where they now are.
Furthermore, through Humboldt’s mediation, he had an opportunity to inspect all the drawings and manuscripts of Champollion, and he found them “surprisingly copious and interesting.” He was able to take the first of the forty numbers of Champollion’s great work on monuments, ready printed, to Italy with him. Champollion’s grammar was also soon to be published.
Something had been neglected in regard to Lepsius’ military obligations, which might have been momentous to the farther progress of the ardent investigator, but this oversight did him no injury either, in consequence of the warm commendation which Alexander von Humboldt had given him to the Governor of Mentz, General v. Müffling. It cannot now be ascertained on what grounds the robust and well developed young doctor was released from military service, but before us lies a letter written immediately after he had presented himself, which says, in reference to his military duties: “And now in Mentz I have been relieved of all farther anxiety in this respect.”
“In the latter part of my stay in Paris,” he writes to Bunsen in the same letter, “I have learned to regard Barucchi, the director of the Turin Museum, as a very excellent and courteous man. He has promised me every possible facility and convenience in the Turin Museum for study, so that now I can go there with great confidence of good results.”
Gladly and hopefully he crossed Mont Cenis to Turin; and yet the parting from Paris had become hard for him. He had gained much there, and acquired a fixed aim in life; there he had come to mature manhood, and his whole personality, as well as his scientific activity and solid abilities, had awakened the same good will on the Seine as previously in Germany, at Leipsic, Göttingen, and Berlin. And no wonder! For nature had endowed the youth, intellectually so highly gifted, with a tall and imposing figure, and crowned it with a head whose beauty was to outlast the years. The noble and sharply cut lineaments of his countenance reflected the earnestness, the force, and the acuteness of his mind, and wherever he showed himself in the circle of the leading literati of Berlin, where there was no lack of impressive heads, all eyes were drawn to him, and even strangers were attracted to inquire about him. When his abundant hair had become snow-white he was one of the handsomest of old men. He told us, in an hour of social relaxation, that he was once climbing one of the Swiss mountains in very hot weather—I believe it was the Faulhorn,—and had sat down near the summit, with dripping brow. A strange gentleman, who had joined him, had sunk down beside him, and had responded to his observation that it was frightfully hot: “You ought to be accustomed to that, Professor. When one has climbed the pyramids and made excavations in Ethiopia, as you have—.” Lepsius asked the stranger how he came to know him, and received from the other—as it turned out afterwards, a medical colleague from Heidelberg,—the answer, “How can one forget your medallion-countenance after once seeing it?”
His profile was, in truth, singularly fine. I, myself, first met Lepsius in his forty-ninth year, 1859, as his pupil, but the impression which he made on me at that time was such that I willingly credited the assurance of a Leipsic friend, whose parents’ house Lepsius had frequented as a student, that he had been one of the handsomest young men of his day. The same bearing which he retained throughout his life, and which entirely corresponded to his essential nature, must also have been peculiar to him as a student. It was quiet, yet not stiff, well-bred, and equally appropriate in all circumstances of life. Moreover, with all his industry and earnestness, he was at that time always glad to go into society, and he long preserved and cherished his musical gifts and pleasure in singing, as well as his fondness for chess.
ITALY.
The route which Lepsius took to Rome was entirely determined by the Egyptological studies to which he had devoted himself with such great zeal and success during the latter part of the time in Paris. It led him first to Turin.
There he might hope to find all that was best and of most importance, for the Egyptian museum at Turin is now, and was at that time, one of the largest and richest in the world, and so far exceeded Lepsius’ expectations that instead of several weeks he allowed himself to be detained there for more than three months.