The proposition made to him at this time to enter the Foreign Office, and devote himself to a diplomatic career, he declined positively and without long consideration.
In Naumburg was completed the printing of Gally Knight’s work,[39] and of the introduction by Lepsius. This fills forty-six pages, and treats of the extensive employment of the pointed arch in Germany as early as the tenth and eleventh century. His observations begin with the Naumburg cathedral, which his father had studied with special thoroughness, and where he had actually found pointed arches of the eleventh century.
This introduction raised a great deal of dust, and when, thirteen years afterwards, Lepsius wished to carry through an affair of importance with the King, the royal adviser on art matters at that time, was not well disposed towards him, because in the views of Lepsius on the early application of the pointed arch in Germany, he saw an attack upon his own opinions. For the rest, the note-books of the Egyptologist, full of architectural drawings, and his letters to his father, show that in all his subsequent journeys he paid the keenest attention to all the edifices which he met, and when he was in a position to construct a house for himself, he built it in the English-Gothic style, and placed his beloved pointed arch over the doors and windows.
Meanwhile, he also published two smaller academical treatises.
In the winter of 1841, he undertook a new journey to Italy across the Alps, which were covered with snow and ice. The exclusive object of this was to complete the editing of the “Book of the Dead,” which had been already prepared, and which was mentioned above on page 95. As a well-known scholar and member of the board of directors of the Archaeological Institute at Rome he was now received at Turin with particular consideration, and had freely placed at his disposal a new copy of the great Turin “Book of the Dead,” which had been brought thither by Barucchi, the manager of the museum. But this was not sufficient for him, and there was still much for him to do before his own copy gained that accuracy which distinguishes it.
“I ought to leave here to-morrow in order to keep to the time fixed upon,” he writes to Bunsen, on February 18, 1841; “but it is not possible for me to finish yet. I need at least two days more to complete all that is of most importance. I go to the museum at half-past eight; they are not up there before that; I stay there the whole day, except from four till quarter of five, my meal-time; from the table I go back again and work until ten or half-past ten o’clock. I cannot work at the great papyrus by candlelight, for fear of injuring something, but then, I have the finest things to look over to select for copying, all of which I had not found when I was here first.” Altogether, he now perceived that during his former visit much had been intentionally withheld from him; this time everything was entrusted to him, and he made the most profitable use, for his chronological purposes especially, of the large “Papyrus of the Kings.” He had busts cast in plaster, from the finest images of the Pharaohs, for the Berlin museum, and amongst the treasures of Turin the idea occurred to him of publishing the most important records of the time of the Pharaohs as a separate work. This accordingly appeared in 1842.[40]
He employed the draughtsmen Weidenbach before mentioned, on this work and on the edition of the “Book of the Dead,” and he expressed to Bunsen his delight over the great progress made by these artists on the path which he had indicated to them.
On his way home he visited Bunsen in Bern, spent several happy days in the circle of the ambassador’s family, and then tarried for some time in Munich, where v. Zech was his “cicerone,” and where he established relations with Cornelius and other men of celebrity. He enjoyed the most frequent and agreeable intercourse with Schelling, of whom he says “his nature is as great as it is lovely.” The latter had just accepted a call to Berlin, (at first for one year only) and Lepsius says he was going thither with great hopes of success and of exercising a salutary influence. “He is convinced beforehand of the victory of his good cause, since it is not a question of bare negation and opposition, such as he reproaches Stahl with, (who only filched from him), but he has something to advance which is new and positive, and will make a place for itself. He must either be refuted, or he must convince and prevail. As, according to his firm conviction, he cannot be refuted, the latter must take place. Besides the foregoing alternatives, it is true that another occurred to me, but about that I naturally kept silence. Good fortune to him!”
Refreshed and satisfied with the results of this journey he devoted himself at home with all his energy to the editing of the Umbrian and Oscan inscriptions[41] which he had collected in Rome.
In the following year two more of the fruits of his Italian labors came to maturity,[42] and were received with universal commendation.