Richard Lepsius, a biography

by Georg Ebers

THE PRUSSIAN EXPEDITION TO EGYPT, UNDER THE DIRECTION OF LEPSIUS.

On the eighteenth of September, 1842, after a stormy passage through the Bay of Biscay and a short stay in Gibraltar and Malta, Lepsius, who was proof against sea-sickness, and had been perfectly well throughout the voyage, first set his foot upon Egyptian soil at Alexandria.

The choice of his companions had been fortunate, and answered perfectly to the needs of the expedition. We will first mention Erbkam, an excellently trained young architect, distantly related to Lepsius, who was to make surveys, and draw maps and sketches. He showed himself so entirely equal to the task that the architectural and topographical drawings executed by him under the direction of Lepsius have long been acknowledged to be model productions and faultlessly correct.[45] We have already said all that is necessary of Lepsius’ Naumberg fellow-countrymen, the brothers Weidenbach, and their work as hierogrammatists. Lepsius had made the acquaintance of the painter Frey, from Basle, when in Rome. In the book on monuments, which will be described hereafter, many of the beautiful colored landscapes and architectural pictures from lower Egypt are by him; others are by the Dresden painter, George, a jovial and talented artist, who joined the expedition after Frey had become seriously ill, and been sent home.

The moulder, Franke, at first rendered excellent service by making casts of such monuments as could not be brought away, and by preparing the many thousands of paper impressions which it was necessary to take of the inscriptions and bas reliefs. But subsequently he had to be dismissed and sent home on account of inadmissible conduct.

The expedition was also accompanied by H. Abeken of Osnabrück, who had been with Bunsen, first at Rome and then at London, as chaplain of the Prussian Embassy. He had made the acquaintance of the leader of the expedition on the Tiber, and was closely associated with him during the remainder of his life. Under the guidance of Lepsius he occupied himself with Egyptological studies, even after he had relinquished theology and entered the diplomatic service. This is the same Abeken, diplomatic Privy Counsellor and Acting Counsellor, who afterwards accompanied Prince Bismarck to France during the war of 1870-1, and proved of great service there. On the tenth of December, 1842, he joined the expedition in which he served incidentally as chaplain. He was the most agreeable companion to Lepsius, “with his invariably cheerful temper,” and his “witty and learned conversation.”[46]

With these Germans were associated two Englishmen. The first was the sculptor Bonomi, who at that time had already won celebrity as a traveler in Egypt and Ethiopia, and of whom Lepsius himself said: “he is not only full of practical knowledge about the life there, but he is also a connoisseur in Egyptian art, and a master of Egyptian drawing.”[47] The second was the young and “genial” architect Wild, who was of great assistance to Erbkam.

The leader of the expedition had himself scarcely passed his thirty-first year, and was so young and vigorous, that when he desired to hire a kavass, that is, a Turkish constable, to superintend the servants, the intercourse with the authorities, etc., he wrote home: “In Europe I should have felt more than sufficient confidence in my own ability to manage the entire practical conduct of the expedition.” He had, besides, sovereign command of the most thorough scholarship in all those departments wherein the expedition was intended to add to existing knowledge.

He had garnered the whole harvest to be reaped in Europe from every field of Egyptian archaeology, and all that could be gathered anew from the banks of the Nile only needed to be stored in the receptacles which, already set apart and half-filled, stood ready for the expected gains.

The conditions under which he traveled, and studied the localities of the monuments, were such as to fill us later investigators with envy. For in 1842, there was no museum of Boulak, which now lawfully claims all antiquities from Egyptian soil as soon as they are brought to the light of day. At that time there existed only the first beginnings of a collection of Egyptian monuments, and these had no supervisor nor director.

The subsisting law against the exportation of antiquities was set aside in favor of Lepsius, compulsory labor was not yet abolished, and Muhamed ‘Ali, who governed in his viceroyalty with the irresponsible power of an absolute despot, wished to extend every assistance to the expedition. He caused a firman to be issued for Lepsius, which gave him unconditional permission to make any excavations which he might consider desirable. All the local authorities were charged to assist him in his undertakings, and Lepsius said that by means of the kavasses who had been assigned to him by the government, and on the strength of the firman, they obtained from the sheiks of the nearest villages and the mudirs of the provinces all the workmen and appliances needed for making and transporting his collection of antiquities. The necessary payments had of course to be made, but they never met with a refusal. At Fayoum, for instance, he employed a hundred and eight workmen in the excavation of the building which he considered to be the Labyrinth. Each man received two copper piasters a day (about twenty pfennige) and each child ten pfennige, or, if it was very industrious, fifteen pfennige, a day. Besides this some bread was given them. Under such conditions great things may be accomplished with comparatively small means.