Richard Lepsius, a biography

by Georg Ebers

He had ordered a ship to be ready at Gebel-es-Set, and thence he went across the Red Sea to Tur. His companion, Weidenbach, is now living in Australia, in easy circumstances, and we can readily understand the sigh with which he declared that this was the most fatiguing part of all the journey, when we consider that Lepsius was obliged to limit his whole sojourn upon the Peninsula of Sinai to the time between the twenty-first of March and the sixth of April, and observe, from his other writings,[58] as well as the great work on monuments, all that he accomplished in that period. With this must be included, too, all the inscriptions and designs which he copied. The days began at sunrise, and before the travellers lay down to their brief sleep in the evening all that had been discovered through the day had to be reduced to order and set down in writing.

Lepsius visited only a small portion of the Peninsula of Sinai, but with the exception of the neighborhood of Petra, it was the most interesting part, and he explored it in every direction with diligence and sagacity. He copied or took home with him in the shape of casts whatever Egyptian inscriptions or paintings of interest he found there, and he afterwards published, from his excellent paper casts, many of those incisions upon the rocks of the Peninsula of Sinai which are known by the name of the Nabathean Inscriptions. The most important elevations in that locality were all ascended by him, and he took from their summits the points of the compass, for the cartographic works to be undertaken in the future. His sagacity and erudition established that which the king of Oriental travellers, Burckhardt, had suspected before him, namely, that the mountain from which the Law was given was not the Gebel-Musa group, which is at present held to be the Sinai of the Scriptures, but the magnificent Serbal. The author of this biography, during his own journey to Sinai, was also obliged to adopt the view of Lepsius; he furnished fresh arguments to confirm it,[59] and is of the opinion that sooner or later it must be generally accepted as correct, in spite of the opposition which it still encounters on many sides.

After Lepsius had returned to Thebes from this excursion, he wrote to Bunsen: “Fortunately the journey to Sinai now lies behind us, and in truth I am heartily glad of it, not only because it was the hardest and most dangerous part of our whole pilgrimage, but also because it presented the most important and difficult problems which still remained to be solved on our return journey. Now nothing remains but the departure from Thebes and from Cairo; and, this, too, is only a question of getting ready to leave, there is nothing more of importance to be undertaken. When I consider all the material which we have collected in the three years it almost terrifies me, for I shall never be in a position to work it up, even if we succeed in bringing it home.”

Nevertheless, he was afterwards able, as we shall see, to make the whole of it accessible to science.

From the Peninsula of Sinai Lepsius went back to Thebes, where he found that his instructions had been excellently carried out. Thence he returned to Cairo, making only short stops in the places where the most important monuments were to be found. On the way he met Dr. Bethmann[60] an old university friend, who had come over from Italy, in order to make the return journey through Palestine with him. Before his departure to the Promised Land, Lepsius superintended the despatching of the treasures which he had collected, and the taking apart of the tombs from the pyramids to be transported to Berlin. Lastly he visited the localities containing the most important monuments in the Delta.

In a letter of the eleventh of July, 1845, he stated the plan according to which he hoped to see the Egyptian antiquities arranged in the new museum at Berlin. This was to be on an historical basis, and was afterwards executed in the manner proposed. He had heard at Cairo, much to his delight, that they had not yet begun to build the halls intended for the Egyptian department of the new museum at Berlin, and that his desire to see every part constructed in the Egyptian style of architecture might yet be carried out from the very foundation.

“I think,” he wrote, “that to produce a generally harmonious impression, we must preserve the characteristic styles of building of the different periods, and especially the order of the pillars, in their historical sequence, and also with all their rich colored decoration.”

Lepsius still kept his attention fixed upon Egyptian antiquity even during his rapid journey through Palestine, and he was afterwards able to publish,[61] and also to incorporate in his great work on monuments, the best copy of the celebrated tablet chiselled on the living rock, which commemorates the victory of Rameses II. on the Dog river (Nahr-el-Kelb). This is the Lycos of the ancients, and lies north of Berytos (Beirut).

When Lepsius finally turned homewards from Smyrna, (he had chosen the route through Constantinople), much more than three years had passed since he first set out upon his journey, and these years had been employed in a manner which far exceeded all the expectations and hopes of his monarch, his patrons and his friends. Not only had the tasks imposed upon him been perfectly fulfilled, but the emissary had bethought him upon the way of imposing new ones upon himself, and now returned home with an unprecedented number of acquisitions in the way of inscriptions, maps, works of art and notes on language. The really enthusiastic reception which he met with everywhere, and especially in Berlin at the beginning of 1846, was well deserved. All the newspapers lauded the brilliant achievements of the returning expedition. The name of the leader became famous in all countries; it spread far beyond the circle of his professional collaborators and countrymen, and won that world-wide celebrity which it will retain as long as historical and philological research exist.

His King, Frederick William IV., was the man to recognize the value of his acquisitions, and his friend and fellow-workman, Bunsen, his patron, A. v. Humboldt, the Director of the museum, v. Olfers, and others, did not grudge due appreciation to the great services of the returned traveller. They were able to induce their monarch to grant him the means of turning to good account the abundance of treasures which he had sent home, and of placing them at the disposal of the learned world in the best and most appropriate manner. Thus, without regard to the enormous expenses which must be entailed by such an undertaking, Lepsius was able to set to work at the preparation of the great book on monuments which was to make his name immortal, and to give renown to his native land and his royal patron.