With regard to the material welfare of its members the Expedition may be called in every way a very fortunate one, and especially favored by Providence. The members were eight in number, with the addition of three others who joined as volunteers, and all returned in good condition to European soil. The painter Frey alone could not support the climate, and on that account was obliged to return from Lower Egypt to Europe, where he has since recovered. As a contrast to this, the company of Professor Ehrenberg lost nine members, in spite of the greatest care. They were, however, under much more unfavorable conditions, and through his advice we profited by their experiences. It was still worse with the English under Clapperton. The French Tuscan expedition also lost both its leaders, besides many other members, in consequence of the journey. As we did not, like the expeditions mentioned, have a physician with us, we were obliged to redouble our direct attention to ourselves, and I ascribe the fortunate result, next to the protection of Providence, chiefly to the excellent conduct, mutual helpfulness and strict regard for order of all the members. There was but one exception, the moulder Franke, whom I was forced to dismiss on account of unseemly disturbances of this order. This harmony and admirable disposition of the members also greatly facilitated the management for me, and I cannot but praise this spirit especially in our architect, Herr Erbkam, who stood by me on every occasion as a true and helpful friend.
As far as the scientific results are concerned, I must first observe that scarcely any other expedition had been undertaken under such favorable circumstances. Amongst these circumstances I reckon chiefly the definiteness of the tasks which were set before us, and which we were able on this account to pursue with perfect system. The expedition most immediately comparable with ours was Champollion’s, but that was more a voyage of discovery, and necessarily suffered from the very deficiencies which we were easily able to supply. The advantages which he had as founder of the science and from his incomparable ability as a student of monuments, were for us more than counterbalanced by the firmer and broader foundations of the science, the last results of which are now presented to us in Bunsen’s remarkable work on history. Added to this was our greater previous knowledge of the interesting localities which we had to investigate. From the very beginning of the journey we could within wide limits strive for completeness, without suffering from any want of new, unexpected and most highly important discoveries. Especially had Champollion left behind to us, practically uncommenced, the investigation of the oldest Egyptian history, that is, the epoch of the first Pharaonic kingdom from about 3000 to 1700 years before Christ, which extends the history of the world for almost 1500 years. He had only ascended the valley of the Nile as far as the second cataract, beyond which there still exist a great multitude of old Egyptian monuments of all kinds, as yet entirely uninvestigated. There the whole of Ethiopian antiquity, which cannot be separated from the Egyptian, must find its interpretation and, if I do not deceive myself, has done so through us.
Thence it follows that our results are by far the most important in chronology and history. The pyramid fields of Memphis, whose importance had not been recognized by Champollion, and which had therefore scarcely been touched by him, have placed the Egyptian civilization of those remote ages before us, in four hundred large pictures. The representation which they furnish must for all future time be regarded with the highest interest and considered the beginning of investigable human history. Those earliest dynasties of the Egyptian rulers now offer us more than a barren succession of empty, unknown or doubtful names. They have not only been raised beyond all reasonable doubt and been critically arranged in order and according to the correct periods of time, but through the contemplation of the political, civil and artistic popular life which bloomed under their reigns, they have preserved an intellectual and often very individual historical reality.
This is the greatest success of our journey and must always be a convincing proof of the great and lasting service rendered to science by our expedition and its illustrious promoter. I pass over for the present the details of the evidence, which can only be rightly estimated by those co-workers on this field who shall make later and more extensive investigations. But I will mention that in Middle Egypt up to Thebes we found eight separate places of sepulchre, belonging to the Old Kingdom, which the French Tuscan expedition had passed by without suspicion. Of some of these we were the discoverers, and others we were the first to recognize as belonging to that period, and to excavate. We could not fail, also, to make a great number of more or less substantial restorations, corrections and additions to the history of the most flourishing period of the New Empire, which was peculiarly the prime of Thebes, as well as to that of the following dynasties. Even those Ptolemies who were apparently completely known in the light of Grecian history, have appeared in a new aspect in their Egyptian representations and inscriptions, and indeed have been recruited by some individuals scarcely mentioned by the Greeks and whose existence has hitherto been considered doubtful. Finally the Roman emperors, in their character of Egyptian rulers, have also appeared to us on the Egyptian monuments in greater and almost perfect completeness. They have been carried down, from Caracalla, (who had till now been recognized as the last whose name was written in hieroglyphics,) through two later emperors to Decius. Thus the whole extent of Egyptian monumental history has been increased at the latter end also by a number of years.
Egyptian philology, too, has made no insignificant advances during the journey. The lexicon has been increased by the addition of some hundred signs or groups, and the grammar has received manifold corrections. Besides this a wealth of material has been gathered, especially by means of the numerous paper impressions of the most important inscriptions, the gradual interpretation of which must lead to substantial progress in the science. According to the great age established for the earliest written monuments the history of the Egyptian language now embraces a period of nearly five and a half thousand years, and thus acquires an entirely new significance in relation to the universal history of human language and writing. In matters of detail one of the most important discoveries on this field was two bi-lingual decrees, written in hieroglyphics and demotic, which were discovered in Philae. One of these repeats the inscription of Rosetta, and there is promise of important results from a comparison between them. The news of this seemed so important to the French that they resolved on sending out the famous scholar Ampére, with an artist, expressly to copy this one monument. I first became aware of their intention through the publication and philological exploration of that inscription, now just appearing in print.
According to my opinion Egyptian mythology, in spite of countless works upon the subject, has hitherto been without any firm foundation. I had almost abandoned the hope that our expedition would achieve any actual advance for this science, when upon the return journey I discovered in the Theban temples a series of monuments which threw so much unexpected light upon its essential nature and historical phases, that I have come to the conclusion that upon this basis Egyptian mythology may for the first time be presented according to its true import and in its historical development.
The history of art has never been worked out from the present standpoint of Egyptology. To accomplish this was necessarily one of the chief objects of our expedition and the advanced chronological knowledge of the monuments conduced greatly to progress in this direction. For the first time we have been able to trace the various divisions of the history of art in the Old Egyptian Empire, previous to the invasion of the “Hyksos,” and thus to extend it, as well as Egyptian history in general, for about thirteen centuries upwards and for some decades downwards. We were also obliged to regard the history of art almost exclusively in the selection of our collection of monuments, of which I shall speak again hereafter. Amongst the different branches of Egyptian art, architecture, which had been entirely neglected by Champollion and Rosellini, was especially well handled by our skillful and industrious architect Erbkam. From him it received the treatment befitting the important position of this special branch, in which the artistic element of grandeur, bestowed upon the Egyptians above all other nations, could be and was most highly developed. The rendering of the sculpture and painting fell to the other artists who accompanied us. They soon learned to reproduce with praiseworthy skill the peculiar Egyptian style, which in spite of all the childish constraint that characterizes Egyptian art, yet contains an unmistakable and finely perfected ideal element. If the Grecian genius had not received art from the Egyptians as a child so severely, chastely and carefully reared, it could never have given to it such a positive character of blooming freedom. The chief task of the history of Egyptian art is to show wherein consisted this culture of art, which no ancient Asiatic nation shares with the Egyptian. I will adduce as one of the most important details belonging here, that we have found three separate canons of the proportions of the human figure, in numerous examples, upon uncompleted monuments; one for the old Pharaonic kingdom, another for the New Empire since the eighteenth dynasty, and a third which first came into general use shortly before the time of the Ptolemies. This latter involved an entire change of the principle of distribution, and remained in force under the Roman emperors to the end. These discoveries are also of decided importance in judging of the Greek canon.
Next to the history of art, however, a great part of our time and attention was claimed by Egyptian archaeology in its widest sense. This was a field which had already been worked with success and industry, especially by Wilkinson and Rosellini. It contains an inexhaustible wealth of detached monuments of common life, and representations thereof of all kinds, far exceeding in abundance all other remains of antiquity. And on this account this branch of study needed much more a vigorous prosecution of its aims and elevation of its standard, than a farther accumulation of details. Nevertheless these are continually coming in from all sides and have been collected by ourselves in great quantity as material.
Finally, geography and chorography, to which travellers are always expected to make additions, demand special attention. In Fayoum we have for the first time thoroughly investigated the Labyrinth. It lies beside Lake Moeris, which was discovered by Linant, but is now dry. We have been able to assign the Labyrinth its place in history through the discovery of the founder’s name. Our description of the ruined cities and monuments of antiquity in the land of the Nile, up to Senaar, will be more complete and exact than any previously given. So also will be our account of the rarely travelled dependencies of the dominion of the Pharaohs, such as the Ethiopian countries, the eastern mountains between the Nile and the Red Sea, and the colonies in the copper region of Mafkat (of the Peninsula of Sinai.) Only the oases of the western desert we have unfortunately been obliged to leave unexplored. In more modern geography, which must always accompany and correct the ancient, I have devoted special care to obtaining the Arabian names accurately, in order to counteract as far as possible, at least upon the region traversed by us, the intolerable confusion of designations. I have prepared upon the way accurate geographical maps of various parts of the eastern mountains of Egypt and the Arabian copper region. Respecting the border lands of Mahommed Ali’s dominion, towards Abyssinia, I have collected and recorded graphically important geographical information from particularly well-informed people of that region. On the Peninsula of Sinai I have not only for the first time investigated more exactly the ancient Egyptian copper mines, the working of which, according to the pictures on the rocks and inscriptions, preserved at Wadi-Magara, goes back to the time of Cheops, about 3000 years before Christ, but I have also traced out the route of the Israelites to Sinai. In doing so I have come to the conclusion, which I have sought to prove in a preliminary report to his Majesty, that a tradition of comparatively late origin has wrongly designated the mountain which the monks call Gebel Mûsa as the Sinai of the Bible, and that Horeb or Sinai, the Mount of God, corresponds rather to the present Serbâl, which lies some days’ journey to the north of Gebel Mûsa. A noteworthy contribution has been made to the history of the physical conditions of the Nile valley through the discovery of the nilometer of Semneh in the region of the Nubian cataracts. From this it is apparent that about 4000 years ago, under the rule of Amenemha-Moeris, the Nile at that place rose in average years twenty-two feet higher than now, while in Egypt at about that time it stood at least ten to fifteen feet lower, so that the Nile at the intervening cataracts fell thirty-five feet farther than at present. This gradual leveling of the bed of the stream has had the most decisive influence on the cultivation of the valley, and the history of its whole population, since the shore of the Nubian country lying along the stream was made inaccessible to the natural inundation by this great sinking of the water, and thence became dry and unfruitful.
Besides all our acquisitions in the ancient Egyptian language we have made some not unimportant gains for the science of language in general. In the upper countries of the Nile I have obtained three African languages, the grammar and lexicon of which I have made out and noted down from the communications of the natives, with sufficient completeness to present a clear idea of them. They are: 1. the Congâra language, a negro language of the interior, spoken in Darfur and the adjoining countries: 2. the Nuba language, which is spoken in two dialects in a portion of the valley of the Nubian Nile, and in the neighboring districts to the southwest. This appears, moreover, to be of primitive African origin. It has never been written, and I have collected for the first time a considerable quantity of Nubian manuscript literature, by getting a Nubian sheik, who was entire master of the Arabian language and writing, to translate from Arabian into Nubian, the fables of Lokman, the Gospel of St. Mark, and a portion of the Thousand and One Nights. I also had him write down and translate into Arabian about twenty Nubian songs, some in rhyme, and some only rythmical. In doing this he displayed a wonderful talent for the correct comprehension of linguistic relations. 3. The Béga language of the race of the Bishareen who are widely scattered between the Red Sea and the Nubian Nile. This appears to be a most important branch of the original Asiatic-Caucasian family of languages, and deserves our attention so much the more since it seems that it can be historically proved to be the present form of the ancient Egyptian language of Meroë. I have also found in those countries, and in the pyramids of Meroë, a great number of old Ethiopian inscriptions, which are recorded in an alphabetical writing until now entirely unknown. Subsequent inscriptions are in an alphabet formed after the Greek, and they can probably both be deciphered by the aid of the Béga language. Finally we have also made the completest possible collection of many hundreds of paper impressions from Grecian inscriptions. These are now of great value as a contribution to the knowledge of Grecian-Egyptian antiquity, which has been industriously cultivated on several sides. We have also made another collection of the numerous so-called “Inscriptions of Sinai” which were cut into the rocks by a Christian population who lived on the Peninsula of Sinai in the first centuries of our era. These have not yet been entirely deciphered.