a Civilian In Egypt

Edward Daniel Clarke

by Peta Rée

“In order to do something everywhere, it was necessary to rest nowhere¹.”

One might suppose this the exhortation of a modern package tour operator – in fact, it was written in the early nineteenth century by Edward Daniel Clarke, Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. He was referring to the regretted necessity of his departure from Egypt – ‘the difficulty of “knowing when to have done” is never more sensibly felt than in a territory so fertile of resources…’

But by that time, in less than two and a half years, he had visited much of Scandinavia, including Lapland and Finland, Russia, Turkey, Cyprus, the Holy Land and Egypt, with the Grecian Isles, Athens, the Morea, Boetia, Thrace, Thessaly, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Transylvania, Hungary, Germany and France still to tour before he arrived home in November 1802.

Clarke had set out from England in May 1799, accompanied by two friends, William Otter and Thomas Malthus, also aged in their early thirties, also Fellows of Jesus, and by a younger man, John Marten Cripps, who was his pupil, and who was paying all the expenses of their travels together.

Clarke proved an exhausting travelling companion. ‘There was,’ remarked Otter feelingly, ‘at times a feverish impatience about him, which would never allow him to place his own rest or comfort in competition with the more rapid attainment of any object he had in view, nor even to tolerate such a disposition in others².’ But his friends could forgive him much; Otter also says that his two most remarkable qualities were enthusiasm and benevolence – ‘the more intimately he was known, the more delightful did he appear³.’

After a few weeks, Malthus and Otter returned to England, pleading shortage of time, though Clarke remarked jauntily, ‘Had they been lads of sufficient enterprise, I still think they might have taken a journey full as extensive as ours.’

Clarke and Cripps continued on their exhaustive (and exhausting) way. In December, 1799 they set off for Russia – ‘Cripps would go to the mountains of the moon if I would accompany him,’ Clarke wrote to his mother. After several months in Russia, eschewing the mountains of the moon and even Siberia, they reached Constantinople by November 1800. Having next visited the plain of Troy, they took passage on a provisions boat headed for Egypt, arriving in mid-April 1801.

The English army, under General Sir Ralph Abercrombie, had landed at Aboukir, under heavy fire from the French, on 8 March. On 21 March was fought the great battle at which Abercrombie was mortally wounded. On 2 April, his successor as Commander-in-Chief, General Hutchinson, took Rosetta.

Still about a hundred miles from the Egyptian coast, the sea very calm and scarcely a breath of wind, Clarke heard ‘a low gentle murmur upon the water’. It was the sound of the distant gunfire of a battle somewhere on the Nile beyond Rosetta.

On 17 April, they saw Alexandria distinctly, with a fine view of Pompey’s Pillar and soon came up with the English fleet, in the Bay of Aboukir. ‘It was the grandest naval sight I ever saw,’ wrote Clarke, ‘Troopships, transports, with all the Turkish frigates, merchant vessels and other craft, belonging to the Expedition…
Innumerable masts, like an immense forest, covering the sea, swarms of sailing boats and cutters, plying about in all directions between the larger vessels…’

Clarke’s younger brother, George, was captain of the Braakel. Clarke and Cripps settled aboard his ship which was in use as a hospital. Clarke was deeply distressed to see the suffering officers, many his friends, ‘mutilated, hacked or wounded by shot… others, brought aboard too ill to serve, presented a revolting picture of the ravages of war.’

The picture was not restricted to shipboard. Often dead bodies sewn up in hammocks would brake the surface of the bay and float on the current slowly shorewards – so that orders were given to bury as many as possible on the islet named Nelson’s Island ‘already a complete charnel-house of heaps of dead cast up after the action of the Nile’ – the battle more than two and a half years earlier in which Nelson defeated the French fleet. Two weeks later, Clarke landed on the island with his brother, and saw at close hand the revolting spectacle of these poor corpses, safe from devouring jackals and so still preserved upon the shore. George had his crew bury them, and Clarke and Cripps were ‘proud to add their pious labour’.

Add to the floating corpses, ‘the stench of slaughtered horses, camels and other animals – and when a land wind prevailed, our whole fleet felt the tainted blast: while from beneath the hulks of our transports, ships that had been sunk, with all the encumbering bodies of men and carcases of animals sent through the waves a fearful exhalation.’

Less than a month since the death of the much loved Abercrombie, the gloom still over the army made it difficult for his successor, John Hely Hutchinson, fine soldier and popular commander though he was. He was pursuing a strategy of mopping up the different French positions one by one, a slower process than before, but a more certain one. Being more sensible than audacious, this caused complaints of torpor from the fleet, and sarcasm from the French outposts, ‘who occasionally remarked, “Gentlemen, you make haste very slowly.”’

Clarke later heard accounts of the campaign both from ‘the most impartial among the French’ and ‘the most candid’ of his own countrymen.

‘The laurels acquired by our army in Egypt,’ he remarked, ‘can never fade. Posterity will relate the heroism, which, on these remote and almost unknown deserts, enabled an inexperienced army to vanquish an enemy, not only in possession of the territory, but also inured to the climate, and well acquainted with the country.’

Posterity knows, what Clarke could not, how precariously the French army was in possession of the territory, how exhausted and debilitated by constant skirmishes, constant disease and constant shortage of arms, equipment and food, and how demoralised by the clandestine departure of Napoleon, the man who had led them into this plight for his own glory and deserted them when a more certain glory beckoned in France. Few of the French generals, apart from Menou, still believed in Napoleon’s vision of Egypt as a colony of France; few of the soldiers did not long above all, after three weary, cruel years, to go home.

The problems of the French army, however, do not detract from those of the British army. ‘The obstacles encountered… were greater than have ever been described,’ continued Clarke, and the ‘most powerful originated in their want of information. Never did so much ignorance accompany an expedition. The maps they brought with them would have disgraced a Chinese atlas. The instruction they had received was a mere mass of error; and their guides were unable to direct them… Instead of the flat sand they expected to find between Aboukir and Alexandria, they discovered a country full of eminences and advantageous posts, so that the French, when defeated, only had to draw back from one strong position to another.’

Jealousy and divisions between the commanders of the combined naval and army force also made difficulties. Some of the naval captains took umbrage because the ‘brilliant seaman and tactician’, Sir Sidney Smith, spent so much time with the landsmen ashore, while the army generals ‘could ill brook counsel, or even assistance from a naval officer… The most unpardonable resistance was therefore offered to his measures and suggestions.’

Described as having a temperament which ‘tended towards that peculiarly English type of flamboyance which is a mixture of cool cheek, courage, dash, and a love of the theatre⁴’, Smith had earned his reputation for heroism, cool and compassion at the siege of Acre two years before, and there is no hint of anything but admiration for him in Colonel Robert Wilson’s account of the British Expedition to Egypt.

On 22 April Clarke went ashore with his brother to visit the British camp near Alexandria.

One of Hutchinson’s strategies, executed reluctantly for fear of the consequences it might have for the Egyptian people, had been to cut the canal of Alexandria, so that the water flooded out, drowning a huge area of desert to the east and south of the city, inhibiting communication with the rest of Egypt and preventing a supply of fresh water.

As the party’s cutter made its way across the Lake of Aboukir, the water was so shallow and so full of fish that the creatures leapt into the boat. Often they had to get out and heave their vessel across the mud. They walked to the camp across two miles of desert. English soldiers and sailors were ‘lounging about… seemingly at home upon the sand of Egypt. Arabs and Moors were seen mounted on camels, while the army officers cantered about on asses, to and from the little shops established by Greeks near the shore.’

Having dined with the 12th Dragoons in their Egyptian messroom (a square hole in the ground with the branches of palm trees), in the evening they rode outside the lines, where the ‘whole front of the British army was then drawn up and under arms, behind breastworks’. From the artillery stations on the heights opposite Alexandria they could see the French cavalry descending from their earthworks to relieve their outposts. They were close enough to distinguish the troops putting on their long white cloaks for the night. The French and English outposts were within a hundred yards of each other, and ‘often conversed; the French party frequently coming over to ask for water’.

Clarke and Cripps slept in a tent pitched upon the sand, in some dread of scorpions, and in the morning woke to find theirs the only tent left, for the Dragoons had marched before dawn to Rosetta. Following them, they found Rosetta gay with English officers and troops and a throng composed of nearly every nation of the Mediterranean – further diversified by English ladies from the fleet and army who, in white dresses, were riding about on asses. It is surprising nowadays to realise how many women, both of ranker and officer class, accompanied their men to war.

Clarke and Cripps settled in at the ‘delightful’ house of Sir Sidney Smith. He was not there, but had prepared it for them, ‘that the turbulence of war, might not,’ as he was pleased to express it, ‘interfere with the arts of peace’.
As one of the arts of peace, viewing antiquities proved to be disappointing ‘there is nothing more remarkable than the scarcity of those antiquities which appear so common in all the museums of Europe,’ remarked Clarke tellingly. A few granite columns only remained in the streets of Rosetta. True, the Rosetta Stone had been found in the excavations made for the foundations for Fort Julien, on the western side of the Rosetta branch of the Nile, but that had been spirited away by the French and though its discovery was known to the English, its whereabouts were not.

On 29 May Clarke and Cripps left for Cyprus, where we will not follow them. As they sailed into Aboukir Bay three weeks later, they were greeted by the terrifying sight of the frigate Iphegenia, on fire, breaking from her mooring and drifting through the fleet, her guns exploding as they grew hot, but amazingly causing no harm. As they dropped anchor, the Iphegenia blew up, not a vestige of the ship remaining.

Four days later they were off again to tour the Holy Land, but by 1 August were once more aboard George Clarke’s ship. Cairo had capitulated in their absence and the long columns of General Belliard’s army and its followers were gradually marching into Rosetta, to be carried back to France.

George’s ship was one of those assigned to this task. When his passengers were drawn up on deck to be assigned their berths some were found to be French women. Very different from those cool white-dressed English ladies, these were barely clothed in the tattered habits of French soldiers. Others, more pitiable still, also in men’s clothes, were Georgian and Circassian girls, taken from Turkish harems only to become ‘the lamentable slaves of the lowest rabble of the French army’. They wanted to go anywhere rather than stay in Egypt, where they feared they would be put to death for ‘admitting the embraces of a Christian’ – perhaps some of them had had a choice.

Despite their wretched condition, observed Clarke, ‘never was there anything to equal the gaiety and good humour of these Frenchmen. All animosity was laid aside; singing, dancing and acting, became the order of the day’. The prisoners, eager to give pleasure to their escort, offered a band to play during dinner, fencing on deck every morning, and a comedic every evening.

Though appreciating this jolly atmosphere, Clarke and Cripps did not wish to leave Egypt yet, and George tried to put them aboard the ship of Capudan Pasha, the Admiral of the Turkish fleet. But transferring from one ship to another at sea is not always possible, and by 7 August they were so far on their way to France that the fleet was out of sight. Fortunately, the Diadem, coming up from Cyprus with wood and water, managed, with some difficulty, to take them aboard. By 9 August they were back in Rosetta, and two days later were in Cairo.

In spite of finding Cairo dirty, dusty and unhealthy, they enjoyed themselves. They had a house facing onto a canal, and a boat, and received generous attentions from the high ranking army officers based in the city.

Colonel Charles Holloway, with other artillery officers, was quartered in the building that the French Institute had used for its meetings. In the courtyard were several interesting bits of antiquity, abandoned by the French, including a stele of porphyry, which Holloway allowed Clarke to take, and which he gave the Cambridge University Library. The most remarkable relic was a very large slab covered with Hieroglyphic, Egyptian and Greek characters, very badly damaged, but similar to the Rosetta Stone.
Holloway was willing that Clarke should have this, but in the event this did not happen, and Clarke supposed it lay there still – one wonders, where is it now?

Colonel Holloway lent them horses and a dragoon escort to look at the ruins on the Cairo side of the Nile, and Colonel Stewart, lodged in Murad Bey’s palace at Giza, did the same to visit the Pyramids. They were joined in that expedition by a person they had become friends with at Constantinople, William Richard Hamilton. Secretary to Lord Elgin, British Ambassador at Constantinople, he had been sent by him to report on events in Egypt.

Most descriptions of the Pyramids dwell almost exclusively on their size, and the colossal efforts needed to raise them, but Edward Clarke’s reactions are more poetic and evocative. Admitting that some people found the impression of awe more painful than pleasant, ‘others,’ he said, ‘have acknowledged ideas of duration, almost endless; of power, inconceivable; of majesty, supreme; of solitude, most awful; of grandeur, of desolation, and of repose’.

The climb to the top of the Great Pyramid was not made less arduous by their carrying with them a compass, a thermometer and a telescope. At the summit, all the party carved their names. ‘It seemed to be a tribute of thankfulness, due for the success of our undertaking’ – a more elevated motive than can usually be ascribed!

Clarke described the panorama visible from the summit – as he also did from the citadel. It would be fascinating, and one fears depressing to compare his description with what can be seen from either today.

Inside the Pyramid, Clarke lamented that the great granite sarcophagus, left unviolated by the French, had been damaged by English soldiers who had used sledgehammers to break off souvenirs, until stopped by Colonel Stewart’s threat to make an example of anyone, officer or private, who should ‘thus disgrace his country by waging hostility against History and the Arts’. Even so, added Clarke, the men who had left behind them a sad memorial of the British name, had only succeeded in accomplishing a fracture near one of the angles.

Invited to dinner by General Baird, commander of the Indian army then encamped on the island of Rhoda, they were astonished by the style of oriental splendour. ‘Even the subalterns live upon sophas, beneath fine tents… while even the richest of the troops from England sleep on the sand⁵’. The dinner was in a magnificent pavilion, with chandeliers, mahogany tables, green silk hangings; fine foods and wines were served to a company in full dress uniform. The ‘Indian army’ was in fact the army of the East India Company, and Clarke commented, ‘No similar result of commerce and conquest is likely to occur again in any part of the inhabitable globe’.

A few weeks later, at Alexandria, Clarke and Cripps attended a dinner in telling contrast to this magnificence, witnessing ‘the sort of fare which the Commander-in-Chief of a British army… allowed for his own use’. Hutchinson invited them, ‘If you have appetite enough to dine with a soldier, you will this day have something more than usually substantial’. The dinner was served in his tent; ‘it consisted of the remaining half of a cold pie, made by one of the privates the day before, containing some lumps of meat encased in a DURABLE crust about an inch thick, of the coarsest flour. Some of the officers informed us that such was his daily diet; and that it rarely differed from the allowance made to the common soldiers of the army.’

On parade in the Indian army, not an unhealthy soldier was to be seen – not only were they well fed, but the English officers, inured to the climate of India, found Egypt temperate, and the sepoys, in spite of being volunteers and never so far from home before, ‘seemed as fond of the Nile as of the Ganges’.

After inspection, the sepoys were marched to Cairo, where, having piled their arms before one of the principal mosques, they joined the other worshippers. Surprised and gratified, the Turks and Arabs speedily circulated the news that the English army was filled with the Faithful. Many sepoys must have been Hindus, for it has often been told how Brahmins in the army, recognising, as they thought, at Dendera, the form of the god Vishnu among the sculptures, were with difficulty restrained by their officers from assaulting the Arabs for allowing Vishnu’s temple to fall into such disrepair.

In general, said Clarke, their voyage down the Nile had been charming. Now posts of their troops occupied the whole length of the Nile from Cairo to the Cataracts.

On 31 August news reached Cairo of the armistice at Alexandria while the terms of capitulation were negotiated. Clarke and Cripps determined to hasten down to inform General Hutchinson of what they had discovered about the antiquities collected by the French during their occupation. Their informant was the Imperial Consul, Signor Carlo Rosetti.

Rosetti is an interesting character, often mentioned by travellers. He died at the age of 83, blind and paralysed, but in 1801 was still in his early 60s. Clarke thought well of him, and Colonel Robert Wilson calls him an accomplished, well-informed and generous man; no one was better acquainted with the history of Egypt. Turks, Copts and Christians were united in esteem of him, considering him their universal benefactor. He was strictly neutral in politics⁶.

This statement is given a more cynical twist by William Richard Hamilton, the diplomat: By prudence and caution he has always succeeded in ingratiating himself with the ruling power; and though concerned, either voluntarily or by compulsion, in most of the intrigues and negotiations carried on among the contending parties, he has known so well how to time his assistance or his desertion of his friends, as to ensure himself the gratitude rather then the anger of each successive conquerors⁷’.

For whatever motives, Rosetti was very ready to ensure himself the gratitude of the English by telling Clarke that all the antiquities were now at Alexandria, awaiting embarkation to France, that this included not only the famous Rosetta Stone, but an article the French valued even more highly, and had concealed even more closely, in a place known, however, to a merchant of Alexandria, to whom Rosetti supplied Clarke with a letter.

On 10 September, Clarke and Cripps arrived at the British camp before Alexandria. General Hutchinson received their information with considerable interest for, though most of the articles of capitulation stipulated by the French Commander-in-Chief; General Menou, had either been granted as stated or with conditions, on one stipulation matters were at a standstill.

Menou’s Article 16 demanded that: The individuals composing the Institute of Egypt, and the Commission of Arts, shall carry with them all the papers, plans, memoirs, collections of natural history, and all the monuments of art and antiquity, collected by them in Egypt.

The answer was: The members of the Institute may carry with them all the instruments of arts and sciences which they have brought from France; but the Arabian manuscripts, the statues and other collections which have been made for the French Republic, shall be considered as public property, and subject to the disposal of the generals of the combined army.

Hutchinson was adamant that the collections should be given up, but of what, exactly, these collections consisted, and where, exactly, they all were, he was ignorant. Now here were Clarke and Cripps and Hamilton, who had appeared the same day, very willing to find out for him. The General was only too pleased to authorise them to make ‘the most diligent enquiry’ in Alexandria, and issued them with passports to enter the city.

Passing the outer gate, they rode across a ‘desolate scene of sand and nuns’ and through the inner gate into the great square of Alexandria.

They found the siege had taken its toll. The inhabitants were ‘in the greatest distress from want of food’. The French, who had fared better for some time, were now killing about 15 horses a day to feed the troops. Even in the household of the Imperial Consul, everyone showed signs of privation – fallen cheeks, clothes hanging loose, and a general appearance of wretchedness and dejection. They asked eagerly when the English were to enter the city, and told it would be some days yet, they burst into tears.

And the chief cause of the delay was the refusal of General Menou to yield up the collections…

That very day Clarke and his companions were called upon by several merchants of Alexandria, who offered any assistance in their power to expedite the entry of the English. A few men remained behind the rest to ask, ‘Does your Commander-in-Chief know that they have the tomb of Alexander?’ This they described as of one piece of green stone, shaped like a cistern, which had for many centuries been venerated as the tomb of Iskander, or Alexander the Great, the founder of the city. Despite ‘a most solemn treaty’ not to violate the Moslem sanctuaries, the French were so eager to obtain this relic that they had forcibly entered the Mosque of Athanasius and carried it off ‘amid the howling and lamentation of its votaries’.

This was the especially prized monument to which Rosetti’s letter referred, and when they called upon the merchant to whom it was addressed, they were told that, with enormous difficulty, the sarcophagus had been concealed in the hold of a ramshackle vessel called La Cause, which lay in the inner harbour. It had been converted to a hospital ship, and they found the tomb half filled with filth and covered with rags from the sick people aboard.

The sarcophagus (which the hieroglyphs carved on it, then of course unreadable, proclaimed to have belonged to the Pharaoh Nectanebo III), was fetched ashore by Colonel Tomkyns Hilgrove Turner. A member of the Society of Antiquaries, he was the official military representative in the antiquities hunt. He had to dispute possession of the tomb not with the French but with the Admiral of the Turkish fleet, the Capudan Pasha, to whose share of the prizes La Cause had fallen.

Clarke was overwhelmed with admiration, ‘having never seen, among the fine works the antients [sic] left us, an instance in which nature as well as art vie for each other to such perfection’. He was later, through historical researches, to prove to his own satisfaction that this was indeed the tomb of Alexander. His Dissertation on the Sarcophagus brought from Alexandria and now in the British Museum, published in 1805, was the work which added most to his literary reputation, according to John Nichols in Literary Anecdotes of the 18th Century. To his enduring indignation, the British Museum refused to accept his conclusions and to this day the label on the sarcophagus does not mention what for many centuries it was devoutly believed to be.

In the evening of this first day of the hunt, M. Roy, Ordonnateur de la Marine, showed them some warehouses near the old port, in and around which were many antiquities: on the beach, among other objects, was the great granite hand from Memphis which is illustrated being examined in situ in La Description de l’Egypte.

For the next three days, Clarke and his companions ‘pursued our researches after the French acquisitions, finding more in their possession than was represented or imagined… Pointers would not range better for game than we did for Statues, Sarcophagi, Maps, Mss, Drawings, Plans, Charts, Botany, Stuffed Birds, Animals, Dried Fish, etc⁸.’

Savigny, who had spent years forming the Natural History collection, ‘the first thing of its kind in the world’, was in such despair that Clarke suggested to Hutchinson that the best plan would be to send him to England also, as the most suitable person to care for it.

When they visited the members of the French Institute, they found them assembled round a long table, inspecting and packing drawings and maps. They were very civilly received by M. Le Père, architect and Director of the Class of Civil Engineers, and ‘experienced from them all that urbanity which must be considered the distinguishing characteristic of the French people in their conduct even towards their enemies’. But asked for permission to inspect the ‘splendid’ map of Egypt their geographers had made, they (however urbanely) refused – ‘nor perhaps was it reasonable to expect them to comply,’ commented Clarke, for they candidly owned that they feared such an inspection would lead to further demands from Hutchinson.

As to Savigny, his fellows said that going to England might palliate losing their specimens, had they not already been away from home for four years. However, on further consideration, they told General Menou next day that they preferred to follow their collections to England rather than give them up. Menou wrote to Hutchinson with superb distain: ‘I have just been informed that several among our collection-makers wish to follow their seeds, minerals, birds, butterflies, or reptiles wherever you choose to ship their crates. I do not know if they wish to have themselves stuffed for the purpose, but I can assure you that if the idea should appeal to them, I shall not prevent it. I have authorised them to address themselves to you⁹’.

In the event (in alarm at the prospect of the invasion of England by so many learned Frenchmen?) Hutchinson decided that the Natural History specimens, so carefully collected and preserved by the savants, could fairly be looked upon as their private property, and therefore exempt from confiscation.

Finding that he was to lose all the trophies with which he had intended to adorn the Louvre, Menou ‘gave no bounds to his rage and mortification’. Above all else he was determined to hang on to the Rosetta Stone, maintaining that it was his private property and thus exempt from confiscation. On 11 September, Hamilton and Turner interviewed him on the subject. Already ‘enflamed’ by this visit, only an hour later Menou was called upon by Clarke, ostensibly to ask for a passport to let him go in and out of the city.

An Aide-de-camp led him to a small tent pitched in a square near the inner gate of Alexandria where the daily parade of the garrison was held. The tent was divided in two by a curtain, behind which Menou kept his harem, giving audience in the part near the entrance, where there was scarcely room to stand upright. Clarke waited some time, hearing women’s voices beyond the curtain, which was suddenly raised and ‘Jacques Abd’ Allah Menou made his appearance’.

Dressed in a flower-embroidered waistcoat with flaps almost to his knees, and a coat covered with broad lace, he raised his chin, to give himself as much ‘pomp and dignity’ as possible, and demanded imperiously, ‘Que souhaite-t-il, M. Clarke?’ Having mentioned the passport and being directed where to apply for it, Clarke ventured to introduce the subject of the Rosetta Stone. Immediately Menou, ‘ready to burst with choler’, exclaimed that Hutchinson had as much right to demand it ‘as a highwayman has to ask for my purse. He has a cannon in each of my ears, and another in my mouth; let him take what pleases him. I have a few embroidered saddles and a tolerable stock of shirts, perhaps he may fancy some of these!’

Clarke refused to bear such a message, but undertook to deliver a note. Hutchinson distained writing, sending only a verbal reply, cautioning Menou not to send any more messages or letters to him, but to obey the proposed conditions, or submit to the examination not only of his own baggage but that of all his officers.

The next day Hamilton reported Hutchinson’s ultimatum to Menou. Clarke and Cripps, waiting outside the tent, were soon highly diverted to hear Menou bellowing his indignation, threatening to publish an account in all the Gazettes of Europe, and as Hamilton withdrew, challenging Hutchinson to single combat – ‘Nous nous verrons, de bien près, je vous assure!’

But the British army had now occupied all the forts, and the condition of his garrison was so bad that even Menou realised he must give way. The Rosetta Stone, covered with mats, was taken from the warehouse where it had been deposited with Menou’s luggage, and handed over by a French officer and a member of the Institute, in a street in Alexandria – ‘Mr Cripps, Mr Hamilton and myself being the only persons present, to take possession of it,’ wrote Clarke unequivocally. The officer recommended it should speedily be taken to some safe place as he could not be answerable for the conduct of the French soldiers if they should see it.

Hutchinson gave orders to Colonel Turner for its immediate removal. Clarke’s emphasis on who alone initially received the Stone is perhaps explained by a letter written by Turner in 1810 to the Society of Antiquaries, in which he neglected to mention this fact. Turner¹⁰ recounted how, with a detachment of artillery and an artillery-engine called a devil cart, ‘from its powers’, he carried off the stone to his own house, ‘amid the sarcasms of numbers of French officers and men’. The artillerymen, who were the first British soldiers to enter Alexandria, took great satisfaction in their employment. Under Colonel Turner’s direction, all the antiquities resigned by the articles of capitulation, were conveyed to England in the Madras The Rosetta Stone, for its greater safety, he carried in his personal baggage, aboard L’Egytienne, a French frigate taken as a prize by the English. And so the Rosetta Stone left Egypt’s shores, as Menou had intended, on a French ship, but headed for a different destination.

With their tasks and their sightseeing both accomplished to their satisfaction, on 16 September, two days after the first French division from Alexandria was embarked for France, Clarke and Cripps left for the Grecian Isles on a ship belonging to the Capudan Pasha.

Peta Rée
York

This article is the Number 2 of Astene Working Papers (2003). Astene, The Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East was established in 1997 to encourage education and learning about the history of travel and travellers in Egypt and the Near East. It brings together all who are interested in the subject, whether professional academic or not, across a wide spectrum of interests. To promote its aims, the Association holds a biennial conference, organises study days and special visits, produces a half-yearly Bulletin and facilitates the publication of its conference materials either in its own name or in cooperation with commercial publishers. It is also creating a database of research materials about travellers to its region. For further details see www.astene.org.uk.

The Working Papers series consists of a selection from the papers delivered at Astene’s biennial conference and represents an attempt both to circulate research findings quickly to any one interested and also to obtain comments for the author in advance of formal publication.

Comments on this paper should be sent to the author, Peta Rée, at 45 Field View, York, Y030 6ES, United Kingdom.

References

¹ Clarke, Edward Daniel, Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia and Africa – Part the Second, Greece, Egypt and the Holy Land, Sections I and II, London: T. Cadell & W Davies, 1814, p. 291

Unless otherwise stated, all major quotations are from Clarke

² Otter, William, The Life and Remains of the Reverend Edward Daniel Clarke LLD, London: J. F. Dove, 1824, p. 343

³ Ibid, p. 662

⁴ Herold, J. Christopher, Bonaparte in Egypt, London: Harnish Hamilton, 1963, p. 282

⁵ Otter, op. cit., p. 483

⁶ Wilson, Lt Col. Robert Thomas, History of the British Expedition to Egypt, etc., London: T. Egerton, 1803, p. 176

⁷ Hamilton, William Richard, Remarks on Several Parts of Turkey. Part I Aegyptica, etc., London: T. Payne and Cadell and Davies, 1809, p. 343

⁸ Otter, op. cit., p.494

⁹ Herold, op. cit., p. 387

¹⁰ Turner, Col. Tomkyns Hilgrove, letter in Archaeologia, Volume 16, 1812