Frédéric Cailliaud: Pioneering French Scientist and Explorer Find us
Cailliaud in 1819
In 1809, a year before the first volume of Napoleon’s mighty Description de l’Egypte, the academic publication born from his invasion, Cailliaud traveled to Paris where he immersed himself in the study of mineralogy. Two years later Cailliaud left Paris to complete his training as a mineralogist. His wandering led to Constantinople where he worked for the Ottoman ruler, Sultan Mahmud II. In 1815 Cailliaud arrived in Egypt.
Over the course of two journeys to Egypt between 1815 and 1822, he worked as the government mineralogist to the Viceroy of Egypt, rediscovered the ancient emerald mines of Mount Zubarah, explored both the Eastern and Western Deserts, and traced unknown routes to the Red Sea. He also compiled an impressive number of antiquities, forming the most important archaeological and ethnographic collection to reach France from the time of Napoleon’s Egyptian invasion to the late 1800s. The French scholarly community was so impressed by his initial voyage that he received a government mandate and funding for his second trip to continue the academic work started by Napoleon’s scholars almost twenty years earlier.
During his second journey he accompanied an Egyptian military expedition into Sudan, penetrating as far as the present-day Ethiopian border. Though dangerous, the mission gave Cailliaud access to ancient Nubia, a remote place discussed by Classical authors but forgotten by the 1800s, and enabled him to correctly re-identify the famous ancient site of Meroe.
Upon returning to France in 1822,
Scenes from the lost tomb of Neferhotep
Women playing, from the tomb of Bakt III in Beni Hasan
Fast forward to 2008 when ARCE Director Gerry Scott launched a multi-year project to publish the manuscript, entrusting Andrew Bednarski, Assistant to the Director for Special Projects, to translate and edit Cailliaud’s Research on the Arts and Crafts of the Ancient Egyptians, Nubians, and Ethiopians. This publication will combine Cailliaud’s sensational visual corpus, documenting the world of the ancient and nineteenth-century Nile, with his never-before-seen text. This volume is expected to be published by AUC Press in late 2013 or early 2014.
INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF MUSEUMS
The International Council of Museums, in an effort to fight against illicit traffic in cultural goods, compiles the Emergency Red List of Egyptian Cultural Objects at Risk. This list aims to help art and heritage professionals and law enforcement officials identify Egyptian objects that are protected by national and international legislations. View the Red List for Egypt.