Egyptian revival is an architectural style that uses the motifs and imagery of ancient Egypt. It is attributed generally to the public awareness of ancient Egyptian monuments generated by Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt and Admiral Nelson’s defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of the Nile in 1798. Napoleon took a scientific expedition with him to Egypt. Publication of the expedition’s work, the Description de l’Égypte, began in 1809 and was published as a series through 1826. However, works of art and architecture (such as funerary monuments) in the Egyptian style had been made or built occasionally on the European continent and the British Isles since the time of the Renaissance.

A characteristic feature of the Empire style is a set of decorative elements, borrowed from the previous artistic epochs. Especially popular were the ancient Greek and Roman motifs, but also used Etruscan and Renaissance themes. Ancient Egyptian art was also included in the list of sources of inspiration. Omnivorous Empire used Egyptian motifs (flowers of papyri, lotuses, palms, sphinxes, pharaohs heads, scarabs, cobra, hieroglyphs, etc.).

History:
Ancient Rome
The connection between Cleopatra and Caesar (from 48 BC), her life in Rome, and then the Last War of the Roman Republic , the conquest of Egypt and its transformation into the province of Roman Egypt , the triumph and the importation of trophies influenced the appearance of Egyptian motifs in Rome . Ancient Egyptian art, with its powerful energy, impressed the Romans, no matter how alien it was for them. Augustine classicism, with its majesty and triumph, proved to be ideologically receptive to the forms of Egyptian art, also imperial. In addition, from the East, mysterious cults, including Egyptian ones, actively penetrated into Rome.

It is known that in 43 BC. e. on the Champ de Mars, the Temple of Isis and the Serapesa Serapesa Temple , surrounded by a wall decorated with obelisks and statues, were erected. The third district of Rome even bore the name Isis et Serapis in honor of another, a double temple to these gods. The temple of Isis in Pompeii is scattered. Villa Adriana also has distinct features of the cult of Serapis, there were taken out statues from Canob (by the way, Adrian’s lover Antina drowned in the Nile and was later idolized by them).

The Romans introduced the custom, which lasted a millennium – to transport Egyptian obelisks and statues and decorate their cities with them. Up to now, in Rome, there are 13 obelisks (8 of them are authentic, others are imitative, see the list of Rome’s obelisks ). And on the Capitol Hill (from the 16th century at the foot of the Capitoline Stairs ) there were figures of lions from black basalt.

Egyptology is visible in architecture, in buildings erected from the ground up. The most famous example is the Pyramid of Cestius , which is characterized by a lack of understanding by local architects of the proportional principles of these pyramids. The third style of ancient Roman painting (so-called “ornamental” or “Egyptite”) (for example, the House of Orpheus , the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii) demonstrates the clear features of Egyptology.

In Byzantium, around 450 AD, an “Egyptite style” is also noted, but it is likely that we are talking about some Hellenistic manifestations. In Constantinople, at the Hippodrome, from 390, the Ancient Egyptian Obelisk of Theodosius stood.

Renaissance
The Renaissance era drew attention to ancient Egyptian art among other legacies of ancient Rome. The most visible remains of it – the Roman obelisks, defeated in the Middle Ages, were raised and again turned into town-forming elements (often these procedures were very difficult technically). Around the year 1512, Giulio Clovio (presumably) performed the miniatures “The Missal of the Colonna” for Cardinal Pompeo Colonna with obvious Egyptian decor elements.

However, there were few visual motifs, mainly intellectual understanding. Great contribution was made by humanists , who studied avidly texts. Poggio Bracciolini translated Diodorus , describing the wonders of Egypt, Nicolo dei Nicoli – Ammianus Marcellinus , who in the IV century described his trip to Egypt and the wonders that he saw. In 1419, the manuscript of Horapollon “Hieroglyphics” was found, containing erroneous attempts to translate hieroglyphs. In 1517, Filipo Facanini translated it. In 1463, Marsilio Ficino translated the text Corpus Hermeticum, attributed to the Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus . In 1488, the image of this Egyptian was included in the mosaic floor of the Cathedral of Siena.

Text and drawings “Hieroglyphics”, as well as hieroglyphics copied from the frieze of the ancient Roman temple in San Lorenzo-Fuori-le-Mura , were used in the dream novel ” Hypnerotomakhia Polifila ” (1499), which enjoyed enormous popularity for several centuries and affected many works of art. The new “Hieroglyphics” , which is a book- emblem , was executed in 1575 by Pierio Valeriano Bolzani, had images of hieroglyphics and pseudo-hieroglyphs in encyclopedic order, with systematization for the moral and theological analysis of nature, and tried to interpret them symbolically. The book was actively quoted and copied in subsequent epochs . In 1531 a new emblem was published (Alciati). Mysterious pseudo-Egyptian pictograms can be found in Leonardo, Mantegna, Pinturicchio, Giulio Romano, Durer. In portraiture, “ennobled” hieroglyphic characters (“discipline, steadfastness, caution, prudence and strength of mind”) were used by Sebastiano del Piombo in a stone parapet in his “Portrait of Andrea Doria” (1526) to create a rebus that was easily read by all educated people of the time familiar with the above works.

A hieroglyphic letter, although attempts to decipher it using the text of Horapollon were unsuccessful, completely captivated the humanists. Many of them considered the Egyptian language to be the original Adamic language that existed before the Fall, which was facilitated by the remark in the Book of Genesis that Adam gave names to all beings (evident evidence that some language he knew). The project for the re-creation of such a language was an obsession, from which the Renaissance humanists and their successors could not refuse. The idea was set forth by Leon Battista Alberti in “On Architecture” (1452), where he suggested that the hieroglyphs were a lost universal language . The image of the hieroglyph-eye can be found on his medal “Self-portrait” (1438) under the chin. This same eye can be found on the reverse of his medallion portrait of Matteo di Pasti .

To popularize Egypt, it was important that the humanists took from the ancient texts the idea that the Seven wise men of antiquity were disciples and followers of Egyptian priests (for example, Pythagoras -Trismegistus). For example, Herodotus highly praised the Egyptians (Histories ii. 77). Thanks to this arose the panrim theory : Egypt was regarded as a source of classical culture, and the Etruscans and Romans are its direct descendants and heirs. Hieroglyphs were perceived as archetypes of Platonic symbols, that is, representations of the ideas of the divine world (logos), the highest form of reality . Plato and Hermes Trismegistus considered them as the forerunners of Christ, and their texts should be integrated into the Christian corps .

Baroque and rococo
The great lover of Hypnerotomachy was the philosophically educated Pope Alexander VII . It was he who turned to the sculptor Bernini in order that he made for the brought Ancient Egyptian obelisk pedestal in the form of an elephant, like the one described in the book. Now the obelisk (1667) stands on the Minerva Square in Rome.

In the era of Mannerism (XVI century), the Sphinx was resurrected, but in the “French version”: with a raised head and a woman’s breast, earrings, pearls and a naturalistic body. (Let’s note still the ancient difference between the “Egyptian” lion sphinxes and the “Greek” – winged and female). Such sphinxes were inspired by the grotesque frescoes of the Domus Aurea , a neo-palace found in the 15th century. The motif was easily included in the iconographic case of classical arabesque motifs, and spread throughout Europe through engravings in the 16th-17th centuries. Sphinxes adorn the frescoes of the Raphael Vatican loggia (1515-20). In French art, sphynxes first appear in the art of the School of Fontainebleau in the 1520s-30s, and can be traced in the era of the Baroque and the late Regency (1715-1723). Thanks to the French influence, the Sphinx becomes a universal garden and park decoration throughout Europe ( Belvedere (Vienna) , Sanssouci (Potsdam), Branicki Palace (Bialystok), La Granja (Spain) and a late Rococo version in the Portuguese Palace of Queluz .

In 1710, five found Egyptian statues (from temples standing there) were installed in the Palazzo Nuovo , then rooms in Egyptian taste were created in various palaces and villas in Italy (Sala Egizia). Such are the Office of the Papyrus (Gabinetto dei Papiri) in the Vatican, decorated with Anton Raphael Mengs and Christophe Unterberger, the Egyptian Hall in the Borghese Gallery , decorated with Antonio Asprucci in 1770-1782 to house a collection of Egyptian statues. Excavations at Villa Andrian in Tivoli, where there were many Egyptian things, also contributed to the heating up of interest. Villa Borghese has the Egyptian gate, the obelisk of Antinous. Villa Torrigiano is a gate, a statue of Osiris-Antinous in the garden of the villa, a Masonic park.

An original guide to the Egyptian style was the work of Bernard de Montfoncon “Ancient Age; with commentaries and engravings “(1719) and Claude de Keillus” The Code of Antiquities of Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek, Roman and Gallic “(1752-1768) .

Giovanni Battista Piranesi also adhered to the theory of the primacy of Egyptian wisdom over the ancient. If Neoclassicists Winckelmann and Loje considered Roman art as the heir to the Greek, Piranesi held to the continuity: Egypt → Etruscans → Rome . In the architectural fantasies of Piranesi, the ruins of Rome appear complete, including the statues of the pharaohs, which the author justified in textual explanations. In 1760, he began designing the “Caffee degli Inglesi” in Piazza di Spagna – the interior is decorated in Egyptian style. These interiors he published in “Different types of decoration of fireplaces and other parts of houses taken from Egyptian and Tuscan architecture” (1769). “The Corps of Piranesi was compiled on the basis of the study of the collections of the cardinals Albani, Borgia and Bembo, the Egyptian Cabinet meeting of the Capitoline Museum, as well as Piranesi’s own excavation at Villa Adriana. This building became the most influential source of Egyptian motifs for the art of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. ”

In France, the traditions of Piranesi combined with the style of the era of Louis XVI: and in the style of rococo , a tradition of the use of Egyptian elements in a non-Egyptian manner, for example, in interiors, interior decoration and small architectural forms (queen of Marie Antoinette in Versailles and Fontainebleau) , statues in Sanssouci.

Neoclassicism
Paper architecture in France also did not do without thinking about Egypt, so the elements are in the design of the palace in Saint-Germain-en-Les Boulle , and Jean Jacques Lekeux created fantastic mixes using Egyptian elements.

Since the 1760s, the shape of the pyramids has also been very popular in the form of smaller copies – pavilions- caprices , which at the end of the 18th century were everywhere hiding in gardens and parks, and could also be “antique”, “gothic”, etc. Fashion was helped paintings by Hubert Robert , who portrayed the fantastic Egyptian ruins. . The Duke of Württemberg built a bridge and a bath in the Egyptian spirit in the Castle of Montbéliard .

In the Park of Monceau (Paris) (1778), Philippe Egalite, the Duke of Chartres and the Park of Maupertuis (in Brie, circa 1780), the Marquis Montesquieu was placed pyramids – “tombs” with false graves and statues. It is important that both the owners, as well as the architects Carmontel and Bron’yar, were Masons , and Philip Egalite was the Grand Master of the Great East Lodge (see History of Freemasonry in France ). The decorative decoration of both parks was saturated with Masonic symbols, and the pyramids themselves were used during the ceremonies. Ancient Egypt in general played a large role in the “mythology” of Freemasons. In particular, their protagonist Hiram , the builder of the temple of Solomon, was identified with Osiris and was also killed. Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute , saturated with Masonic symbols, was staged in “Egyptian” scenery, although the place of its operation is not defined.

The pyramid symbolized the eternity of the temple and the immortality of its creator, so its shape was given to many burials. Thus, on August 26, 1792, in the memory of those who died in the attack on Tuileries, a wooden pyramid was fitted in the Tewilri garden, covered with cloth, to the foot of which lay garlands of flowers and oak leaves .

Sphynxes were also an attribute of neoclassical decoration, and there was a return to a simplified early version, more like a grotesque painting. The Masons considered them to be a symbol of the mysteries and used them in their architecture, treating the gates of the temple as guardians. In Masonic architecture, the sphinx is a frequent detail of the decor, for example, even in the version of the image of his head on a blank of documents.

In the 1770s, Josiah Wedgwood , creator of Wedgwood Manufactory, came up with a black “basalt” claystone mass, which was called “Egyptian”.

List of buildings
1798 Karlsruhe Synagogue
circa 1820: Memorial to Elizabeth Donkin, Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
1824: Congregation Mikveh Israel Synagogue in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Designed by William Strickland. The congregation left this building in 1860; it was demolished in 1902.
1825–26: Egyptian Bridge in St. Petersburg. Collapsed on 20 January 1905, although the new bridge (1955) incorporated sphinxes and several portions of it remains.
1827–30: Egyptian Gates in Tsarskoe Selo, St. Petersburg
1826–30: Groton Monument in Groton, Connecticut, United States
1835: Philadelphia County Prison, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Designed by Thomas Ustick Walter, it was demolished in 1968.
1835–37: The Egyptian House in Penzance, Cornwall. Built by local bookseller John Lavin as a museum, it is still standing.
1836-40: Temple Works, a former flax mill in the industrial district of Holbeck in Leeds, UK. Built for textile industrialist John Marshall and held the distinction of being the largest single room in the world when it was built.
1836: 4th Precinct Police Station on Rousseau Street in New Orleans. Designed by Benjamin Buisson, it originally served as a jail and police station. Later altered significantly; now used by the Knights of Babylon krewe for Mardi Gras float storage.
1838: The Tombs, a court and jail complex in New York City by John Haviland. Demolished and replaced by a new building in 1902.
1838: Pennsylvania Fire Insurance building, Philadelphia by John Haviland. Extant.
1838–39: The Egyptian Avenue and inner circle of the Lebanon Circle in Highgate Cemetery, London.
1838–40: Abney Park Temple Lodges, Hackney, London.
1840: Gates of the Granary Burying Ground, by Isaiah Rogers, in Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
1842: Croton Distributing Reservoir in New York City.
1827–43: Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown, Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
1843: Gates and gatehouses of Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Designed by Jacob Bigelow.
1843: Union Suspension Bridge, Between Ottawa and Gatineau, Quebec, Canada. Replaced in 1889 with another bridge.
1844: Old Whaler’s Church, Sag Harbor, New York, United States. Designed by Minard Lafever.
1844: Launceston Synagogue, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia.
1845: Hobart Synagogue, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.
1845: The brownstone entry gates of the Grove Street Cemetery, by Henry Austin, New Haven, Connecticut, United States
1845: Egyptian Building of the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia, United States.
1846: First Baptist Church in Essex, Connecticut
1846–8: Old Synagogue at Canterbury, England, United Kingdom.
1848: Washington Monument, Washington, D.C., United States. In addition to taking the form of an obelisk, it originally featured doors with cavetto cornices and winged sun disks, later removed.
1848: United States Custom House in New Orleans.
1849: Lighthouse of l’Agulhas, the second-oldest lighthouse in South Africa, also called the “Pharos of the South”.
1851: Downtown Presbyterian Church, Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Designed by William Strickland. It was the church of US presidents Andrew Jackson and James K. Polk.
1856: Egyptian Temple housing elephants at the Antwerp Zoo. Designed by Charles Servais.
1856: Skull and Bones undergraduate secret society at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut in the United States. Architect’s attribution in dispute, but may also be Henry Austin of the Grove Street Cemetery gates.
1862–64: Egyptian temple in the park of Stibbert Museum, Florence, Italy.
1867: Queen’s Park Church in Queen’s Park, Glasgow.
1870: The Egyptian Halls in Glasgow. Designed by Alexander Thomson.
1881–1889: Mausoleo Schilizzi in Naples, Italy.
1891: The Typhonium built in 1891 near Wissant by the Belgian architect Edmond De Vigne
1914: Regional Studies Museum in Krasnoyarsk, Russia
1914: Scottish Rite Cathedral Meridian, Mississippi, United States.
1914: Masonic Temple in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States (1914–87).
1921: Scottish Rite Temple in Mobile, Alabama, United States.
1920: Marmon Hupmobile Showroom, Chicago, Illinois, United States. Designed by Paul Gerhardt.
1922: Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre, Los Angeles, California, United States.
1922: Reebie Storage Warehouse, Chicago, Illinois, United States. It features twin statues of Ramses II and the use of ancient Egyptian images and hieroglyphics. Reliefs depict ancient Egyptians moving grain on barges.
1923–24: Peery’s Egyptian Theater, Ogden, Utah, United States.
1922–26: Mary G. Steiner Egyptian Theatre, Park City, Utah, United States.
1925–26: Sphinx Head Society clubhouse, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
1927: Emulation Hall, Melbourne, Australia
1927: Pythian Temple, New York City.
1927: Salt Lake City Masonic Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah
1927: The Egyptian Theatre, Boise, Idaho, United States.
1927: Empress Theatre, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
1924–29: Lenin’s Mausoleum, Moscow, Russia. Designed by Aleksey Shchusev, it utilizes elements borrowed from the Pyramid of Djoser.
1926–28: Carreras Cigarette Factory, Camden, London.
1928: Lincoln Theatre, Columbus, Ohio, United States. Has an Egyptian revival interior.
1928–29: Egyptian Theatre, DeKalb, Illinois, United States.
1929: Balsiger Ford Dealership, Klamath Falls, OR, United States.
1929: Fox Theatre, Atlanta, Georgia, United States. While the exterior is Moorish revival, the interior features extensive use of Egyptian revival design.
1933: Egyptian Theatre, Delta, Colorado, United States.
1934 Pyramid Theatre, Sale, Greater Manchester, UK (formerly a cinema, both independent and Odeon now a Sports Direct)
1930–37: National Museum of Beirut, Beirut.
1937: Manly Town Hall, Manly, New South Wales, Australia.
1939: Social Security Administration Building, Washington, D.C, United States.
1940: Mary E. Switzer Memorial Building, Washington, D.C, United States.
1939–41: Marion Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Marion, Illinois, United States.
1966: Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, San Jose, California, United States.
1993: Tama-Re, Eatonton, Georgia, United States. Demolished 2005.
1997: Sunway Pyramid, Bandar Sunway, Malaysia.
2001: Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt building, Cairo.

Post-modern variants
1989: Louvre Pyramid, Paris.
1991: Pyramid Arena, Memphis, Tennessee, United States.
1993: Luxor Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States.
1997: Wafi City, Wafi, Dubai City, Dubai UAE

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