A Brill Calendar: December 23

The Birth of Richard Lepsius

Few would-be conquerors of Europe – if not of the world – can boast that their military vigour launched an impressive new ship on the Oceans of Scholarship; although it is admittedly not the only claim to fame of Napoleon Bonaparte.

His Egyptian campaign in 1798, was the essential springboard for the subject of Egyptology and an almost instant challenge to existing archaeological thought. Perhaps the most influential & powerful proponent of this virgin field of learned inquiry was born December 23, 1810, in Naumburg, Saxony, when the little Corsican still basked in the pomp of his greatest power. This Egyptologist, Karl Richard Lepsius, died on July 10, 1894, when Otto von Bismarck’s steerage of another ‘Reich’ had already ended.

Thorough studies in comparative linguistics and epigraphy, embedded in the most progressive academic climate of his age, qualified Lepsius for what was his finest hour: to guide & lead a scientific expedition to Egypt and the Upper Nile under auspices of the King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm IV. It is seldom that awareness of an almost totally forgotten past increased so dramatically, in so short a time: just some thousand days (1843 – ’45). How Romantic you can get?

Lepsius became the scholar who reinstalled the amazing significance and character of Pharaoh Ahkenaton; as well the first scientist to map and measure the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. His findings and insights popularised Egyptology publications in the Western world, whilst dramatically increasing both quantity and quality of Egyptian collections in European museums.

Not only in Berlin, where Lepsius became a Professor upon his return in 1845, but also in Leyden and the Netherlands, where the Dutch proved to be dedicated followers of fashion where pyramids and hieroglyphs, mummies and mastabas were concerned. To appreciate just the sheer size of the scholarly effort of Lepsius, after Champollion’s grand discovery, little is needed: leafing through his enormous ‘Denkmäler aus Ägypten und Äthiopien’ (1858; 12 volumes) suffices.