LITMIR.BIZ

      FIGURE 3. Luxor Temple and plain.

      French travelers visited Egypt and reported about it centuries before Napoléon’s arrival, especially after it became an Ottoman province in the sixteenth century. Since early travelers were mostly Christian pilgrims passing through holy places in Egypt and Palestine, they mainly sent back to France romantic accounts about biblical and holy sites. In the eighteenth century, the age of European secular enlightenment that glorified pre-Christian legacies of Western civilization, French travelers paid extensive attention to Greek and Roman relics in Egypt and romanticized Egyptian ancient sites. They were also sure to comment on the flourishing trade of this country, especially in Upper Egypt, which brought exotic luxuries of the Indian Ocean to Cairo and the Mediterranean.⁶ Finally, by the end of the eighteenth century, in the age of European imperial ambitions, French accounts mixed this romanticized view of ancient times with strategic geopolitical and economic observations. More than simple pilgrims or travelers, French visitors to Egypt were increasingly scientists, philologists, archaeologists, and the like, some of whom were officially sent by the French government on formal missions to explore the possibility of creating a colony in this resource-rich land.

      M. Savary probably presented the first systematic account of France as the needed liberator of the Egyptians from the Ottoman despots and their installed military regime of foreign Mamluks. Savary explored Egypt in 1779, nearly twenty years before Napoléon’s Egyptian campaign. His published Lettres sur l’Égypte was a blunt proposal for colonialism. In the eyes of contemporary Europeans, Savary was a true scholarly expert. An English literary journal commended his “erudition and capacity” and asserted that he “has shown himself well versed in ancient and modern writings concerning Egypt and its antiquities.”⁷ With an informed tone, Savary indicated that Egypt was a country of immense resources, but it was unfortunately inflicted with the “ignorance” of the native Egyptians and the “tyranny” of the Mamluk rulers. Turks, Arabs, and Copts were all “barbarians” neglecting great potential sources of wealth and paying no attention to magnificent monuments. Only an enlightened nation that appreciated art and cultural history, such as France, could restore the riches of this land and return it to its ancient glory after centuries of backwardness.

      In Qina Province, Savary formed the most important colonial argument, asserting that the occupation of the south would bring about French control over global trade. He observed that Qina’s Red Sea port of Qusayr was a meeting point of Indian, Arabian, East African, North African, and Egyptian commerce but lamented how Mamluk despotism and Bedouin raids had reduced the port city’s traditionally robust trade. He advocated using Qusayr to turn Egypt into “the center of commerce in the world,” uniting Europe and Asia.⁸ Savary even suggested digging a canal between Qusayr and the city of Qina—the seat of the province that was a southern Nile port and entrepôt—in order to connect the Red Sea to the river and ultimately the Mediterranean. In the late eighteenth century, caravans had to spend three days carrying Indian and Arabian commodities from the eastern desert to Qina. In ancient times, there had been a canal connecting Qina to Qusayr, but the Turks neglected it and let it dry out. Savary proposed to revive this canal—almost a century before another Frenchman proposed digging the Suez Canal for similar goals: