How the Battle of the Nile gave birth to Egyptology
The Battle of the Nile foiled Napoleon's Egyptian campaign – and led Britain to the Rosetta Stone. Here's how a naval battle gave birth to Egyptology.
Image: Painting depicting the Battle of the Nile | Public Domain
There’s a lot we know about ancient Egyptians today, which is extraordinary considering how many of their own historical accounts are told through hieroglyphs. You’ll see plenty of those adorning ancient Egyptian monuments, but the Western world had no way of deciphering hieroglyphs until the 19th century.
What was the ‘key’ that unlocked the hieroglyphic code, so to speak? The Rosetta Stone, a slab of granodiorite rock discovered by French troops during Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign. The Corsican-born general’s men had landed on Egyptian soil in June 1798, hoping to undermine British trade routes.
Alas, those pesky Brits were hot on their tail. The following August, Rear-Admiral Horatio Nelson’s ships decisively wiped out the French fleet in Aboukir Bay. Here's how the Battle of the Nile played a surprising role in the birth of Egyptology – just ahead of Sky HISTORY's Raiders of the Lost Pharaohs.
The volatile atmosphere of 1790s Europe
In May 1789, the embattled French king Louis XVI desperately summoned the Estates General, the first time the French parliament had met since 1614. It would certainly not go as Louis had planned. Less than four years later, the French monarchy was abolished, with Louis himself executed in January 1793.
The French Revolution was well underway, and unleashed a tidal wave of war as the new French Republic sought to spread its revolutionary ideals. However, though the French military was fearsome on land, the Royal Navy’s dominance of the sea kept Britain safe from French invasion. It all led rising star General Bonaparte to suggest a new strategy for tackling the British…
Rather than attempt to cross the heavily guarded English Channel, French troops should invade Egypt to weaken British economic ties further afield, Napoleon proposed. The Directory government running France at the time was happy to acquiesce. The politically ambitious general was too popular for the Directors’ comfort, but would pose less of a threat to them outside of France.
A Mediterranean game of cat and mouse
British hegemony at sea did not extend to the Mediterranean. This allowed the French to discreetly escort Napoleon and his army by sea, away from prying British eyes. In May 1798, Nelson received word that a French fleet had left Toulon, but was unsure where exactly it was going. Nelson’s fleet spent weeks fruitlessly criss-crossing the Mediterranean in search of the French convoy.
After deducting that the French must have been heading to Egypt, Nelson sped straight to Alexandria, arriving on 28th June. Disappointed not to find the French there, he led his fleet further north to Turkey. It was a real near-miss for the French, who reached Alexandria just hours later. Within weeks, Napoleon had captured the city before defeating Mamluk forces further inland at the Battle of the Pyramids on 21st July 1798.
How the Battle of the Nile unfolded
On 1st August, Nelson’s fleet finally sighted the French ships anchored in Aboukir Bay, 20 miles northeast of Alexandria. The French Vice-Admiral François-Paul Brueys d’Aigalliers had these ships positioned with their port sides facing the shore. Brueys assumed that shoals between the ships and the shore would prevent the British attacking these port sides. On this point, he was gravely mistaken.
Nelson’s captains had been given a general game plan, but remained free to act on their own initiative. Taking advantage of this, Captain Thomas Foley of HMS Goliath snuck between enemy ships and the shoals, with other British vessels following. French captains soon found their ships attacked from both seaward and landward sides.
Brueys was among the thousands of French sailors killed in the onslaught. His 120-gun flagship Orient caught fire, exploding when the blaze reached gunpowder stored in the hull. The carnage came to an end on 3rd August, the French fleet having lost all but two ships of the line and the British none. Still, British casualties of the battle neared a thousand.
The ‘Egyptomania’ craze is born
Though Napoleon later managed to escape back to France, other French troops were left stranded in Egypt. When they capitulated in 1801, the British took the Rosetta Stone and brought it to the British Museum. The slab’s inscriptions would help scholars to decipher hieroglyphs at long last, reawakening the world’s interest in all things ancient Egypt.
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