The Rosetta Stone, the Description de l'Egypte, and Walt Whitman

A few of the objects in this exhibition were influenced by the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone, an iconic object uncovered through excavations conducted during Napoleon Bonaparte’s campaign to Egypt in 1798. In addition to bringing his troops, Bonaparte commissioned an entourage of more than 150 scholars and artists to document what they saw. During the campaign, the stone was uncovered by French soldier Pierre Bouchard in the formerly-Ottoman Fort Julien near the city of el Rashid (Rosetta). 

The documentation assembled by Napoleon’s entourage was published in the Description de l’Égypte between 1809 and 1829 and in a second edition due to popular demand. This multi-volume publication was regarded as a foundational work for the study of Egyptology, which heightened visibility of Egypt and stoked fascination, known as Egyptomania, in popular consciousness. The images of the Rosetta Stone from this publication, and copies created from the object, were distributed to Egyptologists working internationally who hoped to decipher the texts found on the Stone. In 1822, Jean-François Champollion deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphs, demotic (everyday Egyptian script) texts, and Ancient Greek texts that were inscribed on the Rosetta Stone. 

The Stone, currently on view at the British Museum, is among many objects in museum and private collections that were removed from their original locations due to colonial conquests and are the subject of ongoing repatriation requests.   

The decipherment of the Rosetta Stone inspired artistic interpretation then and now. Fascination with Ancient Egypt and its cultural heritage continued into the 1850s as evidenced through the works of American poet Walt Whitman. While working as a newspaper reporter, Whitman reviewed art exhibitions and encountered Dr. Henry Abbott’s exhibition of Egyptian antiquities at the Stuyvesant Institute on Broadway. Whitman became enthralled by what he saw and his discussions with Dr. Abbott, who inspired his investigation of books about Ancient Egypt, including Italian Egyptologist Ippolito Rosellini’s I Monumenti, with illustrations of Egyptian gods such as Osiris (see reproduction below), which in turn influenced his poetry. References to Whitman’s fascination with Ancient Egypt can be found in many of his writings including Song of Myself, which can be seen in Crawford’s Whitman Illuminated.

These works explore the intertwined threads of language, decipherment, and translation through time and their recurring influence on contemporary artists.