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 in Europe and the British Islands since the time of the Renaissance.
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The most important example is probably Gian Lorenzo Bernini's obelisk in the Piazza Navona in Rome. Bernini's obelisk influenced the obelisk constructed as a family funeral memorial by Sir Edward Lovatt Pierce for the Allen family at Stillorgan in Ireland in 1717, one of several Egyptian obelisks erected in Ireland during the early 18th century. Others may be found at Belan, County Kildare and Dangan, County Meath. The Casteltown Folly in County Kildare is probably the best known, albeit the least Egyptian styled, of these obelisks.
Egyptian buildings had also been built as garden follies. The most elaborate was probably the one built by Frederick I, Duke of Württemberg in the gardens of the Château de Montbéliard. It included an Egyptian bridge across which guests walked to reach an island with an Egyptian swing and an elaborate Egyptian "bath house". The building featured a billiards room and a "bagnio". It was designed by the duke's court architect, Jean Baptiste Kleber.
What was new after the Napoleonic invasion was the sudden increase of the number of works of art and the fact that, for the first time, European buildings began to be built to resemble those of ancient Egypt.
The first of the Egyptian style buildings was a newspaper office. The Courier, a London newspaper, built a new office on the Strand in London in 1804. It featured a cavetto (coved) cornice and a pair of Egyptian-looking columns with palmiform capitals.[1]
The most important building of the Egyptian revival in France was the Egyptian Temple in the Place des Victoires, built as a memorial to generals Desaix and Kleber. The cornerstone was laid on 19 Fructidor Year VIII (September 6, 1800.)
An Egyptian Revival building that can still be seen in Paris is the 1812 Fountain of the Fellah, Rue de Sèvres, by François-Jean Bralle.
The Egyptian Hall in London, completed in 1812, and the Egyptian Gallery, a private room in the home of connoisseur Thomas Hope (1769-1831) to display his Egyptian antiquities, and illustrated in engravings from his meticulous line drawings in his book Household Furniture (1807), were a prime source for the Regency style of British furnishings.
The Highgate Cemetery, with its Egyptian Avenue, is an example of the popularity Egyptian style continued to enjoy as funerary architecture.
In Russia, this fashion—associated primarily with the discoveries of Champollion—produced similar monuments:
The Egyptian revival enjoyed greater popularity as an architectural form in the United States and the British colonies than in Europe. A number of Egyptian-style buildings were built, of which some survive.
A number of buildings in Middle Eastern countries, especially Egypt itself, have been built in this style, where it competed with versions of the Moorish Revival style, a revival of the style medieval Islamic architecture in Egypt, as well as Western styles. The National Museum of Beirut, completed in 1937, is an example. A number of entries for the competition for the proposed Grand Egyptian Museum near the Pyramids of Giza mixed modernism with various elements of Ancient Egyptian tomb and temple architecture.[6] The current building of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt, opened in 2001 in the Maadi district of Cairo, is a more recent example of the Egyptian Revival style.
The expeditions that eventually led to the discovery in 1922 of the treasure of Tutankhamun's tomb by the archaeologist Howard Carter resulted in a third revival. Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles, USA, now home to the American Cinematheque, is an Egyptian Revival theatre from the era. Interestingly, the Egyptian Theatre was designed, built and opened in October 1922, two weeks before the historic discovery in November 1922 of the tomb.
The Reebie Storage Warehouse in Chicago, Illinois, features twin statues of Ramses II and accurate use of ancient Egyptian images and hieroglyphics. Plaster reliefs depict ancient Egyptians moving grain on barges. The warehouse is one of the nation's best examples of pure academic-style Egyptian Revival commercial architecture, and is designated as a Chicago Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Simultaneously, Aleksey Shchusev designed Lenin's Mausoleum (1924; rebuilt in 1929) with many elements borrowed from the Pyramid of Djoser. The Egyptian revival of the 1920s is sometimes considered to be part of the Art Deco decorative arts style. It was present in furniture and other household objects, as well as in architecture.
The Louvre Pyramid in Paris and Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose, California, are modern-day examples of Egyptian Revival structures. Additionally, Rosicrucian Park contains many examples of Egyptian Revival architecture.
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