“Soldiers! From the heights of these pyramids, forty centuries look down on us“, Napoleon’s famous rallying cry to his troops before the battle in which he defeated the Mamelukes was almost reduced to a mere testament of a fading memory just four decades later when the Ottoman governor of Egypt suggested using the stones from these monuments as material for the construction of the Suez Canal. His chief engineer prevented this by resorting to a trick to avoid being dismissed for contradicting him. Linant Pasha was the man to whom we owe the survival of the Giza pyramids… or maybe not? Let’s take a closer look.

To be precise, his name was Louis Maurice Adolphe Linant de Bellefonds, born in Lorient, France, in 1798, the son of a merchant marine who ensured he received a good academic education, especially in disciplines that would be useful for a life at sea, such as mathematics and the arts (drawing and painting, crucial for increasingly numerous exploration voyages). The reason for this was that his father, Antoine-Marie, started taking him on board at an early age.

By the time he was fifteen, Linant already had significant seafaring experience and had been to distant places like Newfoundland. Although young Linant was not enthusiastic about the maritime profession – he preferred cartography, mapping, and drawing nautical charts – in 1815, he passed the exams and embarked as a midshipman on the frigate Cléopâtre, which sailed through the eastern Mediterranean, visiting Greece, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt.

Linant Pasha in 1883, the year of his death
Linant Pasha in 1883, the year of his death / Image: public domain on Wikimedia Commons

It was on this ship that he met Auguste de Forbin, the expedition director, an artist who would later become famous and director of the Louvre Museum. However, it was not Forbin who determined his future, but another, through omission: the painter Léon Matthieu Cochereau, who died during the voyage, and Linant was appointed as his replacement. This gave him the opportunity to use his brushes to depict the archaeological ruins of places like Athens, Constantinople, Ephesus, Acre, or Jerusalem.

He also had the chance to join a camel caravan to Jaffa and sail on the Nile to Cairo. The mission ended in the Egyptian capital, and the Cléopâtre was supposed to return to France, but Linant decided to accept the offer made by the Wali of Egypt, Mehmet Ali, to work for him, thanks to the recommendation letter provided by Forbin. Thus, in 1818, a new life began for the young man, exchanging the vastness of the ocean for the deserts, and water for sand.

The result was a series of explorations that took place over a dozen years. The first, between 1818 and 1819, took him beyond the first cataract to Lower Nubia. In 1820, he joined the expedition organized by the French consul Bernardino Drovetti to the oasis of Siwa, famous for the Amun oracle consulted by Alexander the Great to reveal his divine nature and right to the Egyptian throne. Linant captured this remote corner in the middle of the Libyan desert in several drawings that illustrated the book “Voyage à l’Oasis de Syouah” by E. Jomard, published in 1823.

View of Jerusalem from the Valley of Josaphat (Auguste de Forbin)
View of Jerusalem from the Valley of Josaphat (Auguste de Forbin) / Image: public domain on Wikimedia Commons

A few months later, he accompanied the Italian Alessandro Ricci to Sinai, traveling along its east coast to Maghara to sketch the hieroglyphics. The plan was to continue to Petra, but the region had rebelled against Ottoman rule, so it was not safe. They chose to return to Cairo, passing through Sarbout el-Khalem and drawing its monuments. However, Linant’s desire to personally see the marvelous city carved in stone lingered in his mind, and he gathered information from the Bedouins to try again in the future.

In 1821, he made two journeys. The first to Faiyum and the second to Sudan, where he had to gather geographical information and document its monumental heritage on behalf of the English Egyptologist and adventurer William John Bankes. The mission lasted thirteen months, allowing him to discover the ruins of Messaourat and Naga just before the naturalist and geologist Frédéric Cailliaud arrived on a mission for Mehmet Ali. Cailliaud became the first European to reach the city of Meroe, the ancient capital of the Kingdom of Kush, famous for its sharp pyramids that provided Egypt with black pharaoh dynasties.

Linant took a break from his exotic wandering to go to London in 1822, where he contacted the African Company. This company had previously financed a journey for the late Swiss arabist Jean Louis Burckhardt (discoverer of Petra and the temples of Abu Simbel) and was willing to do the same for Linant. His goal soon became a 19th-century obsession: to discover the sources of the Nile. Linant set out in 1827 and reached the White Nile, but the hostility of the local people, with whom he skirmished, forced him to retreat and ultimately give up.

Ottoman Wali Mehmet Ali (Auguste Coder)
Ottoman Wali Mehmet Ali (Auguste Coder) / Image: public domain on Wikimedia Commons

He tried again in 1831 with the sponsorship of the Société de Géographie de Paris, but he did not obtain permission from the Wali. Instead, he was sent to search for the gold mines of Atbai. In the meantime, in 1828, he befriended the archaeologist Léon de Laborde, with whom he finally saw Petra in person. The result was a book published ten years later under the title “Voyage en Asie Mineure” (Journey through Asia Minor). To achieve this, he had to cross the Sinai again, this time through the Isthmus of Suez, where his mind began to contemplate the old Egyptian and Roman project of connecting the Mediterranean with the Red Sea, now that it was proven that there were not the nine meters of difference that discouraged Napoleon’s engineers.

In 1822, he had already studied the remains of Trajan’s Canal and explored the terrain. Now that he knew it better, the plan was taking shape. At the end of his contract with the African Company, he decided to stay on the peninsula, studying everything he believed necessary in engineering to propose to Mehmet Ali the construction of a canal. This preparation took a step forward in 1831 when the Wali appointed him chief engineer of Public Works in Upper Egypt. It was not an empty position because the Ottoman leader was engaged in an intense policy of industrializing the country, an effort to modernize it.

In addition to significant educational and agrarian reforms, the government adapted administration to the new times, introduced European-style changes in the army, and undertook an intense campaign of work on transportation and communication networks, opening irrigation canals and building a series of dams on the Nile. The latter would lead Mehmet Ali to the idea of ​​dismantling the Giza pyramids, stone by stone, and using the already cut blocks. Presumably.

Ferdinand de Lesseps
Ferdinand de Lesseps / Image: public domain on Wikimedia Commons

This suggestion was presented to Linant in 1837, who was already in absolute control of the Ministry of Public Instruction and had been appointed bey, a title that once equated to a provincial governor but had become a mere honorary title comparable to a British knight or sir at that time. Linant, who had long been considering the best way to connect the mentioned seas and consulting with the French consul and engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps, then found himself with that uncomfortable “suggestion” from the Wali.

The stones of the pyramids had been plundered for centuries for various constructions, leaving them deprived of their marble covering. But it didn’t stop there; the very stone blocks were removed for other purposes. The idea that this would become official, and that the pyramids would be dismantled, was torture for Linant, and doubly so, as if he refused to comply with the governor’s order, he would probably be replaced by someone more willing to obey. Again, presumably.

Therefore, he used cunning. Instead of saying no or stating that it was a barbarity, he pretended to accept and promised to present a financial analysis on the matter. He managed to ensure that the final report made it clear that it would be much cheaper to extract stone from a quarry than from the pyramids. Mehmet Ali was convinced, and that monumental complex, considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, was saved. In the long run, Egypt benefited because Giza is a must-visit for any tourist in the country. Once again, presumably.

Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin / Image: public domain on Wikimedia Commons

And now, why so much presumption? Because the story of the dismantling of the pyramids seems to be a legend with colonialist undertones, more than anything else. There is a certain truth, which is the use of their stones for construction, something that also happened in Europe with Roman monuments, for example. Champollion himself warned the Egyptian government about the loss of thirteen temples under these circumstances, often initiated by fellahin (peasants) and sometimes ordered by governors.

However, it was the Armenian engineer and Egyptologist Joseph Hekekyan who first incubated the idea of ​​using the stones of the pyramids, as reflected in his diary. When the French thinker Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin revealed the alleged plan of the Wali, the world was outraged, without considering that Enfantin found it a “poetic” idea that Man could do what time could not: reuse that material. The detail is that no articles from the time mention Linant’s saving role, and he himself is the only source in this regard.

Furthermore, some news contemporary to the events attribute the ruse to the French consul, Jean-François Mimaut, a man interested in Egyptology and reputed to care about that heritage. However, when he was relieved and returned to France, he did so with an impressive collection of pieces taken from the country without informing the authorities. This not only went unscolded in Europe but also earned him a good reputation as a savior of archaeology, even though many of those pieces were obtained at the cost of significant damage.

Longitudinal diagram of the Suez Canal (1869)
Longitudinal diagram of the Suez Canal (1869) / Image: public domain on Wikimedia Commons

In contrast, the idea spread that the Egyptians, and hence other colonized peoples, did not care about their monuments. This might be true in some cases (religious extremists considered that past idolatrous), but it was not a generalization. In fact, Mehmet Ali enacted the Antiquities Export Law in 1835, much to the dismay of Western archaeologists and collectors, who had previously operated freely for more knowledge (not to mention the destruction of temples and tombs by Napoleon’s troops). Chronicles often present the Wali as an obtuse Ottoman whom Linant had to explain that the pyramids were built from bottom to top or that he interpreted the numbers in his engineer’s report as mystical signs.

Mehmet Ali died in 1848, but Linant retained his position, allowing him to present the plan for a Canal of the Two Seas to the Compagnie Péninsulaire et Orientale in 1841 and three years later to Lesseps himself. Enthusiastic about the project, Lesseps obtained a concession from the new Wali, Mehmet Said, for the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez to start the construction. Linant alternated between the roles of chief engineer and his ministerial position until 1869 when he retired. He chose to live in Egypt, wrote his memoirs, and in 1873 received another distinction, that of pasha.

He died in 1883, and his memory is still preserved today in many street and place names in Egypt, although Ferdinand de Lesseps monopolized the fame for the creation of the Suez Canal. He did the same with the story (truth? legend?) of saving the pyramids.

This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on December 20, 2018. Puedes leer la versión en español en Linant Pachá, el ingeniero que salvó a las pirámides de Giza de ser desmanteladas

Sources

Marcel Kurz y Pascuale Linant de Bellefonds, Travellers in Egypt | Richard A. Lobban, Jr, Historical Dictionary of Ancient and Medieval Nubia | Dolores Luna-Guinot, Diálogo de emperatrices | Zachary Karabell, Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal | S. C. Burchell, The Suez Canal | Michael Press, The Colonialist Myth of the Frenchman Who “Saved” the Pyramids | Wikipedia

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