In 1798, Napoleon Buonaparte proposed a French invasion of
Egypt and Syria. Since he wasn’t emperor yet, he had to ask permission
from the Directoire, which was a panel of five people who were running France
in the late days of the French Revolution. Napoleon’s pitch was that an
invasion of Egypt would protect French interests and damage English trade, and
also put France in a good position to start cutting deals with the princes of
India, who were mostly under direct or indirect control of the English.
France and England were at war at this time, so it sounded good to the
Directoire. They gave him the troops and their blessing, however
improbable Napoleon’s scheme was.
The campaign in Egypt didn’t go as well as Napoleon had
hoped. His troops wound up fighting both the English and the Ottoman
Empire. Though they saw a lot of victories, Egypt was just too much to
control, and those two empires were just too much to fight. The invasion
resulted in the deaths of 40,000 French soldiers, 30,000 British soldiers, and
220,000 Ottoman soldiers.
During this campaign, legend has it, the nose of the Sphinx
was shot off by a French soldier. This legend is repeated quite a bit,
but it isn’t actually true. There’s a similar (and more believable)
legend that Napoleon, a pioneer in the use of artillery in the battlefield,
lobbed cannonballs at the Sphinx for target practice, destroying the nose and
damaging the ears of the statue. This is also not true, though the armies
and citizens of the many countries that would spend the next 17 years fighting
Napoleon were probably all too glad to spread this rumor
around. We
can be sure it wasn’t Napoleon who disfigured the Sphinx because there are
texts that blame the invading Mamluk Empire for the disfiguring following their
invasion of Egypt in 1380.
However, the oldest story (and the most credible) puts the
blame on one man: Mohammed Sa’im al-Dahr, a fanatical Sufi Muslim who took to
extremes Islam’s prohibition on representations of images. It’s said that
al-Dahr damaged the nose and ears. Though al-Dahr came from one of the
oldest and most highly respected Sufi convents in Cairo, that didn’t earn him
enough credit among the locals, who were rather proud of the ancient
statue. They were so upset, al-Dahr was lynched, and his body was burned
near the grounds of the Sphinx.
While the French didn’t mess up the Sphinx’s face, they did
plenty of defacing all around Egypt during the short time they were
there. French soldiers in Napoleon’s army were fond of carving the
distance to Paris into the ancient monuments of Egypt. This might be why
so many people find the falsehood that Napoleon’s army vandalized the Sphinx so
easy to believe—they had a reputation! See below the French mark on the
Temple of Isis.
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| Translation: "The French Republic was here, Revolutionary Year 7 (1799)" |
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