Louis Maurice Adolphe Linant de Bellefonds
1818
watercolor
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
Excavation of the Great Temple of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel is a 1818 watercolor by Louis Maurice Adolphe Linant de Bellefonds, a Orientalism work, held at Victoria and Albert Museum.
You see workers in loose white shirts and red sashes digging around two giant stone faces carved into a cliff. This watercolor was made on the spot in 1818, when the temple was buried under sand up to the necks of the statues. The artist, a French engineer, had to sketch fast before the sun moved and changed the shadows. He included tiny European visitors in top hats to show how big the statues really were. Look up the Victoria and Albert Museum to see more early travel sketches like this.
The watercolor depicts efforts led by Henry Salt’s 1818–19 expedition to Upper Egypt, where participants including Linant de Bellefonds worked to clear sand from the facade of the Great Temple of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel. A temporary barrier of date-palm trunks, reinforced with Nile mud carried in sacks by local villagers, was constructed to hold back the encroaching sand. The scene reflects the practical engineering challenges faced during early archaeological interventions at the site. The work is attributed to Linant de Bellefonds, who participated in the expedition alongside other…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Louis Maurice Adolphe Linant de Bellefonds better known as Linant Pasha was an explorer of Egypt and, as the chief engineer of Egypt's public works, 1831–1869, an influential engineer of the Suez Canal.
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