Chapter 8: Paris, The Louvre.

Next morning Mimi accompanied me to the Louvre Museum, where Alain Courvoisier met us in the vestibule.
He pointed to a display cabinet. “This is the diamond so generously donated by the Blanchard family – your family, Lady Greenway.”
“I was not born a Blanchard, Professor Courvoisier. Madam Annette Blanchard adopted my cousin, my sister, and me. When the diamond came into our possession it seemed the right thing to do was to donate it to France’s premier museum in her and her husband’s name.”
“For which I, the museum, and its director, are supremely grateful,” Courvoisier said, giving a slight bow. “And I am not a professor, Milady, but merely a part time lecturer at the Sorbonne, and Curator of Egyptian artefacts here at the Louvre.”
“Jean-Woodrow tells me you are addressed as ‘Professor’ by undergraduates at the university,” Mimi said.
He gave a Gallic shrug. “It is nothing other than a courtesy title.”
“One richly deserved, and one I shall use as a courtesy to you, Professor. “ Mimi bestowed a smile on Courvoisier that had him wriggling his toes in pleasure.

The Egyptian gallery was the first we viewed. In pride of place was the Rosetta Stone, or at least a facsimile of the stone as, much to the chagrin of the French, the original is in the British Museum. However, there were plenty of gold and precious gem studded artefacts on display, as well as simple everyday objects such as shabti, strigils, and various items of household furniture, all recovered from tombs.
A shabti is a figurine made of wood or clay. They represent servants, and were included in tombs to serve the main occupant of the tomb in the After Life.
A strigil is a tool used to scrape the skin free of dirt and grime during a hot bah, and was introduced into Egypt by the Greeks.

The Professor, as I resolved to refer to him from now on, first showed us the Rosetta Stone, admitting that the facsimile in the Louvre was only a pale imitation of the stone that was first brought to the attention of Lancret.
“The English took the original stone as part of the surrender terms after the battle of Alexandria, plus many more objects, usually those items consisting of jewels and precious metals. However the real bounty of Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt is the thousands of hieroglyphic and demotic texts copied from hundreds of temples and tombs by the savants, “ he gave a slight, self-mocking bow, “of which I was one. Once the Rosetta Stone was deciphered we were like time travellers, able to reach back hundreds, thousands, of years to discover how the Ancient Egyptians arranged their secular and temporal lives.”
“How did this stone allow you to decipher Egyptian writing, Professor?” Mimi asked.
The Professor then gave an in depth, ad lib, lecture on the Rosetta Stone. Here follows my precis of his extempore talk.

The Rosetta Stone is a stele, a stone or wooden slab, with three versions of a decree, issued by King Ptolemy V in 196 BC, inscribed on the slab. One version was in Ancient Greek, another in Demotic script, and one in hieroglyphics, the oldest of the scripts and from which the Demotic script evolved.
The Greek text was the first to be translated, and over time the Demotic and hieroglyphic were deciphered by referencing the Greek version. English and French scholars raced to complete the translations, and in 1822 Jean Francois Champollion published a translation of the Rosetta Stone regarded as the most accurate. This then allowed the thousands of hieroglyphic and demotic texts recorded by the savants to be translated; consequently, the French were soon the premier Egyptologists in the world.

Alain finished his ‘lecture’ and a thoughtful look appeared on his face.
“It is pure chance, or some might say serendipity, that Alexander the Great’s early death fragmented his Empire, allowing one of his generals, Ptolemy, to seize Egypt and found the Ptolemy Dynasty, making Ancient Greek the official and court language of Egypt. Centuries after the end of the dynasty another general, hoping to emulate Alexander, invaded Egypt, and the Rosetta Stone was found, the key which unlocked the mysterious Egyptian hieroglyphics, allowing us to reach far back in time.”
The professor’s remark, concerning Napoleon emulating Alexander the Great, reawakened memories of General Marcel Defarge, and his answer to my question as to why Napoleon invaded Egypt. I thought to ask Alain if he had met Defarge when both were in Egypt, but he was answering a question from Mimi concerning the Great Pyramid at Giza, and by the end of his reply the thought had slipped from my mind.

We made a slow perambulation through the Egyptian gallery.
Mimi was fascinated by everything she saw, and Alain spent a deal of time explaining, in minute detail, the relevance of the tomb articles, and in even greater detail, the religious beliefs of the Ancient Egyptians -- who appeared to have more Gods and Goddess than even the Ancient Greeks, although Ra, Osiris, Isis, and Horus were the names most frequently mentioned.
The professor then went on to discuss the many invaders who had conquered, occupied, and ruled Egypt since the death of Ahmose II, the last truly Egyptian Pharaoh.
The number of foreign rulers of Egypt surprised me, a veritable roll call of past civilisations: Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Sassanid, and finally, when the last mentioned pair had fought each other to a standstill, the Arabs, fired by a new religion, swept in from the eastern desert.
Muslim Albanians, in the service of Ottoman Turks, now rule an Egypt conquered by Muslim Arabs.

There are only so many death masks and mummies one can look at, or facts and figures relating to rulers, battles, and changes of leadership to remember, before all the information begins to cloud one’s brain, or at least that is what happened to me.
There was an atmosphere in the gallery, part stale air, but also, with all the funerary memorabilia present, a hint of corpses and death, or at least that is how it seemed to me. However, Mimi and the professor seemed impervious to boredom, fatigue, the stultifying atmosphere, or overworking their brains, and the pair continued a long involved dialogue concerning the heritage of the Ancient Egyptians, and what the modern world could learn from them.
I was greatly relieved when Professor Courvoisier eventually called a halt to his interminable talking about Egypt, and invited Mimi and me to his office for refreshments.

“I hope you were not too bored, Sir Elijah?” he said, handing me a cup of aromatic coffee. “I did notice your eyes glazing over from time to time.”
“I apologise if I appeared unappreciative of your quite stimulating talk, Professor, but I was never an academic, and so much information tends to blunt what little intellect I possess.”
He laughed. “I often see the same bemused expression on the faces of undergraduates when lecturing. I tend to go into a subject in great depth.”
“I thought your talk most interesting and instructive,” Mimi said, before sipping at her coffee, and then nibbling on one of the appetising pastries a Louvre minion had brought in from a local patisserie.
Alain and I watched in fascination as she licked the tips of her fingers clean of sugar and cream after consuming the delicacy.
“I had no idea how much we have learned of the ancient civilisation. I hope my constant questioning did not vex you,” Mimi said, and then helped herself to another pastry.
“Not at all, Lady Mimi, quite the contrary! In fact, I was delighted. Your questions were pertinent, and showed a swift appreciation of the points I was making. You have an inquiring mind and an impressive intellect; it is little wonder your son has similar attributes.”
Mimi blushed in embarrassment and pleasure.

“We are discovering more facts about the lives of Ancient Egyptians by translating the many texts we have here in the museum,” Courvoisier continued. “Unfortunately, we have not received permission to send archaeology expeditions to Egypt to determine more of their history for some considerable time. Since the French carried off so many valuable the Ottomans are eager to keep all artefacts in...”
“But it was the French who located those treasures. If you had not gone delving those items would still be buried deep under the sand,” I said.
“True, and in all honesty the savants were not digging for treasure but for answers. How did the Egyptians become so all powerful, yet now there are only the ruins of temples and palaces to show of their civilization? How were those incredible and inspiring pyramids built? How did a people, able to construct such mammoth edifices, become slaves to the Ottoman Turks and Albanians? The people who constructed the highest structure in the world reduced to the dregs of society.” He sighed, and we all contemplated the eventual fate of all great civilisations; Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Persian, and Egyptian.