In an interview on French Egyptomania

Your next book is The Orient of the Boulevards by Angela C Pao.

One of the most intriguing aspects of our research was tracking down the vaudeville play that was written about the zodiac, Le Zodiaque de Paris (from which we took the title of our book). The play was performed in Paris in September 1822, not long after the zodiac arrived. The play is a mirror of the public perceptions of the zodiac. It dramatised the range of responses to the zodiac’s arrival. And people did respond in various ways, from disbelief that something so bizarre could be anything more than a curio, to a belief that the zodiac was proof that religious authority was bogus. The play was performed at what was called a boulevard theatre.

At this time, as I mentioned, there was a lot of censorship and only a handful of theatres had official status and government support. At the state theatres, you could see the plays by the usual heroes of French drama ­– Racine, Molière, Corneille. And of course you could go to the opera. But if you wanted something different, edgier, more illicit, the boulevard theatres were the place to go. They were numerous, popular and affordable and gave audiences a lot more variety than the state theatres because they included forms like melodrama and vaudeville. They were also exciting. While the shows were heavily censored like everything else, the crowds were rowdier and the actors and playwrights did play to this aspect. Theatre riots were not uncommon.

Pao’s book looks at the evolving representations of the Orient on the stages of the popular boulevard theatres of Paris from the early 19th century until their destruction during Haussmann’s urban renewal. She shows just how popular things to do with the Orient were at the time. Le Zodiaque de Paris, the vaudeville play about the Dendera Zodiac, can be counted among these plays that put ideas about Egypt on the popular stage.

Before we move on to your next book, can you explain why the French were so taken with all things Egyptian?

There had been a low-grade fever of Egyptomania in Europe for centuries. Many intellectuals, wondering about the origins of Western civilisation, looked to Egypt as an alternative to ancient Greece and Rome. So Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, an imperial and colonial adventure that he undertook between 1798-1801, resonated with and enlarged upon a pre-existing fascination. His imperial ambitions in Egypt dovetailed with an existing soft spot for ‘all things Egyptian’ in France.

Napoleon’s obsession with Egypt went back a long way as well. He saw himself as a new Alexander, and like Alexander he wanted to conquer Egypt, as he hoped that doing so would secure his place in history as an imperial ruler. While the campaign was a military failure, it was a cultural and intellectual success. After Napoleon returned, he put into motion the publication of The Description of Egypt, a multi-volume, lavishly illustrated study of Egypt which brought together much that was already known about Egypt, as well as introducing a great deal of new scientific, ethnographic, and art-historical material. The work is still considered one of the founding documents of Egyptology, and when it was published, it was a huge success – in part, because it had a ready-made audience. It excited many people who were already inclined to take notice of these things.