Egyptian Revival Architecture

Egyptian Revival is an architectural style that borrows the motifs and imagery of ancient Egypt, brought to wide public attention in Europe following Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798 and Admiral Nelson's subsequent defeat of the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile that same year. Napoleon's expedition included a team of scholars whose findings were published beginning in 1809 as the multi volume Description de l'Égypte, a work that continued appearing through 1826 and did much to spread detailed knowledge of Egyptian monuments among European architects and designers. From the later eighteenth century onward, this renewed interest led architects to build mausoleums modeled on pyramids and to adopt sphinxes as decorative features flanking monuments or mounted on gateposts, along with the pylon, a doorway with sloped, outward flaring jambs supporting a horizontal lintel, borrowed directly from Egyptian temple gateways. The style recurred in waves through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, applied especially to cemetery monuments, museums and other buildings meant to evoke ancient permanence and mystery.