Egypt
The architecture of the Egyptian section in the 1867 Paris exposition was a major undertaking, similar in size and ambition to that of the Ottoman quarter. The Egyptian buildings, designed by Jacques Drévet and E. Schmitz, however, were products of a school of thought diametrically opposed to Parvillée's. Drévet did not write about his ideas, but they were described by Charles Edmond, the commissioner general of the Egyptian display, in L'Egypte a l'Exposition universelle de 1867:
We would be impetuous to look for a rule or a law in the development of Arabic architecture; it does not exist. The Orient lacks this ordering spirit that our Occident has brought to everything it has created since the Germanic invasion; in its place, the arbitrary and the capricious reign. Therefore, we are not trying to describe the architectonic system of Arabs; they don't have anything like it; and just as the diverse elements of their buildings are disconnected, the history of their art is also disjointed.[27]
Edmond argued that the details of Egyptian monuments were "capricious." The Arabs "tormented the dome in a thousand ways," and they made the arch go through "charming tortures"; the colonette arabe, far from displaying the rigorous proportions of the Greek column, was thin, svelte, and fragile. A true characteristic of this art was the "arabesque," into which "the Arab had poured his whole heart and a soul full of fire."[28]
The Egyptian section, like the Ottoman, contained a replica of a residential structure (Fig. 70). The selamlik was divided into an exposition hall and a pavilion de repos for Isma'il Pasha on his visits to the fairgrounds.[29] The building had a symmetrical cruciform plan, expressed on the exterior by large projections. A dome, covered with arabesques and terminating in a golden crescent, crowned the tower at the center; it was supported by horseshoe-shaped arches on delicate columns. Alternating bands of blue and white lined the facades; the crenellated roofline was white. An entrance portal (at right in Fig. 70), leading to the khedive's private rooms, dominated the main facade, it was framed by a double arch of red and white marble.[30] The two side doors (one visible at left in Fig. 70) served as public entrances.
FIigure 70.
Palace of the khedive, Paris, 1867 ( L'Exposition universelle de 1867 illustrée )
Inside, a "great sobriety of colors and lines" generated "a quiet harmony," but bright colors and light enlivened the verandas. The atmosphere created by Drévet's decorative scheme, executed by French artisans from the Maison Bernard et Mallet,[31] recalled that of the Gamaliyya Palace in Cairo, where the khedive was born. Although Drévet's structure was a "perfect palatial example," it also embodied the main theme of Egyptian Muslim architecture according to Charles Edmond: "In an Arab building, everything is decoration, and the beauty of the ensemble depends on the harmonic and difficult fusion of the details."[32]
Egypt also brought the okel, a commercial building type, to the exhibition in 18O7 (Figs. 71–73). Despite its historic references, this building represented the arts and crafts of modern Egypt, the "living Egypt, the Egypt of Isma'il Pasha"; Edmond pointed out that its parallels in Western architecture were the arcades, the Parisian galleries.[33] Attached to it was a barn that sheltered two dromedaries and two donkeys.[34]
Figure 71.
Drévet, plan of the okel, Paris, 1867
(Gazette des architectes et du bâtiment,
special issue, Paris, 1867).
Figure 72.
Drévet, section through the okel, Paris, 1867 (Gazette
des architectes et du bâtiment, special issue, Paris, 1867).
Figure 73.
View of the okel, Paris, 1867 (Gazette des architectes et du bâtiment,
special issue, Paris, 1867).
Figure 74.
Egyptian temple, Paris, 1867 (The Illustrated London News, 16 November 1867).
In the West an okel is more commonly known as a caravansary, a wholesale market that also provided rooms for travelers. Drévet's interpretation of this structure was considered an interesting use of Egyptian architectural forms and construction methods in modern buildings.[35] Its general outline and details were adapted from several okels —including those in Aswan (the okels of Shaykh 'Abd al-Mansur and Sidi 'Abdallah); the musharabiyya s duplicated those of the Gamaliyya Palace and the Husayn Bey Residence in Cairo.[36] Drévet's okel was a rectangular two-story structure with arcades on both stories and a covered central court, which had a fountain at its center.[37] On the ground floor was a café and shops that faced each other along the length of the building. Here "Oriental hospitality was demonstrated by free coffee, chibouk, and narghile, and music was performed."[38]
The second story of Drévet's okel, like the first, was given over to commerce. Artisans embroidered and made jewelry, lace, saddles, and harnesses; vendors sold fancy pipes, mats, and various trinkets.[39] On this floor was also
Figure 75.
Interior of the Egyptian temple, Paris, 1867 ( L'Exposition universelle de 1867 illustrée ).
the popular "anthropological museum," where hundreds of skulls (some dating from the Egyptian antiquity) and mummies from different centuries were displayed.[40] The second-floor rooms had projections with musharabiyya s, which gave the building a picturesque exterior and created playful effects of light in an interior French rationalist architects praised for its details: the doors had a "correct scale" and a "happy proportion"; the woodwork of the musharabiyya s demonstrated a remarkable compositional integrity because of "grids of great rigidity" yet "varied design."[41]
The Egyptian temple at the 1867 exposition was not in an Islamic style but looked back in Egypt's history (Figs. 74–75)—" A living lesson in archaeology," in Mariette-Bey's words,[42] which demonstrated the keen interest at the time in Egyptian antiquity and the direct role of French scholars in the field. The Egyptologist Mariette-Bey had selected articles for display here from Bulaque Museum, which he himself had established. As a member of the commission nominated by Isma'il Pasha to organize the exhibition, he had also
collaborated closely with the architect Drévet in the design of the pavilion. Mariette-Bey's preference to replicate the Temple of Philae prevailed; for him the temple was not "to embellish the exposition uselessly,"[43] but to show the entire world a "magnificent summary" of antique Egypt. Charles Edmond argued that this building and the artifacts in it reconstructed the oldest ideas of human civilization, from religion, arts, industry, customs, and traditions to the great heroes and feats of the past.[44]
An avenue of sphinxes led to the temple because every temple had to have its own "sacred way." The rectangular building itself measured 18 by 25 meters; it was 9 meters high. Slightly tapered pillars defined the four corners. Four columns on the shorter side and seven on the longer supported the entablature and the corniche, which gave the roof its strong horizontality. The design of the interior had to diverge from the Philae model. To bring in sufficient light for a public exposition hall, a glass roof was erected; "the few rays of light that Egyptians distributed mysteriously in their sanctuaries" would not have been enough. The interior divisions of the original structure were also discarded. Everything else, however, was realized with "the greatest authenticity in the ensemble and in minute detail," down to the colors. To achieve the exact proportion of the columns and other elements, precise measurements and photographs were taken at Philae.[45] With the decoration replicated on the interior walls, the illusion of authenticity was so complete that visitors claimed they felt surprised and strangely uprooted when they first encountered this temple, which seemed to belong to the banks of the Nile.[46]
The architecture of the ancient kingdoms became an accepted symbol of Egypt. In 1878 Mariette-Bey, now commissioner general of the Egyptian exposition, introduced to Paris a dwelling from Pharaonic times, a "severe" cubical building with two massive towers flanking the main facade (Fig. 76). The structure was based on his own archaeological discoveries in the town of Abydos; because some of his archaeological documentation was ambiguous, the dimensions were approximate. The facade details were not exact copies but derivations. Although this building, like the 1867 temple, was intended as a museum for the display of antiquities from the Bulaque Museum, the French organizers of the exposition decided to exhibit these objects, together with other antique works, in the galleries of retrospective art. Thus Mariette-Bey's pavilion became an exhibition hall for the art and industrial products of modern Egypt.[47]
Figure 76.
Egyptian temple, Paris, 1878 (L'Illustration, 31 August 1878).
The Pharaonic house was the only pavilion representing Egypt in the exposition of 1878. The khedive had intended to bring the three epochs of Egyptian history (Pharaonic, Arabic, and modern) to Paris, in the spirit of the 1867 exposition, and "to demonstrate by contemporary monuments the state of Egyptian civilization in three principal periods of its long duration," that is, under the pharaohs, the Arabs and Ottomans, and the reigning dynasty.[48] But financial difficulties arising from the Russo-Turkish war forced a more modest display: medieval Egypt was reduced to the authentic facade of a house inside the Trocadéro Palace, and modern Egypt was architecturally absent.[49]
An Egyptian structure, following the guidelines established in the Paris expositions, appeared again in Chicago in 1893 (see Fig. 44). The Temple of the Sacred Bull on the Cairo Street was a "somber building . . . relieved with hieroglyphic writing containing biographical sketches of the Pharaohs, the history of the worship of the sacred bull, of Osyrus, and the various gods." The obelisks in front of the temple were dedicated to the United States, to Colum-
Figure 77.
Egyptian palace, Paris, 1900 (L'Esposizione universale del 1900 a Parigi )
bus, to the World's Fair, and to President Grover Cleveland. The pavilion served as a museum of antiquities.[50]
The Egyptian Palace in Paris in 1900 was a curious complex composed of three buildings: temple, okel, and a new invention: the theater with a temple facade (Fig. 77). The French architect Marcel-Lazare Dourgnon had based his design for the palace on several well-known monuments: the portico, for example, was inspired by the Temple of Dandur, whereas the principal section was based on the monuments of Memphis and Thebes. Visitors found the exterior of the pavilion "very beautiful" but considered the interior, containing ancient collections and funerary chambers, disappointing, more or less empty and "vulgar," with "nothing new" in it. Its only attraction was the theater, which featured two hundred dancers.[51] The complaints suggest that the exoticism of Egypt had been overexploited and no longer appealed to French audiences.
The okel, like the temple, reappeared at successive fairs—as an independent structure in Vienna in 1873 and as a component of the Egyptian palace in Paris in 1900. In each case it referred to several models. The portal of the Parisian
okel of 1900, for example, derived from the Cotton Market (Khan al-Khalili) in Cairo, whereas the projecting cubical section at one of its corners was a faithful copy of the Sabil al-Gamaliyya, again in Cairo.[52]
The architectural ambition of Egypt's national pavilions reflected its economic and political status. As a semi-independent province, struggling to detach itself from the Ottoman Empire and searching for a firmer alliance with European powers, the Egypt of Isma'il Pasha sent a grand display to the 1867 exhibition, emphasizing its national self-image and complex historical heritage. With the downfall of Isma'il Pasha, Egypt had to curtail any grand plan for the 1878 exposition. When Egypt submitted to British rule in 1882, the scale, ambition, and character of its presence at the fairs changed. In 1889 the Egyptian section, financed by individual entrepreneurs, represented a street in Islamic Cairo, popular as an entertainment zone; and the Cairo Street in Chicago in 1893 functioned solely as an amusement strip.