Egyptian Revival architecture

Egyptian Revival is an architectural style that makes use of the motifs and imagery of ancient Egypt. It is generally dated to the enthusiasm for ancient Egypt generated by Napoleon's conquest of Egypt and, in Britain, to Admiral Nelson's defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of the Nile in 1798. Napoleon took a scientific expedition with him to Egypt. Publication of the expedition's work, the Description de l'Égypte, began in 1809 and came out in a s... more

Egyptian Revival is an architectural style that makes use of the motifs and imagery of ancient Egypt. It is generally dated to the enthusiasm for ancient Egypt generated by Napoleon's conquest of Egypt and, in Britain, to Admiral Nelson's defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of the Nile in 1798. Napoleon took a scientific expedition with him to Egypt. Publication of the expedition's work, the Description de l'Égypte, began in 1809 and came out in a series though 1826. However, works of art and, in the field of architecture, funerary monuments in the Egyptian style had appeared in scattered European settings from the time of the Renaissance. The most important example is probably Bernini's obelisk in the Piazza Navona at Rome. Bernini's obelisk influenced the obelisk constructed as a family funeral memorial by Sir Edward Lovatt Pierce for the Allen family at Stillorgan in Ireland in 1717, one of several early eighteenth century Egyptian obelisks erected in Ireland in the early eighteenth... less