Rare Napoleon works from Egypt come to SUArt Galleries

More than 200 years after Napoleon commanded his armies to Egypt, the work his scholars gathered during their time on the Nile is being showcased at the SUArt Galleries.

"Napoleon on the Nile" focuses on research conducted by French scholars during Napoleon's occupation of Egypt and is the second part of an SUArt initiative that brought works by Michelangelo to campus last semester.

The exhibit was brought through a partnership between the university and the Dahesh Museum of Art in New York City.

"We see it as being a great wide-ranging show that will interest not just the artists and art historians on campus, but also the language departments, the anthropology departments and also the sciences, too," said David Prince, director of SUArt Galleries.

Napoleon's expedition to Egypt led to one of the most bloody and disastrous military campaigns of his reign.

Though originally a military expedition, Napoleon brought scholars with him to study the Egyptian culture. Their findings were compiled in a multi-volume encyclopedia called "The Description of Egypt," which is still the basis of modern Egyptology.

Napoleon's occupation of Egypt is comparable to the United State's presence in the Middle East, Prince said.

"It's an ongoing challenge for one culture to see another culture without bias," said Prince. "You can think about what is happening between America and the Muslim world over the past nine years, and you can see that there has definitely been some challenging views of other cultures by America."