First Pylon - French Inscription Carved on the Eastern Embrasure at Point H, Island of Fila (Philae)

Félix Teynard was one of several artists and scholars who flocked to Egypt to employ the new medium of photography to document ancient sites and complex hieroglyphics ripe for study. Originally trained as a civil engineer, he offered his services to the French Academy of Sciences in 1851, and by the end of that year he had set sail southward on the Nile. Between 1851 and 1852, Teynard made an extensive record of the Nile valley, ultimately producing 160 salted paper prints covering one thousand miles on the river. This photograph shows, along with hieroglyphics, a stone inscription made in March 1799 by Napoleonic troops after their defeat of local Egyptian forces. Others, presumably locals as well, had subsequently defaced the monument, and a French traveler had added one last layer of commentary before Teynard's picture, incising in colonialist reply: "A PAGE OF HISTORY SHOULD NOT BE SULLIED."