The Philae obelisk at Kingston Lacy

Philae, a robotic probe, landed on a distant comet today. The European Space Agency hopes that the information that it gathers will help scientists understand the early development of the Solar System.

It shares its name with the Philae obelisk which stands at Kingston Lacy. The inscriptions on this obelisk helped Georgian scholars to understand Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Philae obelisk, Kingston Lacy

Discovery of the Philae obelisk

The Philae obelisk was discovered by William John Bankes on his first journey into Egypt in 1815. The pink granite needle was one of a pair in front of the Temple of Isis on Philae, an island in the Nile. The island has since been flooded as a result of the building of the Aswan Dam. Giovanni Finati acted as Bankes' guide and his travel journals give details of some of Bankes’ excavations.

William John Bankes
Portrait at Kingston Lacy

Finati wrote that Bankes

“by the light of his candles at night found an inscription in it that had never been observed up to that time. It was also during this short stay that he first brought to light the granite pedestal of the obelisk, which has more than twenty lines upon it in the Greek character; this was buried altogether below the surface; but the probable position of it was conjectured from the obelisk lying near the spot, and search was made there accordingly. Some steps were taken, even then, towards the removal of this monument; but, for want of proper tackle, it was abandoned for that time.” (1)

On his second journey into Egypt in 1818-19, Bankes’ party included Henry Beechey, son of Sir William Beechey, the famous portrait painter; Dr Alessandro Ricci; Louis Linant de Bellefonds, a French midshipman; and Giovanni Belzoni. After starting out as a performing strong man at Sadler’s Wells, Belzoni had become a hydraulic engineer specialising in the excavation of Egyptian antiquities.

A disastrous attempt

Bankes employed Belzoni to take the Philae obelisk back to his family home of Kingston Lacy in Dorset, England.

Kingston Lacy, Dorset

The operation was fraught with difficulties and the first attempt to remove the obelisk ended in disaster. Finati wrote:

“Meanwhile the obelisk had been brought on rollers to the water's edge, and a boat below to receive it; all hands were at work, and five minutes more would have sufficed to set it afloat; when all at once the temporary pier built for it gave way under the pressure, and the monument plunged end long into the river almost out of sight.” (1)

A striking descent

Belzoni tried again with more success. Finati wrote:

“Mr Bankes said little, but was evidently disgusted by the accident, and set sail within a day or two afterwards, leaving me to witness Mr Belzoni's further operations respecting it. These were certainly conducted with great skill, though not quite without injury, and the scene of its actual descent down the cataract (2) (the passage being at that time narrower, and the fall more considerable, from the decrease of the Nile) was very striking, the great boat wheeling and swinging round, and half filling with water, while naked figures were crowding upon all the rocks, or wading or swimming between them, some shouting, and some pulling at the guide ropes, and the boat-owner throwing himself on the ground, scattering dust upon his head, and hiding his face. The danger, if any, was but for a few seconds, the equilibrium was recovered, and the mass glided smoothly and majestically onwards with the stream.” (1)

The obelisk arrived in England in 1821 and the Duke of Wellington offered to send a gun carriage to transport it to Kingston Lacy.

Duke of Wellington
by William Salter (c1839) in the NPG

The pedestal

The excavation of the obelisk’s pedestal was equally difficult. Finati wrote:

“The only commission left with me, was to see to the removal of the Greek pedestal belonging to the obelisk, from the spot where it had been left by Belzoni” but “the inundation (3) had already put the stone quite under water and out of sight, which rendered useless both the tackle and the boat that I had brought with me on purpose. For unfortunately, Mr Belzoni, fearing fresh disputes as to Mr Bankes's property in this pedestal, (though the original and uncontested finder of it,) had, in default of means for sending it at once down the cataract, carried it across from Philae to a low sand bank opposite, and there laid it on its so little judgment, that the smallest rise of the river must inevitably cover it, and make the transport impossible, during all those months of the year when the passage by water is the easiest, and it was owing to this, that, at length, after more than two years, it was found to be the best expedient to drag it by land, till it could be shipped below the rapids.” (1)

The Philae obelisk in the garden of Kingston Lacy

The platform

Finati noted that:

“This platform consists of four blocks only of red granite, and had served, without doubt, as the base to some obelisk now destroyed.” (1)

It was not until 1829 that Linant de Bellefonds, who had accompanied Bankes on his second trip to Egypt, sent what was left of the matching obelisk and the three huge steps of granite from Maharraga which were used to make the platform.(4)
 
Finati wrote:

“The heaviest block weighs nearly eleven tons, and was not removed till 1822, nor brought to England till 1829, when nineteen horses were required to drag it to its position at Kingston Hall.” (1)

It was damaged in transit and had to be repaired using some granite from the ruins of Leptis Magna – a prominent city in the Roman Empire situated in what is now Libya – given to Bankes for the purpose by George IV.

The inscription around the bottom of the Philae obelisk, Kingston Lacy

A monument to tax exemption!

The Duke of Wellington chose the spot in the garden, south of the house, for the site of the obelisk. He laid the foundation stone in 1827, but it was not until 1839 that the obelisk was finally erected.

The inscription written around the bottom of the obelisk reads as follows:

THIS SPOT WAS CHOSEN
AND THE FIRST STONE OF THE FOUNDATION LAID BY
ARTHUR DUKE OF WELLINGTON
AUGUST 17 1827.

WILLIAM JOHN BANKES ESQ MP ELDEST SON OF HENRY BANKES ESQ MP (5)
CAUSED THIS OBELISK AND THIS PEDESTAL FROM WHICH IT HAD FALLEN
TO BE REMOVED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF G BELZONI IN 1818
FROM THE ISLAND OF PHILAE BEYOND THE FIRST CATARACT
AND BROUGHT THIS PLATFORM FROM THE RUINS OF HIERASYCAMINON
IN NUBIA.

THE GRANITE USED IN THE REPARATION OF THIS MONUMENT
WAS BROUGHT FROM THE REMAINS OF LEPTIS MAGNA IN AFRICA
AND WAS GIVEN FOR THAT PURPOSE BY HIS MAJESTY
KING GEORGE IV.

THE INSCRIPTIONS ON THIS OBELISK AND PEDESTAL RECORD
THEIR DEDICATION TO KING PTOLEMY EUERGETES II
AND TWO CLEOPATRAS HIS QUEENS
WHO AUTHORIZED THE PRIESTS OF ISIS IN THE ISLE OF PHILAE
TO ERECT THEM ABOUT 150 YEARS BC
AS A PERPETUAL MEMORIAL OF EXEMPTION FROM TAXATION. 

The significance of the Philae obelisk

Bankes studied the obelisk carefully, and found he could make out the names of Ptolemy and Cleopatra. He made lithographs of the bilingual inscriptions – both Greek and hieroglyphic - and this helped scholars in their understanding of hieroglyphics.

Recently, a new study has been conducted on the obelisk. Current researchers have been able to confirm that Bankes’ lithograph, particularly of the hieroglyphs, was very accurate. Modern imaging methods have made it possible to read the whole of the Greek inscription for the first time. Much of this had been worn away by the time the obelisk arrived at Kingston Lacy.

Notes
(1) From Finat's Life and Adventures (1830).
(2) A cataract is a large waterfall.
(3) An inundation is a flooding.
(4) Finati mentioned four blocks of granite, but only three were used in the platform for the obelisk. It is not clear whether only three were transported or whether Finati remembered incorrectly.
(5) William John Bankes was the second, but eldest surviving son of Henry Bankes. His elder brother Henry died in 1806.

Sources used include:
Finati, Giovanni, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Giovanni Finati, edited by William John Bankes, Esq (1830)
The National Trust, Kingston Lacy (guidebook) (1994)
The National Trust website

Photographs © Andrew Knowles - www.flickr.com/photos/dragontomato

William John Bankes (1786-1855) - Egyptologist and friend of Lord Byron

William John Bankes
- portrait in the Spanish Room, Kingston Lacy (2013)

Profile 

William Bankes (11 December 1786 - 15 April 1855) was an antiquarian and Egyptologist and the owner of the Kingston Lacy and Corfe Castle estates in Dorset.

Family

William John Bankes was born on 11 December 1786, the son of Henry Bankes, a wealthy Dorset landowner and politician, and Frances Woodley, a celebrated beauty, who was the daughter of the governor of the Leeward Islands. The Bankes estates included the family seat of Kingston Lacy, Corfe Castle, Studland and the Purbeck hills.

Education

William was educated at Westminster School and went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in June 1803, where he became close friends with Lord Byron and gained a reputation for extravagance and wild living. Byron described William as his “collegiate pastor, and master, and patron” and “good-naturedly tolerant of my ferocities”. He declared that William “ruled the roast – or rather the roasting – and was father of all mischiefs.”1

Trinity College, Cambridge
from Memorials of Cambridge by CHCooper (1861)

Member of Parliament

Through the patronage of Lord Falmouth, who married his sister Ann, William became MP for Truro in 1810. He generally supported the government, but failed to shine in political circles and the speeches he made in parliament were unimpressive. He gave up his seat at the dissolution of 1812.

He later became Tory MP for the University of Cambridge (1822-6), Marlborough (1829-32), and then Dorset (1832-4).

Byron’s fashionable friend

Although only the second son, William became heir to his father in 1806 on the death of his elder brother, Henry, and was given an income of £8,000 a year. In 1815, he inherited Soughton Hall in Flintshire from his great grandfather.

During the season of 1812, William and Byron were central figures in society. Byron referred to William as one of his

...early friends. He is very clever, very original and has a fund of information: he is also very good-natured; but he is not much of a flatterer.2

Lord Byron from A Journal of the Conversations
of Lord Byron with the Countess of Blessington (1893)

William proposed to the bluestocking heiress Annabella Milbanke, but was refused. She later married Byron.

Lady Byron, from The Ladies' Monthly Museum (1816)

The Grand Tour

After his rejection, William followed in Byron’s footsteps and set out on his own Grand Tour. He followed Wellington’s army through Spain and Portugal, purchasing paintings during the disruption of the Peninsula War.

Over the next eight years, William travelled extensively in Italy, Syria and Egypt. He stayed on Mount Lebanon, crossed the desert to Palmyra, travelled up the Nile, explored to the east of the Dead Sea and became one of the first Europeans to reach Petra. Byron nicknamed him the Nubian Explorer or Discoverer.

He employed an Italian, Giovanni Finati, as his interpreter and guide. Later on, he was accompanied by another Italian, the archaeologist, Giovanni Belzoni.

William the archaeologist

The importance of William’s archaeological work has tended to be undervalued because he published very little apart from Finati’s memoirs. He and his team made detailed plans of various sites including the temple at Luxor which are a very important source for Egyptologists as they are not merely artistic impressions, but accurate records accompanied by careful transcriptions.

From William Bankes' Egyptian collections at Kingston Lacy (2013)

William visited the temple of Rameses II and copied all the wall paintings by candlelight and recorded many objects which have since been lost or destroyed. He carried out excavations at El-Sebua in Nubia and at Abydos, where he found the table of the kings, which is now in the British Museum.

The Philae obelisk

William amassed a collection of Egyptian artefacts many of which are on display in the billiards room at Kingston Lacy. But his most impressive artefact is the Philae obelisk which has sat in the garden at Kingston Lacy since 1839. William employed Belzoni to bring the obelisk to England and it took him twenty years to do it! On the first attempt to move it, it ended up on the river bed. William produced lithographs of the bilingual inscriptions on the obelisk which were a valuable aid to understanding hieroglyphics.

Find out more about the Philae obelisk here.

An Egyptian sarcophagus and the Philae obelisk
in the gardens of Kingston Lacy (2013)

Architectural projects

When he returned to England in 1820, William rebuilt Soughton Hall according to his own design, aided by the architect Charles Barry, whom he had met on his travels. Barry later designed the new building for the Travellers Club to which William belonged and the Houses of Parliament.

As soon as he inherited Kingston Hall in 1834, William started to remodel it with Barry’s help. He moved the entrance back to the north front and dug down to create a new basement entrance where visitors could alight from their carriages out of the rain. He created a Loggia and put in a marble staircase.3 He created a new, bigger dining room and the Spanish Room in which to display his Spanish paintings.

 

From the Egyptian collections at Kingston Lacy (2013)

Scandal

William’s personal life was beset with scandal. In 1820, he was forced to pay damages to James Silk Buckingham for libel after accusing him of stealing and publishing his research.

Then, in 1823, he was subject to a suit for criminal conversation, that is, adultery, with Anne Hobart, Lady Buckinghamshire.

But by far the most serious scandal revolved around repeated accusations of homosexuality, which was at that time a capital offence. In 1833, he was found not guilty after character references from, among others, the Duke of Wellington, but when further allegations were made in 1841, William fled the country.

Exile and death

William lived in Venice for the rest of his life, leaving his estates in the hands of his brother George. But he continued to transform Kingston Lacy from a distance under the supervision of his widowed sister, Lady Falmouth.

He commissioned Carlo Marochetti to create bronze sculptures of Chief Justice Bankes, Dame Mary and Charles I for the Loggia.

The sculptures of Dame Mary Bankes and Charles I
in the Loggia at Kingston Lacy (2013)

William died in Venice on 15 April 1855 and was buried in the family vault at Wimborne Minster, Dorset.

Rachel Knowles writes clean/Christian Regency era romance and historical non-fiction. She has been sharing her research on this blog since 2011. Rachel lives in the beautiful Georgian seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset, on the south coast of England, with her husband, Andrew.

Find out more about Rachel's books and sign up for her newsletter here.

If you have enjoyed this blog and want to encourage me and help me to keep making my research freely available, please buy me a virtual cup of coffee by clicking the button below.

 

Notes
(1) From a letter written by Lord Byron to John Murray, 19 October 1820 from Byron’s Letters and Journals, ed Leslie A Marchand (1976)
(2) From A Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron with the Countess of Blessington (1893)
(3) A loggia is a roofed gallery, often on a upper storey overlooking a courtyard, which is open to the air on at least one side.

Sources used include:
Baigent, Elizabeth, Bankes, William John (1786-1855) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn Jan 2008, accessed 3 Oct 2013)
Blessington, Countess, A Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron with the Countess of Blessington (1893)
Byron, George Gordon, Baron and Marchand, LA (ed) Byron's Letter and Journals (1976)
The National Trust, Kingston Lacy (guidebook) (1994)

Photographs © RegencyHistory.net

Lady Elizabeth Foster, later Duchess of Devonshire (1758-1824)

Lady Elizabeth Foster, later Duchess of Devonshire,
in South Sketch Gallery, Chatsworth

Profile

Lady Elizabeth Foster (baptised 13 May 1758 - 30 March 1824) was the intimate friend of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and the mistress of Georgiana's husband, William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire. She became the Duchess of Devonshire after Georgiana's death.

Early years

Elizabeth Christiana Hervey was baptised on 13 May 1758 in Horringer, Suffolk, the daughter of Frederick Hervey and Elizabeth Davers. The family moved to Ireland when Hervey was appointed Bishop of Cloyne (1767) and then Bishop of Derry (1768) through the influence of his brother. Elizabeth, known as Bess, spent her childhood in relative poverty, in Ireland and on the continent. The family fortunes changed drastically when Hervey became 4th Earl of Bristol in December 1779, but by this time, Bess was already married.

A short-lived marriage

On 16 December 1776, Bess married John Foster, an Irish MP. She had two sons, Frederick (1777) and Augustus (1780), but the marriage was not a success and in 1780, the couple separated. Foster was unfaithful, but on her side, Bess may have been regretting marriage to someone beneath her newly elevated status as Lady Elizabeth Foster. Bess gave up custody of her sons to Foster and returned to England, where she was forced to live in reduced circumstances.

The Duke and Duchess of Devonshire

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire
in South Sketch Gallery, Chatsworth

In 1782, Bess met the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire in Bath. Seeing an opportunity to improve her circumstances, she attached herself to the emotionally-starved Duchess, with whom she formed an instant bond. She succeeded so well that when Georgiana went home, Bess was invited to accompany them. Eager to please, Bess provided the Duke with the companionship he needed and at some point became his mistress.

Intrigues abroad

Georgiana’s mother, Lady Spencer, was keenly jealous for Georgiana’s position and encouraged the Cavendishes to send Bess abroad for her health. Bess duly left for France in December 1782, acting as governess to Charlotte Williams, the Duke’s natural daughter. The doors of Parisian high society were closed to her as a governess, but she enjoyed the freedom of being on her own in receipt of a large income.

Rumours drifted back to the Duchess that Bess was involved in scandalous behaviour in Italy. Bess hastened to reassure Georgiana but did not hurry to return home, afraid that she would have lost her influence after the birth of Georgiana’s daughter. Eventually, Bess was persuaded to return to Devonshire House, in July 1784.

A secret birth

She did not remain long. At the end of 1784, Bess went abroad again, ostensibly for her health. The reality was that she was pregnant. This time, she was given letters of introduction to the Duchesse de Polignac to enable her to move in polite society in Paris. Despite carrying the Duke of Devonshire’s child, she became mistress to the Duke of Dorset.

Duchesse de Polignac
  from Seven Splendid Sinners,
 by WRH Trowbridge (1908)

When her pregnancy could no longer be hidden, she fled to her brother in Naples and confessed all. He arranged for her to have the baby in a squalid inn and quickly reappear in society to preserve secrecy. In July 1786, Bess left her daughter, Caroline, with the elderly Comte St Jules who agreed to accept paternity, and finally acquiesced to the Duke and Duchess’ pleas for her to come home.

Ménage à trois 

By this time, Georgiana could no longer be in any doubt about the relationship between her husband and her best friend, but, to the amazement of society, she accepted the strange threesome, or ménage à trois. It is unclear whether this was due to Georgiana’s emotional dependence on Bess or whether Bess was blackmailing her over her massive debts which she was anxious to conceal from the Duke.

William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire
after Sir Joshua Reynolds
  stipple engraving pubd 1808
  NPG D13723 © National Portrait Gallery, London

An illegitimate son

In 1788, Bess was pregnant again and went abroad to have her child. She had her son, Augustus Clifford, in relative comfort, and left him with foster parents before returning to England. There was some question about Augustus’ paternity, as Bess had also had an affair with the Duke of Richmond, but the Duke of Devonshire accepted that the child was his. Two years later, she succeeded in having Caroline and Augustus brought to England, to be raised with the Cavendish children.

The bonds of friendship

After the birth of her son in 1790, Georgiana confessed her debts to the Duke. Bess stood by her throughout the ordeal. But the real test of her friendship came the following year when Georgiana was banished abroad because she was carrying Charles Grey’s child. Bess went with her.

After two years abroad, the Duke relented, and Georgiana and Bess came home in the autumn of 1793. They resumed their strange ménage à trois, but Georgiana and the Duke were getting on much better than before, and Bess feared that her influence was waning.

The Duke of Richmond

Anxious for her long-term future, Bess rekindled her affair with the Duke of Richmond and became his mistress. When, in 1796, both the Duchess of Richmond and her own husband died, she expected the Duke to marry her. But after many months of waiting, it was clear that the Duke had no intention of doing so.

Charles Lennox,
3rd Duke of Richmond and Lennox
  by George Romney 1775-7
  NPG 4877 © National Portrait Gallery, London.

The new Duchess of Devonshire

On 30 March 1806, Georgiana died. Bess was distraught. “She was the charm of my existence,” she wrote to her son, “my constant support in all my sorrows, the doubler and sharer of every joy.”1

Georgiana had secured her friend’s immediate future by making her sole guardian of her papers. The Cavendish children might resent her presence, but the Duke found he could not do without Bess to look after him.

Eventually, on 19 October 1809, the Duke and Bess were married. But Bess did not have long to enjoy the attainment of the position that she had coveted for so long. The Duke died on 29 July 1811, less than two years later.

Roman excavations

After the Duke’s death, Bess lived alone, in style, in Piccadilly before moving to Rome in 1816. Here, Bess found a new vocation as a devoted patron of the arts, in particular, archaeology. For eleven years, she funded the excavation of the Forum, enabling the recovery of the Column of Phocas and the stones of the Via Sacra. In Rome, she also found the last love of her life - Cardinal Hercule Consalvi, secretary of state to the Vatican.

The Forum, Rome

Bess died in Rome on 30 March 1824 and was buried in the Cavendish family vault in Derby Cathedral.

Rachel Knowles writes clean/Christian historical romance set in the time of Jane Austen. She has been sharing her research on this blog since 2011. Rachel lives in the beautiful Georgian seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset, on the south coast of England, with her husband, Andrew.

Find out more about Rachel's books and sign up for her newsletter here.

If you have enjoyed this blog and want to encourage me and help me to keep making my research freely available, please buy me a virtual cup of coffee by clicking the button below.

  

Note

1. From a letter from Lady Elizabeth Foster to her son Augustus (9 July 1806).

Sources used include:

Bell, John, La Belle Assemblée (John Bell, 1810, London)

Bourke, Hon. Algernon, The History of White's (1892)

Cavendish, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and others, The Two Duchesses, Family Correspondence ed by Vere Foster (Blackie & Son, 1898, London)

Foreman, Amanda, Cavendish, Elizabeth Christiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (OUP 2004, online edn May 2010, accessed 11 Oct 2012)

Foreman, Amanda, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (HarperCollins, 1998, London)

Horringer Parish Registers with biographies (1900)

Trowbridge, WRH, Seven Splendid Sinners (1908)

Photographs © Regencyhistory.net