At the University of Pisa 200 years ago the world's first Egyptology teaching

In Pisa, 200 years ago, for the first time in the world, Egyptology made its entrance into a university classroom. The professor was a young orientalist, Ippolito Rosellini, one of the very few scholars who approached the fledgling discipline, who presented notions of the history and language of ancient Egypt to the students of the University of Pisa. It was the academic year 1825-26 and Pisa thus anticipated Paris by a good six years: in France it was not until 1831 that a chair of Egyptology was established and entrusted to Jean-François Champollion.

This primacy for Pisa was also possible thanks to the support of Leopold II of Tuscany. So much interest on the part of the Grand Duke also had practical reasons: Livorno at the time was the European gateway for all pharaonic antiquities. Every European court aspired to own its own Egyptian collection and Livorno was chosen as the main port of call for this particular trade. Ships laden with grain and exotic products departed from Alexandria and arrived in the port of Livorno also bringing statues, sarcophagi, mummies and papyri. Soon, Livorno's lazarettos and warehouses were filled with those finds that we admire today in museums in Turin, Florence, Bologna, London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Leiden. Even a real specialised tourism was born with antiquarians, collectors and scholars travelling to the Tuscan city to see this precious merchandise in person.

To commemorate this event, the Egyptologists of the University of Pisa, Rosellini's heirs, have set up a schedule of events to remember and celebrate the bicentenary. Meetings, an international conference in December and an exhibition in which the pages of Rosellini's first lectures will be exhibited, together with other documents preserved in the University Library of Pisa, such as ancient volumes, manuscript notes and the wonderful drawings made during the Franco-Tuscan Expedition. The original manuscript pages of the first two lectures, entitled 'Memorie per servire alle lezioni dell'Anno Accademico 1825 e 26', are kept at the Braidense National Library in Milan because they were donated by Rosellini's wife, Zenobia Cherubini, daughter of the famous composer Luigi. A slightly later transcription, dating back to 1857, is in the University Library of Pisa. The text, unfortunately incomplete, presents the introduction to the course: "We shall set out the history of ancient Egypt, that is, of that country where perhaps the culture of the sciences and the arts first originated, and which then derived from the other nations; of that country that was the theatre of grandiose and almost innumerable events, and which had such an influence and connection with the events of other countries; and which in the end, with its mysterious writings, awoke the admiration and the desire of all scholars".

But Egyptology with Rosellini did not stop at lectures and went much further, reaching as far as Egypt. In fact, together with Champollion, the Pisan scholar planned a fascinating scientific journey to the Nile Valley, financed by the Grand Duke of Tuscany Leopold II and Charles X of France. The famous Franco-Tuscan Expedition of 1828-1829 was the first real Egyptological mission. If Bonaparte's savants were still unable to read and understand the texts they copied, Rosellini and Champollion brought with them draftsmen whose task was to perfectly document the material taken from the walls of temples and tombs. The Tuscan part of the expedition arrived in the port of Livorno between November and December 1829 with around 2,000 finds for the Archaeological Museum in Florence and an extraordinary wealth of documents, now preserved in the University Library in Pisa, consisting of over 20,000 papers, including notebooks, handwritten notes, letters, texts and over a thousand wonderful drawings, many of them watercoloured.

Gianluca Miniaci Professor of Egyptology at the Department of Civilisations and Forms of Knowledge at the University of Pisa; Mattia Mancini, Egyptologist at the University of Pisa