JAMES GRASBY : Hello and welcome to the National Trust Podcast.
Today to celebrate the BBC TV series, Hidden Treasures of the
National Trust, we're sharing a classic story from our podcast
125 treasures presented by Alison Steadman.
In this episode, we travel to the Gardens Of Kingston Lacy in
Dorset to discover a 30 ft tall ancient Egyptian antiquity. The
Philae Obelisk. A closer look at this artefact reveals a curious
inscription which helped Egyptologists to unlock a
mystery which had remained unsolved for millennia.
ALISON STEADMAN: We're in Dorset on the south coast of England
looking out to sea. If we turn around and begin walking inland,
we pass through farms and expanses of crops until
eventually the terrain changes. And we reach formal gardens and
the striking site of a lavish family home. This is Kingston
Lacy, whose land stretches right down to the Dorset coast.
There's a wild garden, a Japanese garden and a cedar walk
planted with seeds that Kingston Lacy's intrepid former owner
collected whilst in the holy land. Indeed, this former owner
traveled far and wide during his time and his travels even helped
to unlock the secrets of an ancient civilization. I'm Alison
Steadman and this is 125 Treasures, a podcast from the
National Trust. Episode three, The Needle On the Lawn.
CATHERINE SHARP: I'm standing in the park to the north of
Kingston Lacy house. I am surrounded by green pasture,
trees dotted around me.
ALISON STEADMAN: This is Catherine Sharp, Cultural
Heritage curator at the National Trust. She looks after Kingston
Lacy.
CATHERINE SHARP: And turning to the house as stately homes go.
It's quite a, a small house, but it certainly has a presence in
this landscape. Rising from each corner are tall chimneys and
projecting from the entrance is a port cochere or a covered
entrance porch.
And entering the house now, coming into the magnificent
entrance hall, inside it had to make a big impact and this hall
certainly does. It has a marble floor and a great arch in front
of you directly opposite the front door with steps.
ALISON STEADMAN: Much of what we see in the house today. From the
marble staircase to the extensive collection of Spanish
paintings is thanks to Kingston Lacy's former owner, William
John Bankes.
Born in 1786 William was an explorer, architect and
socialite, moving in circles that included famous poets,
artists, and even the Prime Minister. He was an avid
collector, but his most impressive artifacts were
acquired in an attempt to understand an ancient society
that captivated him.
CATHERINE SHARP: And now entering the servants' hall.
It's now set up as the exhibition room for the Egyptian
collection accumulated by William John Bankes.
It's making use of alcoves in the room as display cases and
there are some really amazing things in here. I think probably
what strikes me most of all are the graven tablets. They were
made by workmen who were working on the tombs in the valley of
the kings.
ALISON STEADMAN: This is the largest private display of
Egyptian relics in the UK.
CATHERINE SHARP: William John Bankes' most famous artefact
from his travels in Egypt isn't in this exhibition room with the
others.
I'm climbing the stairs to the library and the library has a
very different feel. I think you can tell it has a plush carpet,
what a difference from the marble floors. And it's here
from the library window that I can see the jewel of William
John Banks' Egyptian collection. It's outside and it's very large
and it stands at the end of a long path on the south lawn.
I'm going to walk down the path towards it.
It's a very tall piece of stone. It's made of pink granite and
it's like a pillar tapering towards the top with a square
section and it stands on some stone steps and it just reaches
up into the sky.
ALISON STEADMAN: Standing at 9m in height, this is the Philae
Obelisk.
You may have seen other famous obelisks, Cleopatra's Needle in
London, for example, or the Washington Monument in America.
But unlike those, the Philae Obelisk held the key to
unraveling a mystery that had perplexed society and scholars
for hundreds of years.
And it all starts in 1813, when Bankes decide to take an
eight-year gap year traveling through Europe and the Middle
East. In 1815, he then went to Egypt. Anne Seba wrote a
biography of William John Banks.
When he went to Upper Egypt and Palmyra and Syria, he went in
small bursts and then would come back. And of course, he had a
classical education. He was very well educated, he spoke Greek.
CATHERINE SHARP: Egypt had been ruled by the Greeks for many
centuries. And so Greek, as well as the hieroglyphics that they
couldn't yet understand was a language that could inform his
studies in Egypt.
ALISON STEADMAN: Egypt had been changing fast.
CATHERINE SHARP: Napoleon had invaded Egypt. Ultimately, his
campaign in Egypt did not succeed. But what had happened
was that information about Egypt was disseminating throughout
Europe and it was becoming a very exciting place to be. So
for William John, a young British man with a lot of money,
it was like entering Aladdin's cave. And at the same time, you
see, this was a period when scholars were trying to decipher
the ancient texts.
ANNE SEBBA: The rosetta stone had just been brought back to
England as well. And the rosetta stone was something that really
excited Victorians as to how they would decipher what was on
the rosetta stone. And there was a race really between the French
who were being led by a scholar called Champollion and the
British who are being led by a scholar called Thomas Young.
ALISON STEADMAN: No one understood if hieroglyphic
script recorded a language or whether it was just a series of
picture symbols which were used instead of words, it was a
locked language for which no one could find the key.
The rosetta stone contained the same text in multiple languages
including hieroglyphics. So was commonly seen as the best chance
of creating a method of translation. It was one of a
number of objects which had been taken out of Egypt and sent to
Europe for study. But William John Bankes was initially
content with the sketches and drawings of artefacts. He came
across.
ANNE SEBBA: At one point when he was inside a temple at Abu
Simbel, instead of tearing down some of the tablets on the
walls, he worked painstakingly in great heat copying. So he
wasn't the sort of collector who was in a hurry who just wanted
to tear everything down and, and send it home to England.
CATHERINE SHARP: I think what distinguishes William John is
the fact that he was so passionate. He was intent on
copying everything he saw. He was a good, good draftsman and
watercolourist. And even though he couldn't understand
everything he saw, he faithfully copied it. And this is so
important because a lot of what he saw on his trip in the early
19th Century has since been lost.
ALISON STEADMAN: Banks, wanted to see everything and copy it
down. His incredible energy amazed the people he was with.
He never stopped and he scarcely slept. For his trip in Egypt, he
had kitted out a grand barge.
ANNE SEBBA: They went up the Nile and that really was where
Bankes discovered all sorts of intriguing objects.
CATHERINE SHARP: The Nile is the main artery of Egypt, but on the
Nile are a number of cataracts which like waterfalls and then
stretches of river. In one of these stretches is the Isle Of
Philae. On this island was the Temple of Isis.
ALISON STEADMAN: This was a very impressive collection of ruins,
but it was what had once flanked the entrance to the Temple of
Isis that intrigued Bankes the most.
ANNE SEBBA: He discovered an obelisk at Philae that had
submerged into the water. It dates from the 14th Century BC.
CATHERINE SHARP: It was a very important temple. It was a very
beautiful and large temple. And when William Bankes and his
party arrived on the island they spent several days there
sketching, of course, sketching and drawing. William John saw
the list and instantly wanted it. He he knew it was important.
ALISON STEADMAN: A series of inscriptions on the obelisk
immediately caught Bankes' Eye.
ANNE SEBBA: This really is what Bankes' reputation depended on,
this obelisk, because it had hieroglyphs. And at the base, it
had Greek language.
CATHERINE SHARP: The shaft is adorned with hieroglyphics on
the base. There is an inscription in ancient Greek.
Now, William John could read ancient Greek, but he couldn't
read hieroglyphics. In fact, nobody could.
ALISON STEADMAN: From the drawings that Banks did. Whilst
on the island of Philae, he was able to make a startling
discovery.
CATHERINE SHARP: One of the things that he was able to
recognise in the hieroglyphics was a name in a cartouche which
he saw was Cleopatra. And another name came up which was
Ptolemy. A cartouche is like a sort of surrounding border.
And in hieroglyphics, royal names are surrounded by borders.
It's, it is like giving them a capital letter. He was able to
recognize that even though he couldn't decipher what he was
reading, he was able to guess that that's what he saw.
ALISON STEADMAN: He knew it was an important find.
CATHERINE SHARP: Which I think is why he was very keen to get
his drawing of the obelisk to London circulating to his friend
Young, who was working hard on inscriptions at that time. And I
think it also made him very conscious of the need to be
accurate. He was disorganized, he was a bit slapdash in this
respect. He was absolutely conscientious. He got the thing
right.
ALISON STEADMAN: And now he was faced with the huge task of how
to get this enormous object back to Dorset.
ANNE SEBBA: Bankes was the sort of man who responded to a
challenge. Here was a challenge. He knew that it would be
extraordinary in Kingston Lacy in the grounds of Dorset to have
an ancient Egyptian obelisk.
ALISON STEADMAN: At this time, as part of the governor of
Egypt's drive to give its art culture and ancient wonders more
prominence outside the Ottoman Empire, Bankes was supported in
his quest to transport the obelisk back to his home in
England. But this was not a quest he could take on alone.
ANNE SEBBA: One of the people that Bankes had with him was a
former circus strongman, Giovanni Belzoni. And Belzoni
was actually an engineer. When Bankes couldn't stay, he asked
Belzoni to stay on and try and work out how to bring the
obelisk back to England.
CATHERINE SHARP: They had to roll it onto a boat. If you
imagine it's on an island, there's a body of water. It's
got to go onto a boat and they constructed a kind of wooden
pier, but it wasn't strong enough. And the obelisk fell
into the Nile.
ANNE SEBBA: They lifted it and had to watch it plunge back into
the waters.
ALISON STEADMAN: The sheer weight of the massive granite
slab smashes its wooden rollers and amid much panic and shouting
the precious cargo slides under the water. You can just picture
Belzoni face watching this priceless remnant from history
sinking into the Nile, the future of the obelisk and the
invaluable detail of its inscription now hung in the
balance.
Belzoni and his men got to work to secure the obelisk and try
against all odds to rescue it from the Nile. With gargantuan
effort they hauled the obelisk out of the water.
ANNE SEBBA: Eventually Belzoni was able to get it onto another
barge.
CATHERINE SHARP: And it finally arrived in Deptford. In 1821
ANNE SEBBA: Sixteen horses were employed over a period of four
days to bring it back to Kingston Lacy.
CATHERINE SHARP: It was a very awkward piece of stone to move.
But William John was determined.
ANNE SEBBA: You know, it was a major undertaking. So that's one
of the reasons why, why Bankes became so well known in England.
ALISON STEADMAN: Another reason was he's recognizing the names
of Ptolemy and Cleopatra that would turn out to be vital in
the cracking of the hieroglyphic code.
CATHERINE SHARP: His transcription of what was on the
obelisk, in spite of the fact, he didn't understand what he was
drawing was as accurate as it could possibly be. And his work
was used by leading scholars of the day to help them to decipher
the ancient texts.
ALISON STEADMAN: After receiving copies in 1822 of Bankes' and
Thomas Young's work on the Philae Obelisk, the French
scholar Jean-Francois Champollion made a breakthrough.
ANNE SEBBA: Everybody thought at that point, if you can work out
what the picture represents, you'll get there. But
Champollion won the race because he understood that the
hieroglyphs actually were used to create a sound.
ALISON STEADMAN: He dashed into his brother's office,
exclaiming "je tiens l'affaire, I've got it!" before promptly
collapsing and taking to his bed for five days.
CATHERINE SHARP: He obviously had used Bankes' texts as well
because the scholars weren't the travellers, they weren't the
explorers.
ALISON STEADMAN: Armed with the context of what had now been
learned from the obelisk among other artefacts, Champollion was
able to decipher the names Ptolemy and Cleopatra on the
rosetta stone and working from the stone began to translate
hieroglyphics in earnest.
This helped provide even more information about the obelisk
itself and its full inscription could now be read.
CATHERINE SHARP: The hieroglyphics, pointing up into
the sky quite appropriately, represent a homage to the
Egyptian royal family. Whereas the ancient Greek at the base
recounts the fact that by their great benevolence, the king
absolved the priests at the temple of Isis from which this
came on the island of Philae from having to pay tax because
it was crippling them.
And they wanted to show in Greek which was the language of
authority at the time that they didn't have to pay tax.
ALISON STEADMAN: Champollion's discovery opened up a new world,
unlocking secrets of Ancient Egypt that had remained a
mystery for centuries. Champollion talked up his own
discoveries. He became famous and he and the rosetta stone had
their names etched into posterity. He pointedly refused
to acknowledge the significance of Bankes' vital work.
Bankes and the Philae Obelisk remain unsung heroes in the
story of the cracking of the hieroglyphic code.
But back home in England Bankes did become everybody's favorite
dinner guest.
ANNE SEBBA: He was in demand as a an explorer, as a storyteller,
as a very entertaining man about town.
ALISON STEADMAN: Bankes' attention turned away from Egypt
and exploration.
ANNE SEBBA: Once he inherited the house in 1834 his interest
really changed to architecture. And to Kingston Lacy.
CATHERINE SHARP: He employed an architect called Charles Barry,
well known for the Houses Of Parliament who by 1835 had
become very famous. Although William had first met him in
Egypt before he was ever an architect. It was a box in which
William John could put his treasures.
And there were many. And quite apart from the Egyptian ones,
there were all the things he collected on his travels in
Spain and Italy, many many paintings, Spanish paintings and
the decoration of the house absolutely minutely orchestrated
by William John.
ALISON STEADMAN: But Banks would not be allowed to enjoy growing
old in his magnificent creation. He was gay and lived in a time
when homosexual acts were illegal. This would tear his
life apart.
ANNE SEBBA: I think Bankes' homosexuality doesn't really
come to the fore until he's charged with indecent exposure
in 1833.
CATHERINE SHARP: Luckily he had friends who helped him get off
the charges.
ALISON STEADMAN: But eight years later, at the age of 55 he was
caught again.
ANNE SEBBA: And this time he was caught in flagrante in Green
Park with another soldier and he was arrested immediately. And
this time, he was charged with the much more serious indecent
assault, a crime for which men were hanged.
ALISON STEADMAN: And this time, he couldn't rely on friends in
high places to get him off the charges.
CATHERINE SHARP: He would have been made an outlaw. Outlaws
could have all their properties seized by the government. He
didn't want that to happen. So in 1841 he signed all his
property over to his younger brother and fled into exile in
Venice.
By doing that he managed to ensure that the Kingston Lacy
lands, all his lands remained in the family and were not seized.
But what a tragedy for a man who'd put so much of his heart
into his house, into his collections.
ANNE SEBBA: The house was unfinished at this point in
1841. He'd had six years, but he hadn't finished what he planned
to do. Create this Italian Palazzo with the obelisk taking
pride of place on the lawns,
ALISON STEADMAN: His steward had continued to keep him abreast of
the developments his siblings were making of the house,
William Bankes was an absolute and total control freak.
ANNE SEBBA: And there are some intriguing insights where he
asks his sister if she could try out whether a pot would go here
or a piece of sculpture there.
ALISON STEADMAN: It seems Bankes couldn't let go of his
unfinished project. His pride and joy, Kingston Lacy.
CATHERINE SHARP: His body was in Venice, but his heart was always
in Dorset.
ALISON STEADMAN: Bankes had been dealt a double blow. His
scholarly breakthrough sidelined then his beloved home and
collections effectively taken away, but he may now be getting
the recognition he deserves.
CATHERINE SHARP: Very interesting recent research by
Oxford University using the very latest technology has been able
to examine the inscriptions on the Philae Obelisk. They've
managed to digitize it so that they can tell where the
inscription has degraded because the obelisk has always been
outside. It's never been protected by anything against
the weather. So the inscriptions in places have become very worn.
ALISON STEADMAN: With the equipment, the team were able to
clarify both inscriptions, the hieroglyphs and the Greek
inscription underneath casting new light on how impressive
Banke's original work had been.
CATHERINE SHARP: And they have been able to tell by doing that
how accurate William John's drawings of the inscriptions
were. It just shows how, how very meticulous he was.
ALISON STEADMAN: It's devastating to think of all the
time and effort, passion and travel Bankes put into his
collection, particularly his treasured obelisk for him never
to see any of it again. However, if local legend and a clue in a
letter are to be believed, William may have found a way to
continue to enjoy his masterpiece.
CATHERINE SHARP: There are stories that he did return to
Kingston Lacy.
ALISON STEADMAN: There's a letter which suggests that
Bankes may once have made a secret visit to Kingston Lacy
one last time before he died.
ANNE SEBBA: There wasn't quite enough marble in one of these
niches so that there's this very poignant letter to the steward
where he tells him how to cut the marble very finely, which
part of the marble to use. And he says, take it from the box I
showed you.
So there is an indication that he came and quite clear that
there had been some practical demonstration of, of what was
needed. So I, I do believe that once Bankes knew that probably
he wasn't in good health towards the end of his life. So it might
have been 1853 1854, he probably risked coming home for a short
time.
CATHERINE SHARP: He might well have sailed back to the shores
of Dorset, landed on his own land off Purbeck and made his
way to Kingston Lacy just to see what his house looked like after
all the years of imagining what it must look like.
ALISON STEADMAN: I really do hope Bankes had a chance to
return and I hope he gazed up one last time at the Philae
Obelisk.
CATHERINE SHARP: And what do I think when I look at it? Well,
I'm standing at it at its base. The house Kingston Lacy looks
curiously small and this looks very big and very important. And
of course, it was because this artifact was collected at an
extremely important and pivotal time for the translation of
ancient scripts.
And I think this symbolizes in a way how important that period of
discovery was in the early 19th Century and what a significant
part William John himself played in it.
JAMES GRASBY : Thanks for listening to this episode of the
National Trust Podcast. To find out more about the historical
interpretation of the Philae Obelisk and other artefacts in
the collection at Kingston Lacy, follow the links to resources in
our episode show notes.
If you've enjoyed it and would like to hear about how we make
the National Trust Podcast, I'll be appearing at the Chalke
History Festival in June along with the producers behind the
show. We'll be back soon with another episode. But for now
from me, James Grasby, goodbye.