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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;DonnaML, post: 8314025, member: 110350&quot;]Regarding my Napoleonic &quot;Conquest of Upper Egypt Medal&quot; posted above at <a href="https://www.cointalk.com/threads/lets-see-your-exonumia.203005/page-611#post-8311672" class="internalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.cointalk.com/threads/lets-see-your-exonumia.203005/page-611#post-8311672">https://www.cointalk.com/threads/lets-see-your-exonumia.203005/page-611#post-8311672</a>, a couple of additions/revisions to the footnotes, for the record, after I did some more research:</p><p><br /></p><p>1.&nbsp; A new footnote concerning the actual year when the medal was struck, even though it bears the date &quot;An 7&quot; (1798):</p><p><br /></p><p>See Richard A. Todd, <i>Napoleon’s Medals: Victory to the Arts</i> (The History Press, UK, 2009) at p. 22, pointing out that “[t]hough dated 1798, the medal was not struck until 1806.” (And could not possibly have been struck contemporaneously, given the presence of the DENON DIREXIT legend: Denon was appointed Director of the Mint only in September of 1803; see id. p. 15.) As the author further explains at pp. 78-79 of his book, the Egyptian Campaign “produced no immediate medallions except in England. Bonaparte was completely cut off from his European base. The English, on the other hand, had both the means and the incentive to produce a number of medals celebrating their victory. It is surprising that even after Bonaparte’s return to France and consolidation of power as first Consul, and given his enthusiasm for what he regarded as the great achievement of his Egyptian conquests, the Egyptian medals were so long in coming. Of course the recovery of northern Italy was Bonaparte’s first concern, and then there were the medals to celebrate the victory at Marengo. The delay in producing the Egyptian medals was not due to lack of interest on Napoleon’s part, however. [Citing his letter dated 6 September 1800 ordering six medals for the Egyptian campaign, including one for the conquest of Upper Egypt, and another letter dated 9 Jan. 1801 asking for a report on the medals that had been requested.] The three Egyptian medals eventually produced were the Conquest of Upper Egypt (1806), the Conquest of Egypt (1808), and the Conquest of Lower Egypt (1810)” (with a reverse showing the Pyramids).</p><p><br /></p><p>See also the chapter by the late David Block (1926-2002) entitled “The Egyptian Campaign,” in his now-defunct online “Medallic History of Napoleon” (still available on the Internet Archive at&nbsp; <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120204070433/http://fortiter.napoleonicmedals.org/medals/index.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120204070433/http://fortiter.napoleonicmedals.org/medals/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20120204070433/http://fortiter.napoleonicmedals.org/medals/index.html</a>), explaining that the Napoleonic medals on the subject of Egypt were “not designed and struck until a few years after that campaign, when the medal mint was reestablished and Vivant Denon was appointed its director. A law had been created in France under the monarchy that made medal-making a state monopoly. Individuals could prepare dies but the striking had to be done at a government mint. This law, in abeyance during the revolution, was enforced again when Napoleon was ruling France.”</p><p><br /></p><p>2. To be added to the footnote concerning the identification of the obverse bust as representing the statue of the Colossus of Memnon (actually Pharaoh Amenhotep III), rather than the traditional identification as Isis:</p><p><br /></p><p>Although auction houses and dealers have continued almost uniformly to identify the obverse bust as Isis, at least two authorities in this century have rejected that identification (although neither specifically identified the bust as Memnon/Amenhotep III; see [discussion in existing footnote]). First, the late David Block, a well-known collector of Napoleonic medals who used the name “fortiter” on his now-defunct website (still accessible on the Internet Archive at <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20111030192917/http:/fortiter.napoleonicmedals.org/medals/history/egypt.htm" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://web.archive.org/web/20111030192917/http:/fortiter.napoleonicmedals.org/medals/history/egypt.htm" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20111030192917/http://fortiter.napoleonicmedals.org/medals/history/egypt.htm</a>), described the obverse as follows: “The head of an Egyptian pharaoh, facing left. (In all the older books this is called Isis, but in Egyptian iconography Isis wears cow&#039;s horns and a lunar disc on her head, while here we see the uraeus crown of upper Egypt.)” Second, at p. 79 of his 2009 book <i>Napoleon’s Medals</i>, Richard A. Todd states that “[t]he medal for the conquest of Upper Egypt has the head of a Pharaoh, for years misidentified as Isis.”</p><p><br /></p><p>3.&nbsp; I have added the final sentence of the following (in boldface)&nbsp; to the same footnote, after the comparison showing the similarity between the obverse bust on this medal and the engravings of the &quot;Colossus of Memnon&quot; by the artists accompanying Napoleon&#039;s Egyptian expedition:</p><p><br /></p><p>It seems entirely possible that the designers of this medal had access to engravings or prints of the Colossi of Memnon similar or identical to those published a few years later in the first edition of the Napoleonic commission’s findings.&nbsp; (As Laskey may have had when he wrote his book published in 1818, identifying the obverse figure with the statue of Memnon.) <b>Indeed, Baron Denon, who was the Director of the Mint when this medal was issued and was named on the medal (&quot;DENON DIREXIT&quot;), was himself one of the scholars, artists, and scientists who accompanied Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt (see Todd p. 34).</b>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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