Steen met inscriptie in het Boulaq Museum in Caïro, Egypte before 1871

Hippolyte Délié made this photograph of an inscribed stone in the Boulaq Museum in Cairo. The museum itself was an early attempt by the Egyptian government to protect and exhibit its ancient heritage. Photography like this played a key role in shaping European perceptions of ancient Egypt. The Boulaq Museum, founded in 1858, represented a growing sense of national identity, and desire to preserve Egyptian artifacts within Egypt, rather than seeing them removed to European collections. Délié’s photograph is therefore more than a simple record; it's a document of cultural and institutional history, capturing a moment when Egypt was beginning to assert control over its own past. To fully understand the significance of this stone and photograph, one might delve into colonial archives, museum records, and the writings of early Egyptologists. By doing so, we reveal the complex interplay between art, history, and power.