Re: Place de la Concorde

[Jack Aubert]

Maybe it's a message from the RATP with just a few letters wrong.  It actually should say:

Au levant, du Barbès (on) surgit à Paris Nord

But seriously, I did forward this query to a French History mailing list I subscribe to and am waiting for some response from there.  (All the history Professors are off on summer break so the list is kind of slow at the moment.)  Meanwhile, I meditated on it a little more and may have a better answer.

The Place de La Concorde was constructed under the July Monarchy between 1936 and 1846 and an obelisk of Ramses II sent back from Luxor by Napoleon during his Egyptian campaign was installed there.   The Thebes in the inscription clearly refers to the Egyptian city of Thebes, adjacent to Luxor.  I can't be sure that the Obelisk came from east of Thebes, but it probably did.  That would explain the "au levant de Thebes" as the origin of the obelisk. 

Now in 1799, Napoleon suddenly abandoned the Egyptian campaign, leaving it in the hands of Kléber and returned to Paris where he took part in the coup d'etat of 18 Brumiare which marked the end of the revolution and the beginning of the Directorate, effectively giving power to Napoleon. 

My tentative interpretation of  "surgit a Paris le nord" is that this is both a reference to Napoleon's arrival in Paris -- where "le nord" has the sense of bringing order and orientation as in the phrases "perdre le nord" (to become disoriented) and "montrer le nord" (to orient) as well as a physical reference since the Obelisk itself, which is oriented along with the whole Place on a north-south axis, and can be said to represent a north marker.   (It is curious that in English we use a compass or the North Star to find the East). 

So to sum up:  "From east of Thebes, out of Egypt, comes a sudden arrival in Paris that points to the north and reorients the compass."

If anybody can come up with something more convincing, I will be happy to cede way.  I wish I could find some way to turn this research into an excuse to visit Paris but next time I'm near the Place de la Concorde I will definitely stop for a closer look at the Obelisk.  I did notice a few years ago that everything seemed to have been spruced up and re-gilded.

Jack

Jack
 

   
   

This Thebes is clearly not a reference to Greek Thebes, but rather the Egyptian city of Thebes adjacent to Luxor, the origin of the Obélisque. 

La monarchie de Juillet donne à Paris des édifices publics où le style néoclassique se colore déjà d'un certain éclectisme. La place de la Concorde est transformée de 1836 à 1846, accueillant un obélisque de Ramsès II provenant de Louqsor, des fontaines dues à Hittorff, des statues de villes de France.



AU LEVANT DE THEBES
SURGIT A PARIS LE NORD".



At 10:59 AM 9/23/2003 +0200, you wrote:

Barry N. Wainwright wrote:

>From a Frenchman:


Levant has two meanings: sunset and
East

Not sunset, but sunrise, as was indeed corrected below:

I understand the sentence as:
"In Paris, the north rises at the East (or sunrise) of 
Thebes"
  

And a third (now not so common anymore) meaning in French, as already pointed out for English by someone else: the Near-Esat or Middle-East.

Thierry
--
__________________________________

Thierry van Steenberghe
Bruxelles / Belgium
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
__________________________________

To be quite honest, I'm not quite sure what this means outside of the
entire
context...
I don't remember how the obelisk is oriented on the Concorde either...
It
could be related.


    Corentin
 
 

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