Early Years

ALYRE RAFFENEAU DELILE.

Vice-consul dans la Caroline du Nord, professeur de botanique 4 la Faculté de Médecine de
Montpellier, membre de l'Institut d’Egypte, correspondant de I’Institut
de France, chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, ete.

In 1802, when First Consul of France, Napoleon honored the
town of Wilmington by sending to this port as vice-consul the
gifted young scientist Raffeneau Delile, whose scientific work,
although he was at that time but twenty-four years old, had won
for him the grateful recognition of France.

“Quot qu'il arrive i faut que je sois regretté, si j'ai eu quel-
que valeur; cest a Voeuvre que Von connait Vowvrier: ‘A fruc-
tbus eorum cognoscetis eos, a dit lV Evangile.” (Whatever
happens, I must be regretted if I have had worth; it is by the
work that we know the workman: ‘By their fruits you shall
know them,’ saith the Gospel.) Thus wrote Delile in affec-
tionate confidence to his son five years before his death, and
his distinguished contemporary, M. Joly, in an historic eulogy,
quotes the scientist’s own words in his estimate of the man
whose work won for him an imperishable name.

Alyre Raffeneau Delile was born in Versailles in 1778. His
ancestors had held positions at court from the time of Francis
I., and he inherited the post held by his father, but his larger
heritage was the principles of honor and strict integrity. His
early boyhood was passed under the shadow of the impending
Revolution, but though his father was attached to the court
during that critical period, he encouraged Delile in forming
independent opinions, leaving him free to espouse actively
either the cause of the King or of the people. With no predilec-
tion for public affairs, however, he gave himself to the study of
botany and anatomy, and when an interne in the Hospital of
Versailles, learned Greek and some Latin from one of the
Prussian soldiers who then filled its wards. Later, he entered
a medical school in Paris which Bonaparte, then professing in-
terest in chemistry, sometimes visited; but for Bonaparte ab-
stract study could not shut out the call to the great arena of
military activity and conquest. At that time the mysteries of
Egypt beckoned with even greater persuasiveness than had the

[130]

Early Years 131

laurels of Italy, and the African expedition was made ready.
To the credit of Napoleon be it ever remembered that he desired
to conquer more than lands and peoples, and to accompany him
on that memorable journey to Egypt to solve its mysteries and
add distinction to French culture he chose fifteen of the greatest
savants of France, among them René Louiche Desfontaine, the
noted botanist, who had already visited Egypt, bringing back
probably the largest single collection of foreign plants then in
existence. But Desfontaine declined the honor of going and
requested it for Raffeneau Delile, then but twenty years old.
Realizing that his youth and inexperience might embarrass him

in such a company, Delile refused to go unless there should be

conferred upon him the title of a superior officer. His request
was granted, and he went forth with “those soldiers of letters,
the new Argonauts.” In Egypt his knowledge of Greek was of
great value to him in deciphering inscriptions on obelisks and
temples and in tombs. It was Boussard, an officer of this expe-
dition, who found the Rosetta stone, and it is possible that
Delile was one of the first to read some of the Greek inscrip-

tion? upon that. These scientists formed themselves into the

Institute of Egypt, planned after the Institut Natonal, and
Delile was made director of the Botanical Gardens of Cairo,
which he enriched by specimens gathered in the valley of the
Nile, on the borders of the Red Sea, and in the desert. He
thoroughly explored the world of plants, wrote extensively, and
read before the Institute of Egypt memorials that carried his
name across the Mediterranean. But misfortune came, and on
August 31, 1801, Alexandria capitulated to the English, leav-
ing to the merey of the conquerors the marvelous collections of
Bonaparte’s scientific expedition. It was when these were
claimed that the illustrious naturalist Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,
in the names of his colleagues, Delile and Savigny, made to the
haughty English general the heroic response: “We will not
yield. Your army will enter this place in two days. Ah, well,
between now and then the sacrifice will be consummated. We
will ourselves burn our treasures; you will afterwards dispose
of our persons as seems good to you.” It is needless to say that
the collection was saved to the French.

Searcely had Delile returned to France, when Bonaparte sent
him to Wilmington as under-commissioner of commercial rela-

i1To Champollion belongs the honor of deciphering the hieroglyphic
and using it as a key to the deciplierment of the monuments of Egypt.