Watercolour on paper

39.1 by 24.9 cm.

Pompey’s pillar is the name given to a Roman triumphal column in Alexandria. It dates to 298-302 A.D. and was dedicated to the Emperor Diocletian, a giant porphyry statue of whom originally surmounted the column. The association with Pompey came from a misreading of a Greek inscription on the base.

The Arab traveller, Ibn Battuta, visiting Alexandria in 1327, describes an archer firing a line over the top of the column so that an ascent could be made. Perhaps inspired by this story, in 1798, after Napoleon’s rapid invasion of Egypt, French soldiers flew a kite with a line attached over the column in order to harness ropes for an ascent. It seems that their purpose was simply to raise the French flag. After the expulsion of the French by the British a few years later, a British soldier was keen to show that he could more than match the efforts of the French. In early 1803, Commander John Shortland of HMS Pandour flew his kite over the column to fix lines for a rope ladder. Shortland and the Master of the Pandour, John White, climbed to the top where they raised the Union Jack, toasted King George III and gave him three cheers. Four days later, they re-climbed the ladder and, on reaching the top of the column, raised a staff, attached a weather vane, ate a beef steak and, again, toasted the King.

Judging by the structure visible on the top of the column, this watercolour depicts the column just after Shortland’s ascent when the monument was still prominent in the mind of British visitors to Egypt.

The notoriety of the column at this time inspired an over life size replica to be built in County Wexford, Ireland. It is known as the Browne-Clayton monument after the General who commissioned its building to commemorate a fellow officer who died in the campaign against Napoleon.