Louis Maurice Adolphe Linant de Bellefonds

Louis Maurice Adolphe Linant de Belle Fund ( born November 23, 1799 in Lorient, † July 9, 1883 in Cairo, Egypt) was a French explorer, who as chief engineer came in 1831 in the construction administration of Egypt, in 1837 there was given the title Bey, 1862 General the construction administration and construction minister was in 1869. Although less well known than Ferdinand de Lesseps, Linant had a major share in the planning and construction of the Suez Canal.

Explorer

After an education, mathematics, drawing and painting stressed accompanied the 15 -year-old Linant his father Antoine- Marie, a naval officer on a sea voyage to the surveying and mapping of Newfoundland.

After appropriate examination, he participated in the following year on the frigate Cléopâtre on a reconnaissance trip to Greece, Syria, Palestine and Egypt. After a draftsman had died at the beginning of the journey, Linant was given the task to draw views of Athens, Constantinople Opel, Ephesus, Acre and Jerusalem. From Jaffa he traveled with his group on camels after Damietta and further down the Nile to Cairo. Linant decided there not to return to France, but to enter into the service of the viceroy Muhammad Ali Pasha, but he soon left again to undertake research trips.

1818 to 1819 he was in Nubia, 1820 he participated in the expedition of the French Consul General Bernardino Drovetti part Siwa Oasis to the in modern times no European had penetrated yet and of which he published a series of drawings. Shortly thereafter, he explored together with the Italian Alessandro Ricci Sinai; intend to travel on to Petra, but failed to hostilities in the region. However, the collected experiences on this trip and the varied component linked with the local Bedouin contacts contributed to the success of Léon de Laborde 1828 ( 1807-1869 ) to Petra journey undertaken at. In the meantime he visited in 1821 Fayum, after which he was commissioned by the Englishman William John Bankes ( 1786-1855 ), to make explorations in Sudan. This started in June 1821 trip of 13 months led him to the ruins of Messaurat and Naqa which he reached just before Frédéric Cailliaud, the first European to Meroe has discovered.

1824 Linant spent some months in London, where he proposed the African Association to support him like Jean Louis Burckhardt on an expedition. After further travels to Nubia and the Sudan, he tried in 1827 on behalf of the Association to pursue the White Nile as far as possible upstream, but was prevented on 13 latitude by local hostility to the further advancement. After his successful Petra trip in 1828, he retired, as he wrote later, for about a year alone with a good selection of books in a valley of the Sinai back, to acquire the knowledge which he for a service as an engineer in the Egyptian administration required. 1831 gave him the Société de Géographie in Paris commissioned to lead a similar expedition, which was canceled by the viceroy Muhammad Ali Pasha, who instead sent him in search of the gold mines of Etbai.

During this time he began an interest in the Isthmus of Suez to develop. In 1822 he had visited Suez, the traces of the old canal of Trajan, the Timsahsee and the ruins of Pelusium. In the following years he always came back to the isthmus back, pulled through the desert between the Nile and the Red Sea to the monasteries of St. Anthony and St. Paul and explored the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and the water leading to the Menzalehsee arms. As he wrote later, he joined these trips with the first trials for a connection between the two seas.

Engineer in the Egyptian Construction Administration

In 1831 he returned to the Egyptian Engineering Administration, where he was initially appointed chief engineer of the construction administration of Upper Egypt. There he was involved in the modernization of irrigation systems and dams. Between 1834 and 1836 he served as Director of Administration of the canals, bridges and roads throughout Egypt, among others, the construction of the great Delta Barrages, north of Cairo. In 1837 he moved to the building administration in the Ministry of Information and received the title of Bey. In 1862 he became general manager of the building administration and 1869 finally minister and member of the Council of the Viceroy.

At the age of 70 years, he retired to write his memoirs. In June 1873, the viceroy Ismail gave him the honorary title of Pasha. Linant remained in Egypt until his death on July 9 in Cairo.

Savior of the Pyramids

To facilitate the construction of large Nildamms, to the viceroy Muhammad Ali Pasha suggested to him to use the stone blocks of the pyramids. A contradiction was not feasible and might have led to Linant would be replaced by another, compliant engineering. Therefore Linant created a detailed, complex calculation, in which he proved that new blocks of stone from the quarry would be more cost-effective than the use of the blocks of the pyramids. So the idea of reducing the pyramids done.

Linant and the Suez Canal

Since 1830 had Linant first with the French Consul General Mimaut, then talked to the since 1833 acting as consul in Cairo Lesseps about his ideas of a canal construction between the two seas, which he developed while working in the Egyptian construction administration. During this time he also made the acquaintance of the Saint -Simonians Prosper Enfantin who tried with some followers to realize his ideas on a channel. In 1841 he sets ( the later P & O) before the first plans of the British shipping company Peninsular Steam Navigation Co.. In 1844, he passes Lesseps his plans. In his capacity as ministry officials he was involved with the investigation, which was founded by Prosper Enfantin 1846 Société d' Études du Canal de Suez, which were carried out in 1847 by Alois Negrelli, Robert Stephenson and Paul -Adrien Bourdaloue. At the recent survey by the running of Bourdaloue he wrote the report.

The now no longer active in the diplomatic service Lesseps received on 30 November 1854 by the new viceroy Said Pasha, an old friend, the first concession for the construction of a not yet precisely defined channel through the isthmus by a yet to be established, international company. In this concession Linant as an engineer of the viceroy with the Company ( notre commissaire auprès Ingénieur de la Compagnie ) is called. In the following months Linant worked with his colleague Eugène Mougel (1808-1890), a French hydraulic engineer, a more detailed planning of the Suez Canal. Lesseps put this plan with his report of April 30, 1855 the Viceroy before, which it declared by decision of 19 May 1855 contents of his arrangement with respect to the way forward for the construction of the Suez Canal. This decision was determined that Linant and Mougel specify leveling and map the course of the channel in the terrain should make soundings and take soil samples and identify the key labor and material costs and an initial assessment of the number of required workers should perform. The resulting plans should be published and discussed by an international commission; after the final route should be decided. Linant but was aware that an activity is directly incompatible with his position as a senior ministry official for the company, and avoided it thus to assume a position directly in the construction of the Suez Canal. Rather, he continued his career, at the end he was Egyptian Minister of Construction.

Swell

• The article is largely based on the articles in the British and French WP and the subsequent links. The rescue of the pyramids is also described in: Major Robert Hanbury Brown: The Delta Barrage of Lower Egypt. National Printing Department, Cairo 1902, p 4 digital copy on archive.org