In the year 1804, 1 Monsieur Denon's grand publication detailing the antiquities of Egypt became public. The novelty displayed throughout these fine specimens of art, calling to the recollection so distant a portion of ancient history, gave rise and life to a taste for this description of embellishment. 2In 1826 George Smith, the English cabinet-maker, described the impact that the publication in 1802 of Dominique-Vivant Denon's Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute d'Egypte had on English interior design. This illustrated journal of his travels through Egypt established the importance of Denon in disseminating the Egyptian revival in salons across Paris. He achieved a position of such standing in France at the beginning of the nineteenth century that he was able to act as an arbiter of taste for both Bonaparte and his ministers in all artistic matters, a position that allowed his English counterparts access to his designs, particularly through an English edition of Voyage, published first in 1803. The fact that an English edition appeared only one year after Voyage's original publication in France is evidence of its great popularity on both sides of the Channel. By 1806, this edition was described as having affected`many articles of interior decoration [which have become] the present prevailing fashion' in Regency England. 3 Over the last thirty years, texts published on the Egyptian Revival have tended to place it within a simple series of stylistic changes. 4 As such, few have analysed or even referred to it in terms of the`Orientalist' project that has been part and parcel of contemporary cultural studies. This is acutely demonstrated by the use of the term Egyptomania' in a number of these studies. The dictionary definition of a mania is an obsessional enthusiasm', 5 which, when applied to the Egyptian Revival, suggests a compulsion, rather than a deliberate action within a political hegemony. The rationale for the use of this term, as illustrated by the 1994 exhibition Egyptomania, held in Paris, Ottawa and Vienna, rests on the tautology that Western artists looked to ancient Egyptian motifs because ancient Egypt itself was intrinsically so alluring. 6 The`Egyptian Revival' has been discussed simply in terms of style, likening it to thè Gothic Revival' or`Neoclassicism', and placing it within the dialectical structure that marks many histories of architecture and furniture.It is only recently that a new phase of analysis has begun ± that of thè Egyptian' style as a political tool. 7 By using the example of Denon's Voyage and

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