Column in Second Court, Temple of Rameses III at Karnak,

ca. 1870

Construction of the vast temple of Karnak in Thebes (present day Luxor) started in the twentieth century b.c., during Egypt's Middle Kingdom. Eighteen centuries later, Europeans began visiting the site. By the 1850s, when photographers first encountered Karnak, it had suffered many ravages of time, including the modern-era quarrying of sandstone from the ancient structures.
Early commentators on photography had predicted that the medium would offer archaeologists a means of recording and correlating hieroglyphs from far-flung sites. This study of a massive column centers on two oval cartouches bearing the name of Pharaoh Ramesses XI, who ruled for nearly thirty years beginning in 1107 b.c. Bonfils operated one of the Middle East's busiest photography concessions from 1867 until his death in 1885, with studios in Beirut, Alexandria, Cairo, Jerusalem, and Baalbek as well as in his native France.