L’Ichneumon – Egyptian Mongoose.
Painted by Christophe-Ferdinand Caron. 1808.

The view is after the illustration by Vivant Denon (1747-1825) “Ná’oùrah [= noria] ou machine à monter l’eau” (Pl. 27) for the published description of his journey to Egypt during Bonaparte’s 1798 campaign “Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte” (1802). Denon was an artist, curator and author who worked in Italy and France and was Napoleon’s Minister of Arts and first director of the Musée Napoléon (Louvre) (1802-15).

A noria is a large, water wheel used to raise water from a river or stream into irrigation canals. The wheel is equipped with buckets or compartments that scoop up water as the wheel turns and then discharge it into a channel.