URL originale : https://books.openedition.org/inha/12719
Félix Paponot’s canal-construction camp in the Isthmus of Suez
Le camp du chantier de l’entreprise Félix Paponot dans l’isthme de Suez
Bertrand Paponot et Véronique Laurent
p. 83-91
Texte intégral
1In 1869, after the Suez Canal was opened, many of the engineers who had worked on the breakthrough of the isthmus were dismissed with compensation. It was then that Félix Paponot (Cosne-sur-Loire, 1835–Chartrettes, 1897), who had directed the works on the canal at Kantara, contacted Ferdinand de Lesseps, director of the Universal Suez Ship Canal Company, in the hope of executing earthworks or becoming involved in canal maintenance in Egypt. His initiative paid off. When he founded his own company in 1870, he benefited from Lesseps’ support, and until 1877, was actively involved in digging the freshwater canal intended to connect the Nile to the maritime canal. The family preserves the archives of these plans and projects, which had remained the property of the contractor. These archives (contracts, official letters, technical documents) are of considerable interest for the political and economic history of the Isthmus of Suez. In addition, two albums of photographs and private letters constitute a hitherto unknown record of the life and organization of a construction camp on a large public project in the eastern Nile Delta, in the late 19th century.
Felix Paponot’s career
2After graduating from the Collège of Cosne-sur-Loire in 1852, Félix Paponot trained as a draftsman and then as an architect with his cousin Guillaume Robert, an architect in Paris. On the strength of his construction experience on the Solférino Bridge in Paris, he was hired in 1860 by the Hardon company, the Suez Ship Canal Company’s contractor for excavating the isthmus. In 1863, when Hardon’s contract was terminated, Paponot was employed by the Suez Company. He rose through the ranks and, from 2nd class foreman, he became a section chief.1 When the works for the Suez Canal were finished, Félix Paponot created his own public works company, in order to be involved in the major project of digging the freshwater canal from Cairo to Ismailia. It consisted of the completion of gigantic earthworks and the erection of associated constructions, bridges, and locks.
3Though the freshwater canal received less publicity than the ship canal did, it was nevertheless a key element in the Suez Isthmus development project Ferdinand de Lesseps had begun planning in 1855. An irrigation, supply, and navigational canal along Wadi Tumilat, leading to Lake Timsah (where the town of Ismailia would be created) had even been planned to precede the saltwater canal. But due to difficulties with the project, in particular relating to the expropriations it necessitated, construction was postponed until after the maritime canal opened. Initially, the Suez Company limited its project to extending a small pre-existing canal, the Ouady, whose line was based on that of an ancient canal,2 to Timsah. In 1886, following a disagreement with the Egyptian Government, the Suez Company was forced to cede the canal (from then on known as Ismailia Canal) to Egypt. But it obliged the government to finish digging it, to obtain a size and water level sufficient for supplying towns with water and for navigating.3 Despite incomplete sources on this subject, it appears that on the strength of preliminary studies de Lesseps’s company had carried out to define the route of the new canal, de Lesseps was instrumental in securing the contract for Paponot. The Paponot company’s activities on this major project can be divided into three periods: two relate to the Ismailia Canal works, and one to the design of the project for the Tewfikieh Canal, a diversion branch intended to carry fresh water between Ismailia and Port Said. In the end, the last was not dug by the company. The first period, from 1870 to 1872, corresponds to the excavation of the western section of the Ismailia Canal, between the swamps of Abascé (or Abbasa) and the village of Gassassine, located about 40 km from Ismailia. The Paponot company worked as a subcontractor of the company of M. Brocard, a Marine Engineer and representative of the Société des Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée (the company from La Seyne-sur-Mer, near Toulon, that built the heavy machinery for excavating the shipping canal), which had signed the contract for the works with the Egyptian Government.
4The period from 1874 to 1877 marked a new phase in the company’s development. In 1874, after the refusal by the Suez Company board of directors to approve the agreement signed by de Lesseps to complete the final section of the Ismailia Canal (with the Paponot company as subcontractor), de Lesseps suggested to the Egyptian Government that it deal directly with Félix Paponot. Paponot made an offer to the Egyptian Ministry for Public Works to dig the canal while “bearing all the costs for design, tracing, staking, and installations generally.”4 In order to win the contract, he established a new company under Egyptian law and settled in Cairo in a house he owned there. After he provided the Egyptian Government with a guarantee deposit, the contract was signed on July 2, 1874 by Hussein Pasha, representing the Public Works division of the Egyptian War Ministry. Drafted in French, this fixed-price contract was the first of its kind to be signed in Egypt.5
Figure 1: Ismailia Canal (1874-1877), Paponot cont.: Plan of facilities and worksites

Source: Paponot family collection
Figure 2: Gassassine Lock (1874-1877), Paponot cont.: Completed, prior to filling

Source: Paponot family collection
5Félix Paponot was able to benefit from experience acquired on the ship canal and to develop new excavation techniques for this major project. He registered several patents, including a freight rail car adapted for earthworks, the selflocking railroad tie pad, and, in 1883, iron sheet piles. The works were completed in record time, no doubt because Paponot had offered his employees a share in the profits from the operation, as he had in 1870-1872 on the Ismailia Canal.6
6After 1877, encouraged by Ferdinand de Lesseps, Félix Paponot began the design of the Tewfikieh Canal, planned to connect Ismailia to Port Said. He analyzed all aspects, both technical and financial. Once the studies were finished, he spent several years waiting for the contract which would allow him to begin works, and, at the request of de Lesseps, keeping his excavation equipment on site. Back in France, he published several studies on the issue of hydraulics in Egypt and on the Panama Canal.7 He was mayor of the town of Cosne from 1884 to 1886. In 1887, when he learned that the Suez Company had decided in 1883 that his company would not be digging the Tewfikieh Canal, he sold the equipment he had been storing on land rented from the Suez Company. Félix Paponot was an officer and member of various engineering and geographical societies and was a Grand Officer of the Khedivial Orders.
Figure 3: Freight cars used for excavation works, invented by Paponot, c. 1874

Source: Paponot family collection
Figure 4: Félix Paponot’s house at Camp Abu Hammad, c. 1870

Source: Paponot family collection
Organization of the Isthmus camps
7In a letter sent to his mother in January 1861, Paponot noted his first impressions, on arriving. He briefly described the Egyptian villages and the first camps: “The Arab towns and villages are built like the road workers’ sheds you see along French roads. [...] My lodgings consist of a wooden chalet, which I have divided into 4 parts with screens. I have made myself quite a nice bedroom, left a room for my site manager, an office and a storage area where I put my food.”8 This correspondence also reveals the difficult living conditions on the site: “The bad weather beginning now will last for two months; there are terrible hurricanes that sweep everything away. A week ago, the storm was so violent that it knocked over all the tents and removed part of the roof of my shack.” But it is the photographs in the two albums and the plans of various facilities that give the most precise information on the organization and architecture of these camps. Two freshwater-canal construction camps, Abu-Hammad and Rhamsès, are documented. They each represent a different type. Abu-Hammad, where Paponot lived between 1870 and 1872, as Brocard’s subcontractor, was a section camp, while Rhamsès was the main Paponot company camp, 18741877, and therefore contained more buildings. They shared only two characteristics: they were temporary, to be torn down when construction was completed, and they were both located on hillocks to protect them from the Nile’s floods. The camps along the freshwater canal were arranged according to the system developed by the Ponts et Chaussées engineers active on the Suez Canal worksite.9
8First, the site was divided into sections. The composition of each section camp was precisely defined by Paponot company regulations: “Each camp includes a five-room building. One room is for the section chief (if he is married, he may claim two, should he wish); a room for the driller or chief foreman; a room for the head supervisor; one room for the dining room; one for the office. Assistant supervisors shall live on the worksites and occupy houses with moveable panels, wherever the section chief thinks it necessary. Each camp will be closed off by an enclosure of reeds to form a store and within the enclosure there will be a shelter for animals.” The supervisory staff (section chief and driller or foreman) were therefore accommodated in a single building. The size of this building depended on the importance of the works being carried out in the section (with or without constructions). It could be a simple edifice with contiguous rooms or a true villa. The section chief’s house at the Gassassine Lock and those of Félix Paponot at Abu-Hammad and Rhamsès were comparable to the mansions erected by the Suez Company to house its executives in the towns along the canal. They were built in masonry and surrounded by a wooden veranda covered with foliage to provide shade.
Figure 5: Félix Paponot’s house at Camp Rhamsès, c. 1875

Source: Paponot family collection
Figure 6: Model of engineer’s house, Paponot cont.: Plan, section, and elevations

Source: Paponot family collection
9The Rhamsès10 camp stood out because it was very well equipped. It stood on a small rise, on land donated to the Paponot company by the Suez Ship Canal Company.11 During the creation of the garden around his villa, the contractor discovered monuments that were vestiges of the town of Tjeku, founded in the 7th century BC when the ancient canal was being dug. Arranged for years around the camp’s main square, the monuments were transported to Ismailia in 1882, “by my own means and in the interests of science” (to quote Paponot).12 The town of Ismailia moved the relics to a plot of land that was Suez Company property. After the contractor died, it was called “Paponot Square.” In the early 1900s, they were exhibited in the former Khedivial palace garden, which took on the name of “garden of the stelae.” One of the sphinxes was placed in front of the museum of Ismailia in 1934.
Figure 7: Camp Rhamsès: Place des Consuls and the antiquities unearthed in grading for the camp, c. 1875

Source: Paponot family collection
10After travelling here and there, the other monuments were reunited with it, in the museum garden.13 Thanks to its proximity to the Ouady Canal, the location had a steady supply of fresh water, and it was also well connected to Cairo and Ismailia by both rail and telegraph line. Even before winning the contract from the government, Paponot had built, at his own expense, “constructions for housing the agent of the Egyptian Postal Service, the railway agent as well as the station for the new stop, and constructions to house my employees and workers.”14 The rail and communications lines were vital to coordinating and supplying the various worksites, as they had been on the Suez Canal. Thus when, “without prior notice, either by letter or circular, the local train ceased to stop at Rhamsès, and even the agent of the station had been sent elsewhere,” jeopardizing the postal service, Paponot quickly made a plea to Ferdinand de Lesseps to intervene directly with the Egyptian Government: “this situation has a consequence that is so serious for the company and the camp that I could be forced: 1. to abandon the camp and 2., even more distressing for me, to claim damages from the government.”15 In addition to the accommodations for the contractor, employees, and workers, the camp contained a canteen, a dispensary, warehouses, and workshops for the maintenance of the worksite machinery. The warehouses were placed along the Ouady Canal and the railway line by which materials were brought to the site.
Figure 8: Camp Rhamsès, Paponot cont.: Freight dock

Source: Paponot family collection
Figure 9: Ismailia Canal (1874-1877), Paponot cont.: The lock upstream from Ismailia during raising works

Source: Paponot family collection
11An Arab village where the Egyptian laborers were housed was located nearby. Paponot had a mosque built there, and its brick minaret dominated the camp. Evidence of his interest in and respect for religious diversity, the mosque undoubtedly also corresponded, as had been the case for camps on the isthmus, to the “well understood interests” of the company. As early as 1861, the Suez Company had noted that “the presence of a mosque is a way of attracting workers to the worksites and also of maintaining order.”16 Furthermore, there was a social life at the camp: oddly enough, the local newspaper in Cosne-sur-Loire, France, reported in 1876 on a fancy Carnival costume ball which had just taken place at Rhamsès!
Figure 10: The company’s staff, with Félix Paponot seated on a chair in the center, c. 1875

Source: Paponot family collection
12At the end of the works in 1877, after the construction workers had left the camps, the installations were used by the Suez Canal Company to isolate the victims of a great malaria epidemic then raging in Ismailia. Upon receiving a request from Ferdinand de Lesseps “to use the buildings of Rhamsès temporarily to accommodate those from Ismailia who are convalescing from fever,”17 Paponot responded immediately, making the structures in the camps of Rhamsès, Gassassine and Nefiche available.18
Figure 11: Camp Rhamsès, Paponot cont.: Employee canteen

Source: Paponot family collection
Figure 12: Camp Rhamsès, Paponot cont.: Warehouses and stores from atop the minaret

Source: Paponot family collection
13Although nothing remains today of the company’s constructions – destroyed by the contractor in preparation for the Tewfikieh Canal works,19 the site at Rhamsès is still occupied by the village of Tell-el-Maskhutah. Since the rediscovery of the ancient site by Félix Paponot, British, French, Canadian and, more recently, Egyptian archeological teams have excavated the site. They have brought major finds to light. Perhaps the memory of the company is fading, but these archeological vestiges attest to the enduring attraction of this marshy Egyptian delta region, an essential location for contacts and commerce with the Middle East.
Notes de bas de page
1 For more on the organization of the worksites, see Nathalie Montel, Le chantier du canal de Suez (1859-1869), Paris: Presses de l’ENPC/In Forma, 1998, p. 80-85.
2 This canal linked a branch of the Nile to the Red Sea. It was probably dug during the 26th Dynasty (7th century BC). Depending on the level of the Nile and the willingness of the dominant power, it functioned to varying degrees until the early 4th century AD.
3 Nathalie Montel, op. cit., p. 53 and Nicolas Michel, “La Compagnie du canal de Suez et l’eau du Nil,” in L’Isthme et l’Égypte au temps de la Compagnie universelle du canal maritime de Suez, 1859-1956, Cairo: IFAO, 2013.
4 Letter from Félix Paponot to Prince Hussein Pasha, Minister for Public Works, 29 April 1874, archives Paponot.
5 Agreement of 2 July 1874 (18 Gawadaweh 1291) between the War Ministry’s Division of Public Works and the Paponot Company, signed by Hussein and Paponot; letter to Charles de Lesseps in 1887, archives Paponot.
6 “Société pour l’étude pratique de la participation du personnel aux bénéfices de l’entreprise,” Bulletin de la participation aux bénéfices, t. 9, n° 9, 1887, p. 173.
7 Élargissement du canal de Suez, Cosne-sur-Loire: Imp. Bourra, 1883; L’Égypte, son avenir agricole et financier, Paris: Baudry, 1884; Sur la mer intérieure d’Afrique, Cosne-sur-Loire: Imp. Bourra, 1886; Achèvement du canal de Panama. Étude technique et financière, Paris: Baudry, 1888; Suez et Panama, une solution, Paris: Baudry, 1889; Doit-on reprendre les travaux avec des capitaux privés, Paris: Baudry, 1889.
8 Letter from Paponot to his mother, 8 January 1861, archives Paponot.
9 Nathalie Montel, op. cit., p. 18.
10 The site of Ramses (Rhamsès in Paponot’s archives) is cited in the Bible (Exodus, 1:11) as one of the warehouses built by the Hebrews. It is commonly placed at Tell el-Maskhutah where the triad of Ramses II was discovered by the scholars of Bonaparte’s expedition.
11 Agreement between de Lesseps and Paponot dated 25 February 1874, archives Paponot.
12 Félix Paponot, L’Égypte, son avenir agricole et financier, op. cit., p. 217 and photograph, archives Paponot.
13 With the exception of the naos of Ramses II, which has been on view in the garden of the Cairo museum since 1968.
14 Letter from Félix Paponot to the Prince Hussein Pasha, Minister for Public Works, 29 April 1874, archives Paponot.
15 Letter from Félix Paponot to Ferdinand de Lesseps, Rhamsès, 23 January 1877, archives Paponot.
16 Nathalie Montel, op. cit., p. 221.
17 Letter from Ferdinand de Lesseps to Félix Paponot, Paris, 19 November 1877, archives Paponot.
18 Thank you letter from Ferdinand de Lesseps to Félix Paponot, Paris, 21 November 1877, archives Paponot.
19 Letter to Charles de Lesseps, 1887, archives Paponot.
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