Baron Empain

Édouard Louis Joseph Empain, Baron Empain (20 September 1852 - 22 July 1929) was a wealthy Belgian engineer, entrepreneur, financier and industrialist, as well as an amateur Egyptologist.

He was born at Beloeil, Belgium, and was the son of schoolteacher François Julien Empain and his wife Catherine (née Solivier). He went into business with his brother, Baron François Empain and other family members, and amassed a great fortune.

Empain began his career a draughtsman at a metallurgical company, Société métallurgique, in 1878, and became involved in railway construction when he noticed that transport infrastructure in the countryside was inadequate. After success in Belgium with the Liege-Jemeppe line, his companies developed several railway lines in France, including the creation of the Paris Métro.

Because he felt that he depended too much on the banks for his industrial plans, in 1881 he founded his own bank, Banque Empain, which later became the Belgian Industrial Bank ("Banque Industrielle Belge"). The Empain group of companies expanded greatly throughout the 1890s, constructing electric urban tramlines in Europe, Russia, China, the Belgian Congo, and in Cairo, Egypt. Desiring to also be independent of electricity producers, Empain also was involved in forming a number of electricity companies to power his projects.

Édouard Empain arrived in Egypt in January 1904, intending to rescue one of the projects of his company S.A. des Chemins de Fer de la Basse-Egypte; being the construction of a railway line linking Mansourah (on the Nile river) to Matariya (on the far side of Lake Menzaleh from Port Said). Despite losing the railway contract to the British, Empain stayed on in Egypt; a decision due to his love of the desert and his relationship with Yvette Boghdadli.

In 1906, Empain established the Heliopolis Oasis Company, which bought a very large stretch of desert (25 square kilometres) to the northwest of Cairo at a low price from the colonial government.

Commencing in 1906-07 this company proceeded with the building of the new town of Heliopolis, in the desert ten kilometers from the center of Cairo. It was designed as a "city of luxury and leisure", with broad avenues and equipped with all necessary conveniences and infrastructure; water, drains, electricity, hotel facilities, such as the Heliopolis Palace Hotel (now the presidential palace of Hosni Mubarak) and Heliopolis House, and recreational amenities including a golf course, racetrack and park. In addition, there was housing for rent, offered in a range of innovative design types targeting specific social classes with detached and terraced villas, apartment buildings, tenement blocks with balcony access and workers' bungalows.

Today, Baron Empain is perhaps best known by modern visitors to Egypt for the building of a palace (the Palais Hindou) in the Avenue des Palais (renamed Orouba Avenue in the Nasser era) Heliopolis, Egypt. Inspired by Angkor Wat in Cambodia and the Hindu temples of Orissa,[citation needed] it was designed by French architect Alexandre Marcel (1860-1928) and decorated by Georges-Louis Claude (1879-1963), with construction being completed in 1911.

In 1905, Empain assisted the Belgian government in the purchase of an Old Kingdom mastaba for the royal museum in Brussels, of which he was a benefactor. In 1907 he received the title of Baron, and also suggested to Belgian Egyptologist Jean Capart that he excavate at Heliopolis, where his building constructions were underway. He also made it possible for Capart to acquire some fine ancient artefacts for the Brussels Museum.

During World War I he was given the rank of general and directed armaments production at Paris and Le Havre for the Belgian army.

He died at Woluwe, Belgium, and was buried under the basilic of Notre-Dame d'Héliopolis