Redirecting to elgg page in subdirectory?

Ok this is probably a stupid newbie question, but I can't get the redirection from the main page to the subdirectory that I have installed Elgg 1.8.18 in to work.

Wenn I set up a simple redirect via cPanel or with the /public_html/ .htaccess file ("RewriteRule ^$ /Elgg/ [R=301,L]") all I get is in Firefox:

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The page isn't redirecting properly

Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.

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The Elgg site itself is working fine, and other redirects to it (e.g. from another subdirectory) are also working fine, but not from the main domain.

Out host (Hostgator) does not allow to change the /public_html/ folder as the base root directly (I gather from their documents that this option would otherwise exist), so it needs to be some sort of redirect.

Thanks for the help.