Description de l'Égypte

A first edition, imperial edition of Description de l'Égypte.

• Sold as a set of 23 volumes.
• Description de l'Égypte, ou Recueil des observations et des recherches qui ont été faites en Égypte pendant l'expédition de l'armée françaisee, publié par les ordres de Sa Majesté Napoléon.
• Paris: de l'Impr. Impériale ... [Royale], 1809-[1829].
• With plates, portraits and tables within the text (collated complete as per Monglond).
• Includes 894 engraved plates.
• Bound in mid-nineteenth century red morocco-backed marbled paper boards, bound by Bielicke, spines gilt (text) and contemporary blue paper boards with red morocco lettering pieces (atlases), bookseller label on front pastedown (Tessier).

An extraordinary monument to both Egyptology and the history of printing, the first edition of the Description de l'Egypte took over twenty years to complete. The first scientific survey of Egypt and the largest printed work to its date, the Description is often credited with the very founding Egyptology. "The Egyptologists of the 19th century owed their knowledge of ancient Egypt to the efforts of the engineers who described the monuments of antiquity, and it was in the plates of the Description that these were revealed" (Blackmer).

The 1798-1801 Napoleonic campaign against the Ottoman empire in Egypt and Syria was largely undertaken to protect and advance French commercial interests in the Levant and to thwart English efforts. In keeping with the principles of the Enlightenment, accompanying Napoleon's invading force were over 150 scientists and scholars sent to document all known aspects of ancient and modern Egypt, including its antiquities, natural history, geography, peoples, etc. The findings of these "savants" were compiled into what became the ambitious Description de l'Egypte, with hundreds of artists and engravers tasked with producing the work's nearly 900 engraved plates. Sections of the work appeared as they were completed between 1809 and 1829; a second edition would be produced by the publisher Pancoucke between 1821 and 1830.

The present first edition is in a desirable format, with the large "double plates" here unfolded en plano in three elephant folio atlases.

Camille Seguin (booklabel on the atlas volumes). Atabey 343; Blackmer 476; Brunet II: 616-617; Gay 1999; Graesse II: 365; Monglond VIII, 268-343; Nissen BBI 2234; Nissen ZBI 4608.