DESCRIPTION DE L'EGYPTE. Thèbes. Memnomium. Détails des chapiteaux de la salle hypostyle, d'un pilier-caryatide et de l'entablement du péristyle du tombeau d'Osymandyas. (ANTIQUITES, volume II, planche 30)

Original etching in plano, untrimmed, from the so-called "Imperial" edition of the Description de l'Égypte ou Recueil des observations et recherches faites en Égypte pendant l'expédition française, publié par les ordres de Sa Majesté l'Empereur Napoléon le Grand.
Produced between February 1802 and 1829 by order of Napoleon Bonaparte and published from 1809 [actually 1810], it was printed in 1000 copies on laid watermarked paper "Égypte ancienne et moderne" and offered to institutions.
Light marginal foxing without any damage to the engraving, otherwise very fine condition and preservation.
MEMNONIUM DE THEBES:
The Memnonium, a name used by visitors to the Valley of the Kings from 1750 to 1850, designates a complex of three royal constructions from the New Kingdom: the Ramesseum, the temple of Amenhotep III and the temple of Seti I. The draughtsmen and architects of the Institute created by Bonaparte, sent on expedition through Upper Egypt from 1799, documented Thebes and its Valley of the Kings, and even attempted reconstructions based on descriptions of monuments made by ancient authors. The tomb of Ozymandias (one of the many names for Ramses II), greatly ruined, was thus the subject of a very complete study and an attempt to restore its missing parts thanks to the writings of Diodorus Siculus. This Greek historian of the Augustan period stayed in the Nile valley between 60 and 57 BCE, and his visit to the tomb of Ramses II is related in his monumental Bibliotheca Historica (Book I, XLVII-XLIX).
Simultaneously, the scholars made extremely detailed surveys and views of the so-called "Colossi of Memnon," the only remains of the immense memorial temple of Amenhotep III built on the road leading to the necropolis of the Valley of the Kings. They were placed at the entrance of the temple, in front of a first pylon built of bricks. These two statues represent King Amenhotep III, flanked on the right by the great royal wife Tiye and on the left by the queen mother Mutemwia.


Volume ANTIQUITES, II:
These engravings provided Jean-François Champollion with fundamental epigraphic documentation for deciphering hieroglyphs and inspired a lineage of archaeologists like Mariette, Maspero and Carter who gave a new face to ancient Egypt. They aroused such enthusiasm that they gave birth to the phenomenon of Egyptomania and to the orientalism of Delacroix, Fromentin, Marilhat, Decamps but also Théophile Gautier... Financiers, politicians, merchants, and diggers of all kinds would rush to the banks of the Nile in search of good deals following this rediscovery of Egypt. At the origin of Egyptology, these plates would have an immense posterity.

THE DESCRIPTION DE L'EGYPTE, IMPERIAL edition (1809-1829):
La Description de l'Egypte is one of the masterpieces of French publishing and the starting point of a new science: Egyptology. A titanic exposition of Egypt at the time of Bonaparte's conquests between 1798 and 1799, it is distributed in 23 volumes including 13 volumes of engravings gathering nearly 1000 plates in black and 72 in color. The 6 volumes of plates entitled Antiquités are devoted to the splendors of pharaonic Egypt. L'Histoire naturelle is distributed in 3 volumes of engravings. One volume is devoted to Cartes géographiques et topographiques while the 3 volumes : Etat Moderne present a striking portrait of Coptic and Islamic Egypt as it was seen by Bonaparte's armies of the Orient.

The "Egyptian campaign," a military disaster, revealed through the engravings of the Description de l'Egypte the scientific success it became, thanks to some 167 scholars members of the Commission of Sciences and Arts of the Institute of Egypt who followed Napoleon's army. The Institute brought together in Egypt the mathematician Monge, the chemist Berthollet, the naturalist Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, as well as numerous artists, engineers, architects, doctors... They were charged with rediscovering modern and ancient Egypt, showing its natural riches, and the know-how of its inhabitants.

The first edition, called "Imperial," of the Description de l'Egypte was produced in four large formats, two of them specially created for it and named "Moyen-Egypte" and "Grand-Egypte" formats. A specific press was built for its printing, which stretched over twenty years, between 1809 and 1829. The Imperial edition proved so popular that a second edition in 37 volumes entirely in black and without the watermark "Egypte ancienne et moderne," called the "Panckoucke" edition, was published from 1821 by the C.-L.-F. Panckoucke printing house (Paris).
The realization of this monument of erudition owes much to Baron Dominique Vivant Denon, illustrator, diplomat, collector and subsequently director of the Napoleon Museum at the Louvre who accompanied Napoleon to Egypt with numerous other scholars but decided alone to venture into the South of the country, while the other invited scientists remained confined in the Cairo region. The fabulous sketches brought back by Denon during his romantic ride gave Bonaparte the idea to send the other members of the Institute there and thus draw a faithful and complete portrait of the territory. Following Denon, it was thus the greatest French scientists and artists who ventured along the Nile to Nubia. Among them, the painter at the natural history museum H.J. Redouté (brother of Pierre-Joseph Redouté, author of Roses), the mineralogist Dolomieu, the draughtsman Joly, and the engineers Fourier and Costaz, charged with the scientific study of the ancient vestiges of Upper Egypt.
Probably for the first time brought together in such an expedition, the French scientific and artistic elite, composed of more than 160 "scholars" including nearly 50 artists, methodically studied Egypt for three years. They then realized, under the aegis and glory of Napoleon, the most vast historical, geographical, scientific, economic and ethnological analysis ever realized on a country. But it is perhaps the engravings that constituted the major technical challenge of this Description de l'Egypte, as testified by Yves Laissus, curator of the exhibition organized in 2009 by the RMN and the Army Museum at the Invalides:
"The illustration, 836 plates including about sixty in color, engraved with etching and burin in formats hitherto unused (the largest covers nearly one square meter), necessitated the construction of new forms and vats for paper manufacturing, justified the invention, by Nicolas Conté, of a machine intended to lighten the burden of the engravers, and required the realization of new presses capable of printing these immense images. Some of them required two years of work. Nearly 200 engravers reproduced on copper the works of 62 draughtsmen of whom 46 participated in the expedition."
Rare and superb original engraving of exceptional craftsmanship and graphic quality, testimony to one of the most ambitious French editorial adventures.