Voyage dans le Haouran et aux bords de la mer Morte, exécuté pendant les années 1857 et 1858

Paris, Arthus Bertrand, undated [1861]. One text volume and an atlas.

Very rare first edition of Voyage dans le Haouran et aux bords de la mer Morte, exécuté pendant les années 1857 et 1858.

The text volume, largely unopened, is illustrated with one plate. The atlas, preserved in a full red cloth box and slipcase, is complete with 27 plates, numbered I to XXVI with an additional plate XVIII bis, plates XIX and XX being printed on a single sheet. It comprises lithographs, some tinted, together with maps, topographical plans and epigraphical records. The table calls for only 26 plates, a bibliographical peculiarity explained by the numbering of the series. The work was originally issued in six parts.

A copy of the first issue, without the two maps subsequently added by the publisher to copies intended for readers who had not purchased the atlas. These reproduce plates XVIII and XXIV of the atlas. Hage Chahine, 3995; Röhricht, pp. 480-481; Chadenat, 1712.

A very fine copy as issued, preserved in its original state.

Emmanuel Guillaume Rey was barely twenty years old when he undertook this first archaeological expedition to the Levant in 1857. The Hauran, south of Damascus, then lay outside the principal routes followed by European travellers. Rey explored its ancient cities, villages and volcanic plains before continuing towards Jerash, the shores of the Dead Sea and Masada.

The journey is distinguished not only by the extent of the territory covered, but by the means Rey employed to record it. Alongside his notes, measurements, plans and copies of inscriptions, he used photography, still a cumbersome and difficult process far from established studios. The paper negatives produced during the expedition preserved the appearance of monuments, several of which were subsequently altered or destroyed.

The Getty Research Institute now holds fourteen calotype negatives and seven salt prints from this journey, recording the sites of Al-Masmiyah, Qanawat, Atil, Bosra and Jerash. The institution describes these images as among the earliest photographs of ancient sites in Syria and Jordan, and as the first known photographs taken in eastern Syria by an archaeologist.

The atlas gave this photographic survey its published form. Eugène Ciceri, a painter and lithographer trained within his family circle and by Eugène Isabey, translated a substantial part of Rey's visual record onto stone. At least nine photographs now preserved can be directly connected with lithographs in the Voyage. The process did more than reproduce ruins: it transformed the photographic document into a legible image, isolating architectural masses, clarifying relief and presenting the monuments on the scale of a large atlas.

The plates include the so-called Phoenician colossus and a monument in the Beqaa, houses of the Hauran, the temple at Al-Masmiyah, the baths at Chobba, the church and serai at Qanawat, and the temples at Atil. Bosra is represented by a panorama, its theatre, castle and Mosque of Omar el-Katab. These are followed by Jerash, with its plan, hemicycle and great temple, and by views of the Dead Sea and Masada. The pictorial plates are accompanied by a map of the Hauran, a survey of the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, plans of Qanawat, Bosra, Jerash and Masada, and records of inscriptions found at Bosra.

The sequence reveals the method of the young traveller. The panorama places the monument within its landscape; the plan establishes its proportions; the photograph preserves its appearance; the epigraphical record investigates its history. The atlas is consequently far more than a picturesque supplement to the narrative. It forms an independent survey in which the image becomes an instrument of measurement and demonstration.

This first mission anticipated Rey's subsequent career. Later expeditions led him to study biblical topography and the Frankish fortifications of Syria and Cyprus. His Étude sur les monuments de l'architecture militaire des croisés, published in 1871, established his reputation and helped lay the foundations for the archaeological study of the Latin castles of the Levant. The French Ministry of Culture now identifies him as one of the pioneers in the study of Krak des Chevaliers.

The foundations of that career are already present in the Voyage dans le Haouran. At twenty, Rey did not merely visit the ruins: he measured and photographed them, placed them on maps and compared them with their surviving inscriptions. His camera was not employed solely in search of the Oriental picturesque. It had become the instrument of an archaeology then defining its methods.

A very rare copy of the first issue, complete with its atlas of 27 plates and preserved as issued. In this youthful work, Rey's photographs, translated into lithography by Ciceri, carried the monuments of the Hauran and the Dead Sea from the traveller's immediate experience into the enduring record of archaeology.