DESCRIPTION DE L'EGYPTE. Alexandrie. Plan et coupe d'un stade situé au sud-ouest de la Colonne dite de Pompée, Vue intérieure d'une ancienne basilique, vulgairement nommée Mosquée de St Athanase. (ANTIQUITES, volume V, planche 39)

Original, unshaved, full-page etching from the “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. Printed on laid paper bearing the “Égypte ancienne et moderne” watermark, visible against the light. Light marginal spotting not affecting the image, otherwise in very fresh condition.

The Description de l’Égypte, one of the masterpieces of French printing, marks the birth of Egyptology. It gathers the work of the 167 members of the Commission of Sciences and Arts who followed Bonaparte’s army in 1798 and 1799, among them Monge, Berthollet and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, alongside artists, engineers, architects and doctors. Its plates depict the monuments of Pharaonic Egypt, its natural history, and Coptic and Islamic Egypt as the expedition found it. The Imperial edition, printed in 1,000 copies chiefly intended for institutions, required two new paper formats, “Moyen-Égypte” and “Grand-Égypte”, and a press built for the purpose. Its printing extended over some twenty years. A second edition without the watermark, known as the “Royal edition”, was issued under the Restoration by C.-L.-F. Panckoucke. The plates owe much to Dominique-Vivant Denon, later director of the Musée Napoléon. At 51, the only civilian with the troops pursuing the Mamluks into Upper Egypt, he sketched the monuments along his route as far as the threshold of the Sudan. His accounts led Bonaparte to send two commissions, led by Fourier and Costaz, to study the antiquities of Upper Egypt. Their findings became a major contribution to the Description.