DESCRIPTION DE L'EGYPTE. Environs d'Esné (Latopolis). Zodiaque sculpté au plafond du temple au nord d'Esné. (ANTIQUITES, volume I, planche 87)

Original etching in plano, uncut, 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 watermarked laid paper "Égypte ancienne et moderne" and offered to institutions.
Minor marginal worming not affecting the engraving, otherwise excellent freshness and condition.
ESNA AND ITS SURROUNDINGS:
The city of Esna (Esneh or Latopolis in Bonaparte's time), is located fifty kilometers south of Luxor. The scholars of the Institute document their discovery of its temple, dedicated to Khnum, the creator god potter with a ram's head, responsible for the life-giving floods of the Nile bringing fertility. He is associated with Nebout, mistress of the Countryside, and Menhyt, a goddess with a lion's head. This temple, partially reconstructed in the Ptolemaic period, was embellished until the reign of Tiberius. The draftsmen also created numerous views of neighboring temples, notably the smaller temple of Contra-Latopolis, north of Esna.


Volume ANTIQUITES, I:
These engravings provided Jean-François Champollion with fundamental epigraphic documentation for deciphering hieroglyphs and inspired a line 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 the orientalism of Delacroix, Fromentin, Marilhat, Decamps but also Théophile Gautier... Financiers, politicians, merchants, and diggers of all kinds flocked to the banks of the Nile in search of good deals following this rediscovery of Egypt. At the origin of Egyptology, these plates would enjoy 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 divided into 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 paint 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, reveals 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 "Égypte 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 of 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 therefore the greatest French scientists and artists who ventured along the Nile as far as 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 draftsman 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 carried out, under the aegis and to the glory of Napoleon, the most vast historical, geographical, scientific, economic and ethnological analysis ever conducted 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, etched and engraved 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 designed to lighten the burden of engravers, and required the creation 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 draftsmen 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.