|
|
English edition
Jan
2004
127 pp.
Hardbound
26X36 cm
$29.95
LE 150.00
ISBN
978 977 424 797 2
For sale only in the Middle East
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Description de l’Egypte
Napoleon’s Expedition and the Rediscovery of Ancient Egypt
|
E-mail to a friend
Print
|
Franco Serino
The story of the first systematic study of Egypt’s ancient monuments
In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte launched an ambitious expedition of 35,000 troops to conquer Egypt. His ships also carried 167 of France’s leading scholars: mathematicians, astronomers, naturalists, engineers, architects, draftsmen, and men of letters. Their task was to study the country in all its aspects, and their combined efforts culminated in one of the most ambitiously comprehensive works ever published: the Description de l’Egypte with its ten volumes of illustrations, including 837 copperplate engravings and more than 3,000 drawings. Written by a group of about fifty scholars, the work involved almost two thousand people and took approximately twenty years to complete. A special, larger press was built for the project, new printing methods were developed for the color plates, and special paper was utilized, particularly for the engravings. A selection of these illustrations is reproduced here, with their accompanying explanatory captions, offering a fascinating and detailed record of the monuments, painting, and sculpture—some now lost to the ravages of time—of the ancient land of the Nile. Through the concise text and magnificent illustrations in this book, readers can accompany the young scholars down the Nile and rediscover the beauty and majesty of ancient Egypt for themselves.
A former lecturer in foreign literature and languages, FRANCO SERINO is the author of Egypt and its Rediscovery in the Nineteenth Century (1987), Egypt over the Centuries (1992), and Ippolito Rosellini's Monuments of Egypt and Nubia (AUC Press, 2003).
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
