DESCRIPTION DE L'GYPTE
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DESCRIPTION DE L'GYPTE
The Description de L'gypte is a work remembered by the first three words in a very long title. It is also one of the seminal works of nineteenth century Europe. It was produced in twenty-one volumes over a period of twenty-five years by savants from Napoleon's failed expedition in Egypt. In the spring of 1798, Napoleon, then a twenty-nine year old junior general, embarked from Toulon in southern France with a fleet of four hundred ships carrying two armies. One army was of 35,000 soldiers and was meant to conquer Egypt as an opening gamut in Napoleon's dream of taking imperial control of the Near East. The second army was of one hundred and seventy five savants whose job would be to study the ancient culture and its current customs to determine how best to rule it. Consciously following in the steps of Alexander the Great, Napoleon began his conquest with Alexandria. Unkown to him, however, was the presence of Rear Admiral Horatio Nelson, fresh from his victory at St. Vincent, with a squadron of British warships. Nelson knew of the build-up and loading of the fleet in Toulon, but not where it was going. He guessed Egypt. Through a series of unlikely occurrences, however, the swift British ships arrived at Alexandria the day before Napoleon and, finding no enemy there, sailed immediately for the northeast, Nelson then assuming Napoleon's goal was Constantinople. The French landed unopposed at Alexandria and, in the Battle of the Pyramids, their disciplined soldiers and well-manned cannons decimated the forces of the pashas who then ruled Egypt as a province of the decaying Ottoman Empire. Within the month, however, Nelson returned and in the Battle of the Nile decimated the French fleet as it lay at anchor.
Napoleon was stranded; his eastern dream destroyed. Within a year, alone, he fled back to France. The remnants of his army went home under agreement with the British and the savants were treated as civilians and repatriated. They took with them their notes, drawings, and plaster castings of ancient relics, but all the artifacts they had stored on the loading docks of Alexandria for shipment to Paris went rather to London where they amazed the already imperial-minded British. The savants, no longer burdened with the need to administer a colony, turned their attention, under the tutelage of Napoleon, first as First Consul, then as emperor to producing their masterpiece. By the time they finished, Napoleon had left the scene, leaving the Description de l'gypte, like the Arc de Triomphe or history to evaluate.
We have the opportunity to do that. Of the twenty-one volumes, twelve are prints showing all the wonders and strange things that thrilled Europe with its first real look at a truly ancient civilization, and, incidentally, instigated the science of archeology. Prints Old and Rare is pleased to offer a selection from these wonderful and wonder-filled volumes!