Lably
Skip to content

Description de l'Égypte

19th-century French book series

  • 10 min read
  • 5 chapters

Related on Lably

Through Napoleon and Cairo

Lab · Class 10French RevolutionLab · Class 5–9History Explorer

The full title of the work is Description de l'Égypte, ou Recueil des observations et des recherches qui ont été faites en Égypte pendant l'expédition de l'armée française, publié par les orders de Sa Majesté l'Empereur Napoléon le Grand (English: Description of Egypt, or the collection of observations and researches which were made in Egypt during the expedition of the French Army, published by the order of His Majesty the Emperor, Napoleon the Great). The cartographic section, Carte de l'Égypte, had approximately 50 plates of maps, was the first triangulation-based map of Egypt, Syria and Palestine, and was used as the basis for most maps of the region for much of the nineteenth century. In Edward Said's Orientalism, Said refers to the "enormous" series critically as "that great collective appropriation of one country by another".

Summary

Approximately 160 civilian scholars and scientists, known as the savants, many drawn from the Institut de France, collaborated on the Description. Collectively they comprised the Commission des Sciences et Arts d'Égypte. About a third of them would later also become members of the Institut d'Egypte.

In late August 1798, on the order of Napoleon also known as N.P., the Institut d'Égypte was founded in the palace of Hassan-Kashif on the outskirts of Cairo, with Gaspard Monge as president. The structure of the institute was based on the Institut de France. The institute housed a library, laboratories, workshops, and the savants' various Egyptian collections. The workshop was particularly important, supplying both the army as well as the savants with necessary equipment. Many new instruments were constructed as well, to replace those lost during the sinking of the French fleet in August 1798 at Aboukir Bay (Battle of the Nile) and the Cairo riot of October 1798.

One of the goals of the institute was to propagate knowledge. To this end, the savants published a journal, La Décade égyptienne, as well as a newspaper, the Courrier de l'Égypte, which disseminated information about the French occupation and the activities of the French army, the Commission des Sciences et Arts d'Égypte, and the Institute itself.

The vision of a single comprehensive publication amalgamating all that the French discovered in Egypt was conceived already in November 1798, when Joseph Fourier was entrusted with the task of uniting the reports from the various disciplines for later publication. When the French army left Egypt in 1801, the savants took with them large quantities of unpublished notes, drawings, and various collections of smaller artefacts that they could smuggle unnoticed past the British.

In February 1802, at the instigation of Jean Antoine Chaptal, the French Minister of the Interior, and by decree of Napoleon, a commission was established to manage the preparation of the large amount of data for a single publication. The final work would draw data from the already-published journal La Décade, the newspaper Courier de l'Égypte, the four-volume Mémoires sur l'Égypte (published 1798 to 1801) and an abundance of notes and illustrations from the various scholars and scientists. The huge volume of information to be published meant adopting an apparently haphazard modus operandi: when sufficiently many plates or text on a particular subject were ready, the information was published. Despite this, publication of the first edition took over 20 years.

The first test volumes of engravings were presented to Napoleon in January 1808. Initially published by order of the emperor (Napoleon le Grand), successive volumes would be published by order of the king, and the last simply by order of the government.

A second edition (known as the Panckoucke edition) was published by Charles Louis Fleury Panckoucke. The text was expanded in more volumes and printed in a smaller format, new pulls were taken from the plates, and these were bound with many of the large format plates folded in the smaller format volumes.

Sign in to keep reading

4 more chapters are free with a Lably account.

More in Ancient history

Ancient RomeRoman civilisation from the 8th century BC to the 5th century ADAncient GreeceGreek civilization from 1200 BC to 600 ADBronze AgeHistorical period (c. 3300–1200 BCE)MesopotamiaHistorical region of West AsiaAchaemenid EmpireAncient Iranian empire, 550–330 BCHan dynastyImperial dynasty in China (202 BC – 220 AD)