Description de l'Égypte
The Description de l'Égypte ("Description of Egypt") was a series of publications, appearing first in 1809 and continuing until the final volume appeared in 1829, which aimed to comprehensively catalog all known aspects of ancient and modern Egypt as well as its natural history. It is the collaborative work of about 160 civilian scholars and scientists, known popularly as the savants, who accompanied Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt in 1798 to 1801 as part of the French Revolutionary Wars, as well as about 2000 artists and technicians, including 400 engravers, who would later compile it into a full work. At the time of its publication, it was the largest known published work in the world.[1]
For other uses, see Description de l'Égypte (disambiguation).Author
Description de l'Égypte
French
French government
1809–22
France
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.[2][3] In Edward Said's Orientalism, Said refers to the "enormous" series critically as "that great collective appropriation of one country by another".[4]
False reports on destruction of the originals[edit]
It was incorrectly reported that the original manuscript of the Description de l'Égypte was destroyed in a fire at the Institut d'Égypte (Egyptian Scientific Institute) on December 17, 2011, during clashes between protestors and the military.[11][12] In fact, the burnt building's collection had contained a set of the 23-volume first print edition, which was saved without irreparable damage.[13] Furthermore, according to a statement by the country's minister of culture, at least two more complete sets of the same original edition remained in Egypt.[14] The majority of the original manuscript material for the Description resides in Paris' National Archives and National Library.