Our copper engraving, hand-colored to spectacular effect, portrays the Aigle Criad (Spotted Eagle) and is an original first plate of the Description's volume on birds, engraved by Jules-César Savigny. Savigny in fact engraved most of the plates in the work's zoology sections. The eagle is represented life size and the sheet bears the dry stamp of the Egyptian Institute.

It is inscribed "H.N./Zoologie/Oiseaux/par J.C. Savigny."

La Description de l'Egypte
(French, 1809)

In 1798, Napoleon invaded Egypt, with the stated aim of freeing the Egyptians from their Ottoman oppressors. His true end was to make Egypt a French colony, then a province of the Republic, and to record for posterity the antiquities, flora, fauna and present social conditions in Egypt. The campaign was an abject failure, with Horatio Nelson destroying the 200 ships which had conveyed the 54,000-strong French army and expeditionary force. Napoleon promptly abandoned his army, returning home to defend his country against the Coalition and to have himself crowned Emperor.

Though a military failure, the expedition led to the birth of the science of Egyptology. The cultural and scientific elite of France accompanied the expeditionary force: 167 scholars including 21 mathematicians, 3 astronomers, 17 civil engineers, 13 naturalists and mining engineers, 4 architects, 8 draftsmen, 10 men of letters, and 22 printers. They gathered information sufficient to produce what was the largest publication in the world at that time. A Commission of Science and Art and an Egyptian Institute were founded, the latter under Baron Vivant Denon, later Director of the Louvre. Under their aegis, virtually all of Egypt's patrimony was systematically catalogued, mapped and meticulously drawn, from the obelisks to the vast statues on the banks of the Nile, as well as the country's flora and fauna.

In 1802, Napoleon ordered the Imperial Press to begin publication of the visual record set down by the Egyptian expedition. Initially, the work was published in installments between 1809 and 1829. 400 copper engravers worked some twenty years on the Description. The resulting monumental work comprises ten folio volumes with 837 copper engravings and 3000 illustrations edited by the best minds in France.

A copy of the complete edition of the Description de l'Egypte, published in 1997 by Benedikt Taschen GmbH, Cologne, will accompany this work.

For a complete recounting and historical context of the work's production, see Egyptomania: The Egyptian Revival: A Recurring Theme in the History of Taste, © 1994, James Stevens Curl, Manchester University Press Publishers.