JOMARD Edme François Voyage à l’oasis de Syouah. D’après les matériaux recueillis par M. le chevalier Drovetti, consul général de France en Égypte, et par M. Frédéric Cailliaud, pendant leurs voyages dans cette oasis, en 1819 et en 1820.

Gay, 2515 (under Cailliaud) ; Quérard, IV, 240 (under Jomard) ; Blackmer, 270 (note); not in Atabey.

First edition of this rare work given by Edme François Jomard.

The young engineer and geographer Edme François Jomard, a student in the first graduating class of the École polytechnique, had taken part in the Egyptian expedition, alongside his teachers Monge and Berthollet. A member of the Commission of Sciences and Arts, then of the Institut d’Égypte, he notably mapped the Fayoum oasis and Upper Egypt and established the topography of the city of Cairo. He was one of the last ‘scholars’ to return to France and was appointed a member of the Commission responsible for publishing the work of the expedition, La Description de l’Égypte. From 1807, he became its president and devoted twenty-five years of his life to this considerable task.

This task completed in 1830, he was appointed curator of the Geography and Maps department of the Royal Library, then the National Library, then the Imperial Library (under fifteen successive Ministers of the Interior until his death in 1862). But he had many other activities. Noting that Napoleon had neglected primary education, he introduced the ‘mutual method’ of learning to read in France; surfing on the wave of egyptomania, he devoted himself to the development of Egyptology, which he turned into a true science. Jomard took charge of the young people whom Méhemet-Ali sent to study in France to become the leaders of the Egypt of the future. A geographer and ethnographer, he was one of the founders of the still active Société de Géographie.-

At the age of 85, he still has the joy of seeing a dream of his youth come true: Lesseps launches the drilling of the Suez isthmus and Jomard is elected honorary president of the Suez Canal Company.

The explorer Frédéric Caillaud (1787-1869) took part in two expeditions to Egypt, the first of which took place between 1815 and 1819, and the next between 1819 and 1822. Appointed official mineralogist to Mehmet Ali in 1816, the latter commissioned him to explore the deserts East and West of the Nile. He then travelled through Upper Egypt with Bernardino Drovetti (1776-1852), penetrated Nubia, and explored the monuments located towards the last cataracts of the Nile. He crossed a large part of the desert to reach the great Oasis and the city of Thebes where he stayed for nine months before returning to France in 1819.

Returning to Egypt in September 1819, Caillaud travelled from Fayun westwards to Siwa, where he carried out important research that formed the basis for the scientific discovery and exploration of the Siwa Oasis. In 1820, Bernardino Drovetti arrived in Siwa with Mehmed Ali’s expedition. Accompanied by two draughtsmen and protected by Egyptian troops, Drovetti was able to explore the oasis and have plans and views drawn. In this way, he managed to complete the image that Caillaud had given of Siwa earlier. The two explorers then sent their reports, which Jomard had published subsequently.

The beautiful atlas opens with a large steel engraved map with details of the oasis area, followed by finely lithographed views and detailed plans of monuments and antiquities. The Voyage à l’oasis de Syouah is the only source known today giving details of the research carried out by Drovetti.

Scattered foxing, else fine.