The Monuments of Ancient Egypt: As Commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte

In 1801 the army of Napoleon invaded Egypt. In the course of his conquest, he commissioned a team of architectural engineers to conduct a survey of the monuments and artifacts discovered there. The result was to significantly change the way scholars and scientists viewed the world and give rise to the study of Egyptology. All of their meticulously drawn plates pertaining to Egyptian antiquities have been reproduced in this extraordinary volume. Temples, monuments, hieroglyphs and plans of sites have been rendered with remarkable detail. It was on this expedition that the Rosetta Stone, which turned out to be the key to decoding hieroglyphics, was discovered. An introduction by the Princeton professor, Charles Coulston Gillipsie provides context and background to more than 480 pages of plates.