Fig. 1. Representation de la Pierre a laquelle selon la tradition eto it...; fig. 2. Vue de la Ville d’Esnay, dans l’Egypte Superieure. Plate CXXI, from ‘Voyage d’Egypte et de Nubie’, 1755.
Copenhagen: L’Imprimerie de la Maison Royale des Orphelins, 1755. Engraving. 28 x 45 cm (sheet). Good, light foxing, staining along sheet edges, small binding holes along sheet edge.
Norden’s splendid record of the 1737-38 Danish expedition up the Nile from
Cairo to Aswan. The plates show the pyramids, ancient monuments and temples
(including the first depiction of the Nubian Temple of Derr), obelisks, and
hieroglyphics, as well as scenes of contemporary life in Cairo and along the
ancient river…
The engravings are today a valuable source of information on the state of the
antiquities in the eighteenth century, due to Norden’s eye for detail and devotion
to realism. For example, Norden was the first artist to portray the Great Sphinx of
Giza as lacking its nose; prior artists, perhaps wishing to show the face as it
might have appeared in ancient times, reworked the enormous face imaginatively
by attaching an imperious Roman feature. As indicated by the text, Norden
(1708-1742) was dispatched by Danish King Christian VI in 1737 to undertake an
expedition that had “the design of enriching the learned world.”…… The
expedition arrived at the port of Alexandria in June of that year, travelled on to
Cairo by camel, and then by boat up the Nile to Aswan in Nubia, going further up
that river than any previous European explorers. Norden meticulously recorded both the route and the sights from the modern city of Alexandria to the ancient
temples in Derr, Luxor, and Karnak, from the antiquities of a great civilization to
contemporary ploughs and hydraulics. According to ODNB, “Sixty years before
[Napoleon I’s] expedition to Egypt, Norden had made excellent maps, precise
descriptions, detailed topographical drawings, and panoramas of the landscape
and monuments of Egypt. His drawings and comments on contemporary Egypt,
its government, and peoples, also supply valuable historic and ethnographic
information”. Plagued with health problems, Norden began preparing his
sketches and maps for publication as soon as he returned to Copenhagen in
1738. Before his death from tuberculosis in 1742, he made arrangements for the
Nuremberg engraver Carl Marcus Tuscher to execute the plates under the
direction of the Danish Royal Navy, a task that took the engraver seven
years…
REFERENCES: Weber II, 519; Brunet IV, 101; Graesse IV, 686…..
The Danish Naval Captain and explorer, Frederick Norden sailed to Egypt in 1737-
38 to surveyed the architecture, agriculture, and other curiosities of the country. He
was the first European to penetrate as far as Derr in Nubia, and produced the first
coherent maps of the country. Seventeen years later, long after Norden’s death, his
maps and drawings were published by the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and
Letters, under order of Frederick V of Denmark, as Voyage d’Egypte et de Nubie
(1755). Two years later, the physician and naturalist Peter Templeman completed
an English translation, which was published in two folio volume. Item #76-1244
Price: $150.00