PERRY (Charles).
A View of the Levant: Particularly of Constantinople, Syria, Egypt and Greece.
A clean, crisp copy of this important and rare work.
Charles Perry (1698-1780), a physician by profession, travelled extensively in the Levant and Egypt between 1739 and 1740. He was both a perceptive writer and observer, and a pioneer in terms of the areas visited, being one of the first Europeans to leave the relatively well-trodden paths of Alexandria and Cairo and penetrate Upper Egypt as far south as Aswan. He was the first to observe in detail (and draw) the Temple of Isis, and the tombs of the Beni Hasan complex, and his “enthusiasm for Egyptian art was unprecedented when he described Egyptian temples in 1743 and the ‘Quantity and Quality of their Sculpture, their Painting, and other Ornaments, that ravish and astonish the Beholder.’” (Searight, The British in the Middle East, p. 195). Indeed, most of the plates in this work illustrate Egyptian antiquities.
Ibrahim-Hilmy II, 108; Blackmer 1291: (quoting Spencer, “a work which deserves to be better known”), “The list of subscribers includes Thomas Shaw, Richard Pococke, Horace Walpole and the book collector Sir Andrew Fountaine.”
