A handsome copy of this seminal work on Egypt. The Atlas bears a presentation inscription from the author to his nephew, dated at Nantes 15 August 1860, and the text plates are hand-coloured and highlighted with gum arabic.
Frédéric Cailliaud (1787-1869) “…born at Nantes, the son of a jeweller and watchmaker of that town he went to Egypt as a geologist and mineralogist; there he was charged by Muhammad ‘Ali Pasha in 1815 to rediscover the ancient emerald mines of Mount Zabora in the Atbaï; with B. Drovetti, consul-general of France in Egypt, he ascended the Nile as far as Wadi Halfa and tried without success to enter the tomb of Abu Simbel, then choked with sand…returning from France to Egypt in 1819 with a companion, P.C. Letorzec, a young naval officer, he accompanied the military expedition of Ismâ’îl Pasha which the viceroy sent to the Sudan in 1820; with Letorzec he explored the Nile as far as Khartoum, and Blue Nile to Fâzûghli, in 1820-3; he was the only scientific reporter of the expedition after the Italian, E. Frediani, one of the few other Europeans capable of recording scientific information, went mad at Sennar; Cailliaud has been accused by recent Italian writers of making unacknowledged borrowings from Frediani’s notes, of which no trace survives; his monumental account of the journey, published in Paris 1823-27, contains the first serious survey of the ancient monuments of the Sudan and is an indispensable authority on the Egyptian expedition to Sennar…” Richard Hill, A Biographical Dictionary of Sudan, London, 1967, p. 93.
Blackmer 270; Ibrahim-Hilmy I, 113; See also Carré pp. 221-224.
