Frederik Ludvig Norden | Voyage d’Egypte et de Nubie. Copenhagen, 1755, early illustrations of Egyptian monuments - photo 1
Frederik Ludvig Norden | Voyage d’Egypte et de Nubie. Copenhagen, 1755, early illustrations of Egyptian monuments - photo 2
Frederik Ludvig Norden | Voyage d’Egypte et de Nubie. Copenhagen, 1755, early illustrations of Egyptian monuments - photo 3
Frederik Ludvig Norden | Voyage d’Egypte et de Nubie. Copenhagen, 1755, early illustrations of Egyptian monuments - photo 4

Frederik Ludvig Norden | Voyage d’Egypte et de Nubie. Copenhagen, 1755, early illustrations of Egyptian monuments

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£ 3 810
Auction dateClassic
28.11.2023 14:00UTC +01:00
Auctioneer
Sotheby´s
Event location
United Kingdom, London
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ID 1076584
Lot 61 | Frederik Ludvig Norden | Voyage d’Egypte et de Nubie. Copenhagen, 1755, early illustrations of Egyptian monuments
Frederik Ludvig Norden

Voyage d’Egypte et de Nubie. Copenhagen: L’Imprimerie de la Maison Royale des Orphelins, 1755

FIRST EDITION, ONE OF 200 COPIES, 2 volumes bound in one, folio (475 x 315mm.), engraved frontispiece and portrait, engraved vignette head- and tailpieces, historiated initials, and 159 ENGRAVED PLATES, numbered I-CLIX (three of these folding) including maps, vistas, flora, monuments, and scenes of daily life (plate CXXXVI with new caption pasted over original caption), contemporary sprinkled calf, spine attractively gilt in compartments with lozenge centrepiece formed by rocaille and drawer-handle tools, cornerpieces with shell and foliate tools, red morocco label, marbled endpapers, dedication leaf with, curving nine-inch closed tear passing through historiated initial (no loss), isolated rust spots, two folding plates with short tears along or near folds (no loss)

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.
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28.11.2023
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