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The Description of Egypt from Napoleon to Champollion

  • Book
  • © 2022

Overview

Authors:
  1. Tamar Sarfatti

    1. Independent Scholar, Oxford, UK

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  • Offers a nuanced view of revolutionary France and its colonial aspirations
  • Connects the birth of the 'mission civilisatrice' to the country's political and intellectual history
  • Discusses Edward Said's concept of Orientalism and the problems of its use within historical research

Part of the book series: War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850 (WCS)

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Table of contents (11 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiv
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • Tamar Sarfatti
    Pages 1-17

  3. An Eighteenth-Century Ordinary Reader: Napoleon Bonaparte

    • Tamar Sarfatti
    Pages 19-43

  4. Colonial Policies and Revolutionary Ideas

    • Tamar Sarfatti
    Pages 45-69

  5. A Short History of the Making of the Description of Egypt

    • Tamar Sarfatti
    Pages 71-102

  6. Literary Genres and Scholarly Traditions

    • Tamar Sarfatti
    Pages 103-123

  7. Engineer Training in Eighteenth-Century France: “From the World of More or Less to the Universe of Precision”

    • Tamar Sarfatti
    Pages 125-145

  8. Egypt Engraved

    • Tamar Sarfatti
    Pages 147-188

  9. Texts About Ancient Egypt and Their Predecessors

    • Tamar Sarfatti
    Pages 189-214

  10. Describing Modern Egyptian Society

    • Tamar Sarfatti
    Pages 215-250

  11. Jomard and Champollion: A Rivalry at the Birth of Egyptology

    • Tamar Sarfatti
    Pages 251-276

  12. Conclusion

    • Tamar Sarfatti
    Pages 277-280

  13. Back Matter

    Pages 281-296
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Keywords

About this book

This book is the first study in English of the multi-volume set of texts and engravings of the Description of Egypt, a work produced following the three-year-long Egyptian campaign led by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798. The book challenges the conventional and rather reductive interpretation of the Description that followed Edward Said's Orientalism,  as a summation of an orientalist colonial project. It re-centres the Description in the much more complex and dynamic political and intellectual world of France of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and its colonial aspirations. It follows closely the notes, texts, and illustrations of the contributors to the work, the majority of whom were graduates of the first years of the Polytechnic school in Paris, and the well-documented editing process that continued for almost thirty years, in which France moved from Revolution to Empire and Restoration. It shows the ways in which scholarly traditions and newly acquired skills interplay with Enlightenment texts, contemporary politics, and received ideas about antiquity, and how these were reinterpreted and modified – in texts and illustrations – through the encounter with the physical and social worlds of Ottoman Egypt.  Using the rich repository of the Description of Egypt the book demonstrates the contribution of antiquarian methods of research to the emerging disciplines of the social sciences.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Independent Scholar, Oxford, UK

    Tamar Sarfatti

About the author

Tamar Sarfatti is an independent scholar, based in the UK and Israel.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Description of Egypt from Napoleon to Champollion

  • Authors: Tamar Sarfatti

  • Series Title: War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15606-9

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: History, History (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-15605-2Published: 02 December 2022

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-15608-3Published: 02 December 2023

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-15606-9Published: 01 December 2022

  • Series ISSN: 2634-6699

  • Series E-ISSN: 2634-6702

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XIV, 296

  • Number of Illustrations: 18 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: History of France, History of the Middle East, Imperialism and Colonialism, Cultural History, History of the Book

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