NORDEN, Frederik Ludvig. Voyage d'Egypte et de Nubie, par Mr. Frederic Louïs Norden, capitaine des vaisseaux du roi. Ouvrage enrichie de cartes & de figures dessinées sur les lieux, par l'auteur même. Copenhagen: L'Imprimerie de la Maison Royale des Orphelins. 1755.
Two volumes, large folio (46 by 32 cm). Contemporary mottled calf, with modern re-backing, marbled endpapers; pp. [lx], 104; [103]-288, engraved frontispiece, engraved portrait, 159 plates as called for in the list of plates, engraved vignettes and initials; one plate with short repair to marginal tear, otherwise, apart from very occasional and light spotting, a remarkably clean and fresh copy, all the plates with the full margins and not two engravings cut to the engraved margins and pasted together to form a folding plate.
Scarce first edition, an attractive copy of this pioneering work, a cornerstone of Egyptology, the earliest systematic description of Egypt and its antiquities by a European, published with a print run of only 200 copies by the then newly founded Royal Danish Scientific Society. The Danish naval officer F.L. Norden (1708-42) traveled on the Nile 1737-38, venturing further into Africa than any westerner had done since antiquity - as far as today's Sudan, where they were attacked by the locals. He had been sent on the expedition by the Danish king Christian VI to keep an eye on Count Pierre Joseph le Roux D'Esneval, who had persuaded the Danish king to try to find a route down the Nile to Ethiopia, the land of milk and honey (and gold!). D'Esneval was a charlatan, but Norden made something out of this expedition (much encouraged by his friend, the German freemason Baron von Stosch, who had masonic contacts in Alexandria), as he was a skilled draughtsman, and his enormous material was the first documentation of many Egyptian monuments ever, also depicting everyday life in Egypt, as well as mapping the Nile. The plates, finely engraved by the Nuremberg artist and polymath Carl Marcus Tuscher, are the most significant previous to those of Denon.
The story of this milestone in the history of European exploration of the Nile is convoluted and almost picaresque. However, the book resulting from it is a masterpiece of an illustrated travelogue. 'Under King Christian VI (1730-46) the first Danish scientific expedition to Egypt was dispatched. The party consisted of a French count, Pierre Joseph le Roux d’Esneval, and his wife; a young officer in the Royal Danish Navy, Frederik Ludvig Norden, and about sixteen other persons. D’Esneval had to establish commercial relations between the Danish King, the Emperor of Ethiopia, and the Lord of Madagascar. He was a mysterious person, full of phantastic ideas, and with a doubtful background. He had managed to get financial support from Christian VI, and he was even appointed leader of the expedition; but Norden was to travel with him as the Kings’s official representative, which must have been a great disappointment to the somewhat dissolute Frenchman … Norden’s enormous importance lies in the fact, that 60 years before the French expedition he made excellent maps of the Nile valley as well as precise descriptions and representations of as many monuments and landscapes he was able to, often under very difficult and dangerous circumstances. Besides, his drawings of houses, local people, utensils and other objects of the Arab Egyptian household have supplied ethnographers with valuable information' (Marie-Louise Buhl, Erik Dal and Torben Hoick Colding, The Danish Naval Officer Frederik Ludvig Norden. His Travels in Egypt 1737-1738, The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, 1986, online).
Not in Atabey; see Blackmer 1211 for the English edition which appeared in 1757.
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