Voyage d'Egypte et de Nubie

rdf:langString Voyage d'Egypte et de Nubie

rdf:langString Voyage d'Egypte et de Nubie (1755) records Frederic Louis Norden's extensive documentation and drawings of his voyage through Egypt in 1737–38. It contains some of the very first realistic drawings of Egyptian monuments and to this day remains a primary source for the looks of Egyptian monuments before widespread 19th and 20th-century tourism and excavations. The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, under the order of Frederick V of Denmark, first published the book in 1755. Norden had already done some preliminary work, but got entangled in war-service for England and died in France 1742 of tuberculosis before anything was ready. He left his documents and drawings to his friend. Mark Tuscher from Nuremberg made the drawings into copperplates for the publication. Norden published some test drawings from his voyage in 1741, under the long name Drawings of Some Ruins and Colossal Statues at Thebes in Egypt, with an account of the same in a letter to the Royal Society. A very often-used extract from this book is Norden's drawing of the Great Sphinx of Giza. As the first near-realistic drawing of the sphinx, he is the earliest known to draw the Sphinx with the nose missing. Although Richard Pococke in the same year visits and later publishes a stylish rendering (in , 1743), he draws it with the nose still on. Pococke's drawing is a faithful adoption of Cornelis de Bruijn's drawing of 1698 (Voyage to the Levant, 1702, English trans.), featuring only minor changes. It is highly unlikely if the nose was still on that Norden out of free fantasy would leave it out. This drawing is often used to disprove the story that Napoleon I of France destroyed the nose of the Sphinx.