BRETON DE LA MARTINIERE, Jean-Baptiste Joseph. L’Égypte et la Syrie, ou Mœurs, Usages, Costumes et Monumens des Égyptiens, des Arabes et des Syriens […]

First edition of one of the rarest Travels by Breton de La Martinière illustrated with 84 hand-coloured engraved plates, of which 28 folding or on double-page (the frontispiece of part 3 is posterior).

To the 49 engravings borrowed from the English work, of the Travels of Lord Valencia, Norden and Niébuhr, the editor added 35 engravings from original drawings never published. More than half of these 35 drawings are by Monsieur Marcel who drew them himself, or had them drawn in situ, and brought them back to France with many Egyptian curiosities. The other drawings are by Monsieur Rosset, a sculptor from Lyons who visited Egypt few years before the expedition.

Superb copy bound in contemporary morocco signed by Chilliat, a famous binder who was active under the First Empire at 2 rue de la Parcheminerie in Paris.

This kind of copy is rare.