Atlas of Egyptian Art

Atlas of Egyptian Art
of works done for Mr. Prisse" 10 (now in Leiden). In one month, they visited all the major Nubian temples, checking them against
Prisse's records and adding new details. On October 6, the dahabiyeh returned through the cataract of Aswan. From there, the
company floated down the Nile, halting at Kom Ombo, Silsileh, Edfu (which had since changed considerably as a result of
Mariette's excavations), el-Kab, and Esna.
Upon arrival at Luxor, Prisse moved into his ancient quarters at the rear of the Karnak temple, where he found one of
Mariette's numerous excavation parties active in and around the hypostyle hall. On November 25, the expedition moved to
Wardi's house—now deserted—on the west bank, for work in the private and royal tombs and in the funerary temples. Again,
Prisse noted that much of the work done in the 1840s could not be collated because the originals had vanished. On the other
hand, there was so much new material available in Deir el-Bahri, where excavations had recently been started by Maunier, the
local consul of France, and in Medinet Habu, where Prisse was allowed to direct the excavations for Mariette. He also
undertook some small-scale digging for the exiled Prince of Orleans.
This took the entire winter, and it was not until April 14 that the expedition finally set sail for Cairo. There, Prisse accepted
the hospitality offered by Mariette in his house at Saqqara, and moved from there to the Giza pyramids, and finally finished
by sketching some of the recent finds pouring into the Bulaq museum from Mariette's excavations. It is not surprising that
Jarrot had a mental breakdown and had to be sent to France. Prisse and Testas followed, leaving Alexandria on June 12,1860.
The result was that Jarrot immediately stopped his career as a photographer, Testas launched a career as a successful painter
of oriental scenery, and Prisse would finally finish the publication project started 15 years earlier. He returned to Paris with a
rich harvest of 300 drawings, 400 meters of squeezes, and 150 photographs. Before long, the first plates appeared of his
monumental Atlas de I'histoire de I'art egyptien, d'apres les monuments, depuis les temps les plus reculesjusqu'd la domination
romaine and its complement L'Art Arabe, d'apres les monuments du Caire, depuis le Vllesiedejusqu'd /a/in du XVlIle siecle. The
former project lasted until 1877, apparently having started with a few plates in 1858, nearly twenty years earlier. The latter took
from 1867 to 1879. These 359 plates did not even represent the full amount of Prisse's records, and it was the death of their author
in 1879 which robbed us of the rest (though the original drawings have been preserved, mainly in the Bibliotheque Nationale).
None of Prisse's contemporaries had the skill or endurance to bring such an endeavor to such a brilliant end. His
combination of interests, with equal zeal for the Pharaonic and the Islamic periods, was quite unique. He was far ahead of his
time in his awareness of the vulnerability of the monuments and the need to protect and record them. His were the first
reliable drawings of Egyptian architecture and ornaments and the first plans and sections of constructions newly excavated.
The present reprint of Prisse's Atlas, the plates of which have lost nothing of their value for modern Egyptology, is a fitting
tribute to the memory of the great orientalist.
Notes
1. WR. Dawson and Uphill, E.P. Who was who in Egyptology, (London, 1972), 238.
2. E. Prisse d'Avennes fils, Le papyrus a I'epoque pharaonique, (Avesnes, 1926).
3. M. Du Camp, Souvenirs litteraires, (Paris, 1984),110 ff.
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