Commissioned by the Louvre in 1850, French archaeologist and Egyptologist Auguste Mariette-Bey traveled to Egypt in search of Coptic manuscripts. Though unsuccessful in this mission, he instead undertook landmark excavations at Saqqara, Giza, and Thebes, culminating in the rediscovery of the Serapeum. Later appointed director of ancient monuments in Egypt and curator of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Mariette devoted himself to conserving the nation’s antiquities and curbing the mass export of cultural treasures.

This print is from the second edition of Mariette’s monumental survey which is richly illustrated with the original heliogravure plates produced by Goupil & Cie for the first edition (1878), executed by the master printer Henri Rousselon using Goupil’s innovative process perfected in 1872.

Despite having as its principal aim the visual documentation of ruins, there is little doubt that the photographer’s refined sense of composition and Goupil’s sumptuous heliogravure plates were also intended to present photographic book illustrations as art rather than merely documentation. First published in 1878, this work was preceded by many years the supposedly groundbreaking efforts to utilize photogravure as fine art plates by Emerson and Stieglitz during the 1890s and early 1900s. (Ken Jacobsen)