Beautiful photograph album made in Cairo, the first illustrated catalogue of the first Egyptian Museum. The photographs by Hippolyte Délié and Émile Béchard, show the halls and antiques of the Bulaq Museum, founded in Cairo in 1863 by the great Egyptologist Auguste Mariette (1821-1881), who in 1858, following his appointment as head of the Antiquities Service, had moved the banks of the Nile. Mariette obtained permission to settle in Bulaq in the abandoned offices of the River Company. In these dilapidated premises, where he lived with his family, he served as "Director of the Historical Monuments of Egypt and the Cairo Museum", and aided by his faithful assistants Bonnefoy and Floris he converted four rooms of his residence into the Museums first four exhibition halls. The period photographs published in the present Album du musée de Boulaq show the low buildings by the river, which were to be almost completely devastated by the 1878 flood.
In the preface, dated 1 November 1871, Mariette explains the origins of this monumental album: "Mr. Hippolyte Délié and Mr. Béchard requested permission from the Directorate of the Bulaq Museum to reproduce by photography some of the monuments on display in our galleries. Not only was the application ... explicitly welcomed, the Director of the Museum felt he should promote the work of the great photographers from Cairo, opening the Museums cabinets for them and choosing among the objects it contains those that appeared to him most worthy of inclusion in the proposed album. Mr. Délié and Mr. Béchard have followed, for the classification and arrangement of their proofs, the order adopted in the Notice sommaire, which is for sale at the entrance of the Museum. The three plates showing the interior and exterior of the Museum serve as an introduction to the Album. The monuments are then classified into religious, funerary, civilian, historical, Greek and Roman sections. The photographic Album ... is thus an illustrated catalogue of the Museum. The remarkable execution of the plates allows us also to recommend this album by Mr. Délié and Mr. Béchard to everyone. Travelers will indeed use it as a souvenir of their visit to the Bulaq Museum. Scholars will find the hieroglyphic texts reproduced with such clarity that they will feel they are in the direct presence of the monuments. Finally artists will find no other work on Egyptology as well suited to their study as the beautiful proofs delivered by the apparatus used by Mr. Délié and Mr. Béchard, which will illuminate the difficult problems that relate to the history of art in Egypt".
Spine scuffed, some foxing, but still in good condition. Nissan N. Perez, Focus East, 1988, p. 123 & passim; for Mariette see also J.-M. Carré, "Voyageurs et écrivains français en Égypte", pp. 223-249.