The Description de l'Égypte, fruit of the scientific, literary, and cultural work of the scholars and experts who travelled with Napoleon to Egypt in 1798, was published in installments (livraisons) between 1809 and 1829. It was a collaborative work directed by a permanent commission of eight members, among whom were Claude Berthollet (1748-1822), Louis Costaz (1767-1842), Joseph Fourier (1768-1830), Gaspard Monge (1746-1818), and Edme-François Jomard (1777-1862). This volume contains the earliest deliberations of the “Commission charged with directing the work on Egypt” (commonly referred to as the Commission d’Égypte). A register of correspondence received and dispatched, it is a record of decisions made during the publication process and an account of the Commission’s exchanges with writers, artists, and politicians. It provides a direct window into the decision-making behind one of the most significant works in early nineteenth-century European Orientalism.
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