PRISSE D'AVENNES, E. - Arabesques. - Pages jumelles d'un qorân mauresque. (XVIIIe siècle)

Lithographed by Daumont. From the author's "L'Art Arabe d'après les monuments du Kaire…". Emile Prisse d'Avennes, an Orientalist and Muslim convert with obsessive attention to detail, was, after Champollion, the greatest pre-20th-century Egyptologist. His interests were not, however, limited to Egyptology and he produced this, one of the most important books on the Islamic monuments of Egypt.
A French nobleman by birth, though impoverished, Prisse d'Avennes seems to have spent his life in the pursuit of the exotic. After a period fighting for Greek independence, Prisse d'Avennes traveled to India, a journey that prefigured his extensive Middle Eastern travels, which during the next 40 years took him to Palestine, Syria, Sudan, Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, & most importantly Egypt and Algeria, where he lived.

Like Coste, Prisse d'Avennes worked for the Viceroy Mehmet Ali until 1836. In 1860, Prisse d'Avennes returned to France with the fruits of his travels: 300 folio drawings, 150 photographs of important architectural details, 150 sketches and daguerreotypes and numerous plans, details and elevations copied on the scene.