Instantanes d'Egypte: Tresors Photographiques de l'Institut Francais d'Archeologie Orientale

Since Bonaparte’s expedition and the deciphering of hieroglyphs by Champollion in 1822, the interest of France towards Ancient Egypt has steadily increased, thus allowing Egyptology to become a major science among French research. Following that impulse, a permanent mission was created in Cairo in 1880, which became a few years later, the Institut francais d'archeologie orientale. Since then, all the scholars who worked at the Institute carried on with the tasks they have been entrusted to perform: studying and preserving Egypt’s heritage. From the desert roads to the temples of the Nile valley, from the oases to the Theban region, Instantanes d'Egypte recounts through 185 pictures, most of them being unpublished, a century of excavations carried out by the Institut. These outstanding black and white photographs retrace the events - being great or small - that occurred on archeological fields and reveal the everyday life of those who worked there. Being more than documentary, this book is also a tribute paid to men and women, being unknown, forgotten, or famous, who helped molding French Egyptology.