12mo. [12], 423 pp., [17], contemporary full-calf, rubbed with small chip at top spine, title gilt on decorated & raised spine, title vignette & head-tail pieces, speckled outer edges, small tear across lower margin of title page, repaired, some marginal markings on first few leaves, endpapers browned, otherwise copy in very good condition, Estienne Michallet, Paris, first edition, 1677.

Synopsis

Translated into English the following year. Hilmy cites a later edition, Paris 1698. This work is not to be confused with an earlier work by Wansleben in Italian, “Relazione dello Stato presente dell’Egitto”, 1671. The Relazione is an account of Wansleben’s first voyage to Egypt made on behalf of Duke Ernest of Saxe Gotha in 1664. In 1666 the German and Lutheran Wansleben converted to Catholicism and became a Dominican friar known as Vansleb. He was brought to the notice of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who sent him on a second voyage to Egypt to collect manuscripts and antiquities to enrich the Royal Collection. He brought back with him 3 mummies and 334 Arabic, Turkish and Persian manuscripts which were placed in the Bibliotheque Du Roi. He left Marseilles on 20 May 1671, when he reached Cyprus he fell ill for a long period, but recovered and succeeded in visiting Tripoli, Damascus, Aleppo and Sidon spending ten months. He was in Egypt from April 1672 to October 1673. (From 1674 to 1676 he travelled to Constantinople and Asia Minor, but we have no detailed account of this journey).
Wansleben penetrated further south than any French traveller up to that time, and his work provides much accurate information. This work is written in a spirit of reasonable observation; especially in ethnographic and historical perspectives. Vansleb also wrote “Histoire de l’Eglise d’Alexandrie”, 1677.
Bibliogarphic references: Atabey 1296; Balckmer 1769; Gay 2269; Ibrahim-Hilmy ii, 303; F. Lamy & MC Bruwier, L’Égypte avant Champollion. LLN, Versant Sud, 2005, pp. 132-135; Sotheby’s 1989.