Large Folio: 25.5 x 18.5 inches (65 x 47 cm), Volume I, Part 1: 18 plates with text description of each plate, chromolithograph vignette on title page / Volume I, Part 2: 16 lithograph plates, some in chromo / Volume II, Part 1: 15 plates + 1 map, minor dampness on margin of plate one / Volume II, Part 2: 18 lithograph plates, some in chromo, chromolithograph vignette on title page, light dampness on upper margin of title page, (total 72 plates, many chromolithographs or tinted lithographs), publisher's three-quarters morocco over gilt stamped cloth, repaired, some offsetting and soiling, all edges gilt, Henry G. Allen, New York, first limited edition, 1887.

Synopsis

BINION’S MONUMENTAL EGYPTIAN PLATE BOOK, NUMBER 331 of 800 EDITION DE LUXE COPIES, WITH 72 SUPERB ELEPHANT FOLIO EGYPTIAN PLATES, many in colour of pyramids, temples, views, the Sphinx, antiquities, mummies, papyri, among other Egyptian subjects, including 50 beautiful tinted and full-colour lithographs.
This spectacular production by the American Egyptologist Samuel Binion was considered the height of American chromolithography. Most of the huge plates are based on one of four major volumes of Egyptian travel and antiquities from the Napoleonic era through the mid -19th century: David Roberts’ “Egypt and the Holy Land”, Prisse d’Avennes’s “Oriental Album”, Lepsius’s “Denkmäler aus Ägypten und Äthiopen”, and the Napoleon-commissioned “Description de l’Égypte”. Of particular beauty are the fully coloured architectural reconstruction plates of Egyptian temples, and a splendid rendition of Cleopatra’s Needle. Mizraïm was originally issued in 12 parts in wrappers; here the parts have been bound together into four volumes, each with its own lithographic title page.
Bibliographic references: Blackmer 143; not in Atabey or Hilmy.