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David Roberts 1838-39 Journal of his travels through Egypt. 100 high-resolution color images of his famous Louis Haghe tint stone hand colored lithographs. High-resolution images of the original Roberts’ map of the Nile. 120 minutes of audio read by award winning narrator Simon Prebble (14 Audie Nominations, PW Narrator of the Year).
Experience Alexandria, Cairo, The Pyramids, Luxor, Abu Simbel, and other landmarks through the words and eyes of one of the earliest European artists to travel up the Nile to Nubia.
Irony abounds.
This foreword is an early 21st century introduction to a digital EPUB edition of a 19th Century printed journal, illustrated with tint stone lithographs depicting 5,000 year old hieroglyph-covered stone monuments.
There are several interwoven themes:
the use of stone in storytelling;
the transition from one storytelling medium to another;
the varying longevity of stories written on rock, paper, or glass;
the multimedia nature of storytelling;
and the need to invent, experiment, and refine storytelling techniques with each new medium.
The many monumental buildings along the Nile are covered with hieroglyphs representing the history of ancient Egypt. In 1822 Jean-Francois Chompollion deciphered the Rosetta Stone and the hieroglyphs began to reveal their stories.
In 1838-39 Scottish painter David Roberts sailed up and down the Nile sketching the sights and recording his travels in a journal. He was one of the earliest modern Europeans to explore the region. In 1850 his paintings were printed as lithographs by Louis Haghe and sold as a three volume set to an enthusiastic audience. They represented the penultimate expression of hand-colored tint stone lithography and became best sellers. 1839 was also the year that daguerreotype photography was invented. Within a decade photography would replace lithography as the primary visual story telling medium.
Roberts’ journey began at Alexandria, site of the famous ancient library. The journey for this digital epub edition begins at the United States Library of Congress where many of the digital images for this edition were sourced. Our goals for this edition are to acquaint readers with the wonders of ancient Egypt, present the glories of David Roberts’ images and journals, and explore the possibilities of this new digital medium.
To fully achieve these three goals the edition includes high resolution images of the original lithographs, a beautifully read audio version of David Roberts’ journals to accompany the text, multiple scanned sections of the original map included with the 1850 publication.
The publication of any book is like tossing a pebble in a pond. If successful, it increases the level of our culture and creates an ever-expanding ripple of effect, reaction, and response. Please be sure to check out our Web Notes section at the very end of this book where you can continue to explore, discover, and share David Roberts' Egypt.
We hope you enjoy this edition half as much as we have enjoyed producing it.
Charles Stack
Sideways, Inc.
29 March 2011
