A famed naturalist, traveller and publisher of numerous works on natural history, Sonnini was only prompted to publish this account of his Egyptian travels during the years 1777-1780, because of the heightened interest in the country following Napoleon’s 1798 invasion of Egypt. Lavishly illustrated, with drawings of the peoples, places, creatures and antiquities that he encountered on the way, Sonnini’s meticulous descriptions invoke in the reader an image of a land that the author hopes “…will soon re-assume her departed glory.”

Crackling with the translator’s sardonic interludes, emblematic as they are of the chauvinism of its troubled times, Hunter’s English version features a patriotic dedication to none other than William Pitt himself, and a polemical foreword haranguing the French for their “…current desire to take over the Globe.”