Monday, November 4, 2019

Answer: Where's this lobster from? What's the story?

This wasn't that hard... 

... but the backstory is DEFINITELY a surprise.  Well, it was to me.    

Remember: I found this cute little lobster image: 

and wanted to know.... 

1.  Where is this lobster image from? 

2.  What's the backstory of the source?  (IIRC, it has a kind of crazy story.  But I don't remember what it is!) 

As most of you did, I did a Reverse Image search (aka, "Search By Image"). Like most of you, I found that it was an image from Description de l'Égypte (1822).  

Like Luis Miguel, I found it on the Paulus Swaen gallery site (an antiquities seller).  From that site I found the full image of the page of that book: 

Lobster (Homard) from the book Description de l'Égypte. (P/C Swaen website)

On that site they say that this lobster is... 

Decorative engraving of a lobster, by Tresca. 
Marie Jules César Lelorgne de Savigny (April 5, 1777 - October 5, 1851) was a French zoologist. In 1798 he traveled to Egypt with the Emperor Napoleon as part of the French scientific expedition to that country, and contributed to the publication of the findings of the expedition in 1809 (Description de l'Égypte published more fully in 1822). He wrote about the fauna in the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea and discovered that mouth parts of arthropods were transformed extremities.
Engraved by Marcet and Leleu.
Savigny was responsible, along with Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, for the zoology sections of the Description de l’Égypte. The plates were engraved between 1805 and 1814, and Savigny contributed all of the ornithology sections and supplemented other sections on vertebrates. The invertebrates are represented on 105 plates with thousands of drawings, all of them from Savigny’s research.

That's an interesting story, but let's check it.  They're also giving a certificate of authenticity, so I'm disposed to believe that this is accurate. (But... As you know, we SRS'ers always check these things.)   

It's easy to check names, so let's start with Marie Jules César Lelorgne de Savigny. A quick search shows us that de Savigny is the person (with the history) as is claimed above.  What about the other people?  

HOWEVER... who's Tresca?  And why does it say that it was engraved by Tresca, and then later in the description that it was engraved by Marcet and Lelu?   

The obvious query for Marcet and Leleu have MANY hits, revealing them as professional engravers.  (Which, I learned, is a very specific skill about translated a drawing, as done by Savigny, into a copperplate for the printing press.)  Tresca was apparently another engraver, one who did "decorative" engravings.  It seems as though Marcet and Leleu were engravers for books, while Tresca was an engraver for "decorative editions."  

So, I believe Savigny created the original sketches, while Marcet, Lelu, and Tresca all made various engravings.  

But what about this book in which those engravings appear?  The text described in the book is given the full title of:  

Description de l'Egypte, ou Recueil des observations et des recherches qui ont ete faites en Egypte pendant l'Expedition de l'Armee francaise, (Paris, 1809-1830). 

That is, this book, ('Description of Egypt, or collection of observations and research that have been done in Egypt during the French Army Expedition, Paris, 1809-1830)' in English), documents Napoleon's  military and scientific expedition to Egypt.  The Wikipedia Descriptioarticle says:  

...[the book ] was a series of publications, appearing first in 1809 and continuing until the final volume appeared in 1829, which aimed to comprehensively catalog all known aspects of ancient and modern Egypt as well as its natural history. It is the collaborative work of about 160 civilian scholars and scientists, known popularly as the savants, who accompanied Napoleon's expedition to Egypt in 1798 to 1801 as part of the French Revolutionary Wars, as well as about 2000 artists and technicians, including 400 engravers, who would later compile it into a full work.

By digging a bit deeper, I found that the book was: 13 volumes included 892 plates of which 72 were colored, among which 9 volumes concerned Antiquity. The other volumes dealt with the Natural History and modern Egypt because Napoleon Bonaparte had brought with him a commission of scholars of all disciplines so that, it was said, in his description was stored 'the richest museum of the Universe'. 
This work was written in part by Baron Dominique Vivant-Denon, before the latter was appointed Director General of the Musée Napoleon at the Louvre. More than 80 artists and 400 engravers were engaged for this titanic project. The dimensions of the exceptionally large boards required the creation of a special press and a specific piece of furniture to preserve them.. 

Now that's crazy.  (Books so large that special furniture needed to be made?)  

But what strikes me as even crazier-crazier is that Napoleon would embark on a military expedition with 160 scholars ("the savants") as part of his military expedition to occupy lands in Egypt.  What?  And not just scholars, but 80 artists (including Savigny) and 400 engravers.  

As it turns out, Napoleon was never one for mild ambition.  His goal was to defend French trade interests in the region, seek further alliances with Tipu Sultan, weaken Britain's access to India, and to establish scientific enterprise in the region.   Hence, the need to bring the Savants along.  

Among other interesting things (like this book),  the expedition eventually led to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, creating the field of Egyptology and allowing the direction translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics for the first time.  

SearchResearch Lessons

1.  While reverse image search got us the answer fairly quickly, it's surprisingly hard to find an original scan!  I know, the notion of an "original scan" is a bit odd, and although I can find MANY copies of the text of the books, but finding a decent scan of ALL the images in the Description is really hard.  (At least I haven't found one yet!)  

2. Even simple Challenges can have untold depths.  While it is simple to find the source, and verify it, the story behind the book is remarkable.  As I said, when I started doing this bit of research, it didn't take long to get to the original artist, or even places where you can buy a modern reproduction.  But once you read that, and then discover that this work was done by a naturalist who was part of the military expedition, the mind boggles.  What an astounding thing!  Hundreds of people traveling along with a major army (and navy) from France to Egypt, and then doing careful, detailed research in a broad number of areas--that's pretty amazing.  

I thought you'd find it an interesting story.  I certainly did.  

Postscript:  Writing this didn't take too much time, and the research was actually fairly simple.  But these weeks in October and November are fairly full.  If you've been watching my personal web site, or my site, you'll see that I'm giving a LOT of talks these days.  Yes, this is the Joy of Search World Tour, and while it's a lot of fun, it wreaks havoc with my writing schedule.  (Last Wednesday, when I should have been writing this post, I was giving an invited lecture at Yale.  Tons of fun, but it also takes a lot of time.)   
I hope you can forgive me if the next couple of weeks are a bit erratic!  

Search on!  


  1. The Imperial edition (1st ed.) in 23 volumes (including all plate volumes) was fully scanned, and it's viewable and searchable on a dedicated website by Bibliotheca Alexandrina ( The plates can be zoomed in and the scans are of decently high quality. However, they can only be downloaded as low quality jpg images.

    1. Ah... that's a useful thing to know. I found that site, but because Flash is disabled on my computer (because of security risks), I wasn't able to take a look at that site. Thanks for letting us know!

      BTW - do you remember your path to finding it?

    2. My path was a simple Google search [ Description de l'Égypte ]. For me, it's the 3rd result, right after the English and Portuguese Wikipedia articles. I assume it doesn't appear to you because you usually don't open Flash websites and I do. Maybe I shoudn't… but for the current purpose it served me well.

  2. Good Morning, Dr. Russell and everyone. Congratulations for the Joy of Search World Tour. I am sure it is complicated, maybe stressful and also worthy. Knowing people, finding new questions and ideas for SRS Challenges.

    And as always a Challenge leads to more questions, answers, Challenges and lots of fun.

    After reading your answer, searched again and found:

    [Napoleon expedition Egypt] also next added Savant

    2006: NY Times. When French Savants Were in Egypt's Land"....The British wanted to confiscate their material but backed down after the savants threatened to destroy everything rather than give it up..."

    Then I read (later read it was already posted on the comments) site and liked it. There searched for [Description de l'Egypte] and apparently there is a digital full version of this project. I can't visit because my equipment has not the necessary software/hardware. I kept reading and found:

    the Description de l’Egypte the digital version I mentioned


    There also read: the Musée Napoléon, today the Louvre. That was a surprise for me. I never thought or asked why the Museum is called that! I thought and never asked, searched or questioned who, what Louvre was.

    So, I searched for that. [Museum Louvre name timeline] [Museum Louvre name origin] [Why Louvre is named that] and other similar. That is how I found:

    2018: THE ORIGIN OF THE NAME LOUVRE Which hypothesis will be the true one?

    1. Searched [Description de l'Egypte digital version]

      I am trying to search and look the photos. At the moment my tablet keeps "thinking" need to visit in laptop. What I have seen looks very good

    2. I should have thought about the NYPL digital collection. Thanks for reminding us, Ramón!