Egyptian sketches extracted from the portfolio of an ingenious young artist attached to the Institut National at Cairo which was found on board a Tartane intercepted on its voyage to Marseilles / [graphic]

"Emblematical frontispiece to a set of six prints on the Expedition to Egypt, see BMSats 9356-61. Two sphinxes, back to back on a stone slab (on which are the signature and imprint), support a stone ornament inscribed with the title ... The sphinxes wear cocked hats with tricolour cockades, and have rapacious claws. Behind the inscription is a pyramid up which climbs an ape dressed as a (ragged) French officer holding up a large bonnet-rouge (such as was then carried on the masts of French men-of-war) in order to place it on the apex. In his sash is a blood-stained dagger. A nude man, symbolizing Folly, wearing a fool's cap, clutches his coat-tail, holding up a cap and bells, the cap on an ass's head. Large clouds, and a line of desert with pyramids on the horizon, form a background."--British Museum online catalogue