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Early Egyptian astronomy in a deluxe binding

SEYFFARTH, Gustav.
Beitraege zur Kenntniss der Literatur, Kunst, Mythologie und Geschichte des alten Aegypten. Erstes Heft: Bemerkungen ueber die Aegyptischen Papyrus auf der Koeniglichen Bibliothek zu Berlin.
Leipzig, Joh. Ambros. Barth (colophon: printed by W. Haack), 1826. With 4 lithographed folding plates.
With: (2) Beitraege ... zweites, drittes, viertes, fünftes Heft. = Systema astronomiae Aegyptiacae quadripartitum ...
Leipzig, Joh. Ambros. Barth, 1833. With a general title-page, a Latin title-page and 4 part-titles, a hand-coloured frontispiece and 10 large folding plates, lithographed throughout.
5 parts in 2 volumes. 4to (22.5 x 26.5 cm). Contemporary richly gold- and blind-tooled polished red morocco in the Romantic style (by the Leipzig master Anton Stumme with his ticket on the first free endleaf). X, 42; XXX, 445, [10] pp.
€ 18,000
A fine morocco volume comprising the first five of Seyffarths monographic contributions to Egyptology (apparently all that had been published at the time of binding: two more were to follow by 1840). While the first part contains the earliest catalogue raisonnée of the substantial Berlin collection of papyri, parts 2-5 (published with continuous pagination) constitute a bold investigation of early Egyptian astronomy and its all-pervading cosmological cult.
This section includes a hand-coloured frontispiece of astronomical animal forms and ten large folding plates, all lithographed, showing important pieces of archaeological evidence: the Navicula astronomica (Paris), Zodiacus Tentyriticus (Paris), Zodiacus Taurinensis (Turin), Sarcophagus Sethi (London), Sarcophagus Ramsis (Paris), Monolithus Amosis (Paris), Mensa Isiaca (Rome) and a Papyrus funeralis formerly in the dHermand collection. The final part is an astronomical lexicon, a typographical masterpiece that fits more than 1300 lithographed hieroglyphs precisely into their letterpress explanations.
A luxury copy printed entirely on wove paper and bound in elaborate morocco with finely goffered edges (unusual for a secular binding of the time) by the Leipzig master Anton Wilhelm August Stumme (1804-67), who also worked for Robert Schumann.
Minor wear to binding, occasional foxing as often in early wove paper, coloured frontispiece browned evenly; largely insignificant gutter tears to four folding plates. A crisp, unused copy in a magnificent binding. Ibrahim-Hilmy II, 229f.
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