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Summary
Author: Gordon, Alexander
Title: An essay towards explaining the hieroglyphical figures. on the coffin of the ancient mummy belonging to Capt.William Lethieullier ; An essay towards explaining the antient hieroglyphical figures, on the Egyptian mummy, in the museum of Doctor Mead, Physician in Ordinary to His Majesty ; Proposals for engraving and publishing by subscription, a supplement to Montfaucon's Egyptian Antiquities.
Publication: London, printed for the author 1737, 1737 (but plates issued 1733 onwards) ; January 1733/4.
Price: £5,500
Reference: 10037
Full Description
Folio. (4) + 16pp ; iv + 10 + (2)pp ; with 25 engraved plates numbered I-XXV (plates XI and XII in duplicate) ; printed leaf, printed on recto only, incorporating printed receipt form at foot, made out in ink to William Jones (tutor to the 2nd Earl of Macclesfield) and signed in ink by Alexander Gordon. Contemporary boards with vellum spine. From the library of the Earls of Macclesfield, with mid nineteenth century Macclesfield bookplate, dated 1860, and armorial Macclesfield blind stamp on first three leaves (as customary with books from this library). A fresh, clean, untrimmed copy.
An excellent untrimmed copy of all that was published of Alexander Gordon's intended folio-size publication on Egyptian antiquities. The author, Alexander Gordon (c.1692-1754), an Aberdeen University graduate, had a complicated career which included spells as an operatic tenor in Italy and London, as Secretary to the Society of Antiquaries of London, and as Secretary to the Governor of South Carolina (he was eventually to settle at Charleston, South Carolina, where he died in an unexpected state of prosperity a few days after 22 August 1754). He had made his reputation as an antiquary in the mid 1720s by the publication of Itinerarium Septentrionale, a handsome illustrated volume devoted to Roman remains in Scotland, but by the 1730s he had become interested in Egyptology, and embarked on the production of the present volume.