When Napoleon visited/conquered Egypt back in the 18th century his intentions were not just to plunder, but also to learn. He took with him a team of scientists and scholars to study as much as the country as they could. The result was Description de l’Egypte, a multi-volume work that basically describes Egypt from tip to toe. It’s also beautifully, beautifully illustrated.
They have a copy of the work at the American University in Cairo – which they keep under lock and key – but now you can also access it on the web, and for free. The effect is not the same as touching those ancient pages with your fingers, and the website is quite slow, but it’s pretty cool nonetheless.
You can find it at:
http://descegy.bibalex.org/
Below is the press release I got, God knows why.


Dear All,
ISIS is pleased to announce the availability of the web version of the Description de l’Egypte digital collection on http://descegy.bibalex.org/
Description de l’Egypte is a stupendous book that was compiled in 20 years starting from the date of Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in 1798. The book is made up of 20 volumes: 11 plate volumes and 9 text volumes. It documented each and every aspect of the Egyptian history, antiquities, modern state, and geography of that period.
The Description de l’Egypte digital collection was initially provided through a virtual browser on DVD with high resolution including features such as page turning, zooming and rotating. An Index Lookup search feature allowed users to select a keyword from a predefined list. The list was based on the Index volume that was created by H. Munier in 1943. As the user selects a keyword from the list, the search engine retrieves all text and plates that are relevant to the keyword. After the first release of the DVD in 2005, the project received tremendous appreciation from Library visitors and the general public, which stimulated ISIS to provide the collection online and free of charge.
The new website http://descegy.bibalex.org/ introduces the entire digital collection in an integrated searchable form. It features:
Page turning: which allows users to flip through the volumes as if they are using the real book
Thumbnail view of all plates of each volume, with title of each plate: this allows the user to have a quick look at all plates of one volume at a glance, then he or she can select the plate of interest and see it in more details
Zoom, Rotate,etc: For each plate or page in the text, the user can zoom in, or zoom out, rotate the page by 45 degrees clockwise, pane in the page
Bookmarks: A user can bookmark a plate or a page in the text, such that when he returns later on to the website, he can go directly to his bookmarks.
Share with friends: A user can share plates and text by emailing them to friends.
Save a copy: A user can save a copy of a plate or a text. However, this is availed with a small resolution.
However, there are two features that distinguish the project.
The first, is the development of an image service by ISIS to serve users with low speed connection. It works for both the plate and the text volumes, where users can zoom in on any page to see the smallest details in high resolution without having to download the entire image, hence, without the need to a very high speed internet connection. In the picture below, only the area inside the red rectangle is displayed in high resolution.
The second important feature is the provision of a full text morphological search on all text with highlights on the results returned.
In addition to the Index Lookup search that was available in the DVD version, a new advanced search function was added to the web version. The 9000 pages constituting the text volumes as well as the title of the plates were subjected to optical character recognition (OCR), corrected and indexed, which makes it possible for the user to search for any word. The application then takes the user directly to the page where the search word occurred. Thanks to the new image service, all occurrences of the search keyword can be highlighted as in the figure below.
We invite you to share with us the new product, and we welcome any comments.
Please note that there are 3 volumes of the text that are not included yet in the search because they are still under correction. They will be availed soon.
For more information about the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, please visit www.bibalex.org/
For more information about the International School of Information Science (ISIS), please visit www.bibalex.org/ISIS/
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Dr. Noha Adly
ICT and ISIS Director
Bibliotheca Alexandrina
P.O.Box 138
21526 El Shatby, Alexandria
Tel: +20-3-4839999
Fax: +20-3-4820405
E-mail: noha.adly@bibalex.org
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