47 - [BONAPARTE - EGYPT EXPEDITION]. Yearbook of the French Republic, calculated for the Cairo meridian, Year VIII of the French era.

[BONAPARTE - EGYPT EXPEDITION]. Yearbook of the French Republic, calculated for the Cairo meridian, Year VIII of the French era. An extremely rare almanac intended for the Egyptian army, among the very first prints from Cairo, where Bonaparte had just established a printing press. In Cairo, from the National Printing Office, Year VIII (1800). In-8 (155 x 210 mm), brown half-basane, spine with 4 raised bands, green leather title label. 119 pages, republican vignette on the title page. Binding rubbed, mainly at the edges and corners; soiling on the title page, which is frayed and reattached with a tab, as are the last 4 leaves; slight water stain extending to page 25; traces of rust running across the first 8 pages, likely caused by a previous object inserted into the book. An extremely rare almanac, among the earliest prints in Cairo, serving as a sort of guide for Egyptian army troops. The preface details its contents: “This almanac is modeled after the one from Paris and compiled by a commission of the Cairo Institute [...] Following the table of the new measurements of the French Republic, readers will find a comparative table of French and Egyptian measurements. The correspondence between the Hijri calendar and the French era has been included, as well as the Coptic and Greek calendars. […] This yearbook concludes with a military roster of the Army of the Orient, the members comprising [sic] the Grand Divan, the General Administration of Finance, the Institute, and the Commission of Sciences and Arts.” Bonaparte’s establishment of the printing press in Egypt spanned from June 1798 until the troops’ departure in November 1801. Designed as true tools of conquest and scholarship, these field printing shops utilized portable equipment requisitioned from the French National Printing Office and the multilingual printing press of the Sacra Congregazione de Propaganda Fide in Rome. Placed under the direction of the scholar and Orientalist Jean-Joseph Marcel (1776–1854), the National Printing Office of Cairo became the official organ of the Army of the Orient and the Institute of Egypt. Founded in August 1798 to bring together the expedition’s most brilliant scholars (Monge, Berthollet, Denon) to conduct an encyclopedic survey of the country, this institute relied directly on movable-type printing to disseminate military orders and proclamations, while also publishing the expedition’s two flagship periodicals: *Le Courrier de l’Égypte*, a propaganda organ intended to boost troop morale, and *La Décade égyptienne*, a scholarly journal dedicated to the memoirs and works of these scientists and artists. Handwritten bookplate in black ink on the title page “L’homond,” likely referring to Amable Nicolas Lhomond (1770–1854), a mechanical captain in the balloon brigade and a member of the Commission of Sciences and Arts during this Egyptian expedition. Label from the Cairo bookstore “Au bouquiniste oriental” on the endpaper. A rare historical document, in quite satisfactory internal condition for a field edition.