AUTHOR'S preface. 



A dawn of hope appears that Egypt, now so 

 vilely degraded, abandoned to plunderers and 

 barbarians, may at length recover the lustre which 

 once distinguished her among the nations of the 

 globe. Transferred into the possession of a peo- 

 ple as renowned as that which was once the boast 

 of antiquity, this celebrated country, which ages 

 of unrelenting destruction have completely dis- 

 guised, will re-assume her departed glory. The 

 men as well as the soil ; the territory as well as 

 its inhabitants, are hastening to wear a new as- 

 pect : and the period is at hand when Egypt shall 

 no longer be what she lately was. 



It could not, then, be uninteresting to exhibit 

 a view of Egypt such as the French shall have 

 found it ; to depict the manners of the different 

 tribes who inhabited it, and among whom civi- 

 lization 



