Antiquités mexicaines. relation des trois expéditions du capitaine Dupaix, ordonnées en 1805, 1806, et 1807, pour la recherche des antiquités du pays, notamment celles de Mitla et de Palenque
- Title
- Antiquités mexicaines. relation des trois expéditions du capitaine Dupaix, ordonnées en 1805, 1806, et 1807, pour la recherche des antiquités du pays, notamment celles de Mitla et de Palenque
Alternative Title: Relation des trois expéditions du capitaine Dupaix, ordonnées en 1805, 1806, et 1807
Alternative Title: Trois expéditions du capitaine Dupaix, ordonnées en 1805, 1806, et 1807
Alternative Title: Recherche des antiquités du pays, notamment celles de Mitla et de Palenque
Alternative Title: Parallèle des anciens monuments mexicains avec ceux de l'Égypte, de l'Inde et du reste de l'ancien monde
Alternative Title: Recherches sur les antiquités de l'Amérique du Nord et de l'Amérique du Sud et sur la population primitive de ces deux continents - Place of Origin
- France
A Paris - Publisher
- Au Bureau des antiquités mexicaines, no 55, Quai des Grands-Augustins
Imprimerie de J. Didot l'aîné, no 4, Boulevart d'Enfer - Date
- 1834
- Description
- Extent: 2 v. in 1 (xiv, 20, 56, 40, 88, 24, 224 p.) : ill. (some col.), maps, plans, plates ; 52 cm. + 1 Atlas (80 p., [166] leaves of plates : ill. (some col.) ; 52 cm.
print - Subjects
- Places
- France--Paris
- Abstract
- "Dupaix’s seminal work on Mexican archaeology. The first edition is dated 1834 in both vols. Another edition came out in 1844 (mixed sets are sometimes found). Bibliographie de la France (1835) 688. Brunet I, cols. 321-322. Dumbarton Oaks, Archaeological Illustrations in America, pp. 26-27. Field 468. Leclerc, Bibliotheca Americana (1878) 1065. Palau 23069. Pilling 4082 (Warden). Sabin 40038: 'An indispensable supplement to Humboldt, as it contains many interesting discoveries not in the latter work.' The work comes in three states: (1) uncolored plates; (2) plates printed on very thin, high-quality India proof paper; and (3) plates in color on regular paper. Because the technique of printing on India proof paper is extremely time-consuming, expensive, and challenging, lithographs were seldom printed in this way. Furthermore, the colored issue of the Dupaix expedition was printed on cheaper paper and is usually found with moderate to heavy foxing, browning, and chipping.
This massive work contains the collected official reports of the Dupaix Expedition. Dupaix was one of the first Europeans to observe, describe, and illustrate the archaeological sites and artifacts of Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Yucatan. In 1804 Carlos IV of Spain, at the suggestion of Alexander von Humboldt and others, ordered that exact drawings and documentation be made of any and all pre-Hispanic remains in New Spain, especially Mexico. This was only the second expedition to survey the antiquities of Mexico (see Del Rio herein). Selected to oversee this monumental task was archaeological explorer, military captain, and writer Guillermo Dupaix (born ca. 1748-1750 in Austria-Hungary, died in Mexico City in 1817—French to the core). Dupaix was born to French parents in Hungary and grew up in Spain. Dupaix joined the military at the age of fourteen, advanced to captain of the regiment of Dragoons of Almansa in 1790, and arrived in Mexico 1791. At the time Carlos IV commissioned him for the expedition, he had been retired from the military for several years. Dupaix and Humboldt met in Mexico, and Humboldt considered him well informed. Dupaix had a deep, serious interest in antiquities, but perhaps more important, he was careful, patient, and slow to theorize. Dupaix 'avoided the zealous enthusiasm commonly associated with ninteenth-century Americanists”' (Robert L. Brunhouse, In Search of the Maya, Ballentine Books, 1976, p. 17).
Between 1805 and 1809 Dupaix led three expeditions in search of archaeology, accompanied by José Luciano Castañeda (artist for the National Museum of Mexico), Juan del Castillo (secretary), and an armed escort of dragoons. The first and second expeditions concentrated on Mexico’s central highlands and the Oaxaca Valley. The final expedition went east into the Guatemalan province of Chiapas, up the escarpment to Ciudad Real, north and overland to Santo Domingo de Palenque, where they entered the ruins in January 1807. As Dupaix recorded his descriptions and observations, Castañeda made twenty-seven drawings of Palenque. 'Completion of the third Dupaix expedition in 1809 marks the end of the period of discovery... However, the results...would not reach print in usable form for more than a decade as other events that would profoundly affect relationships between Europe and the Americas—and the pace of scientific investigation and publication as well—were unfolding' (p. 43, David Stuart & George Stuart, Palenque: Eternal City of the Maya, New York: Thames & Hudson, 2008).
The extraordinary plates ... by José Luciano Castañeda constitute 'the first drawings of Maya architecture to be published' (Wauchope). Illustrated are some archaeological remains and artifacts that have since been lost or damaged due to the turmoil and revolution which Mexico suffered for three quarters of a century. In addition to Palenque, the book covers the Zapotec-Mixtec site Mitla in Oaxaca, various Aztec remains, and other sites as well. The masterful lithographs are mostly the work of the firm of Godefroy Engelmann (1788-1839), who is largely credited with bringing lithography to France, or Englemann’s successors, Thierry Frères. The letterpress was created by Jules Didot, of the illustrious French firm of printers and publishers.
In addition to the reports of Dupaix the present work contains essays by others. Marie Alexandre Lenoir (1761-1839), self-taught French archaeologist devoted to saving France’s historic antiquities from the ravages of the French Revolution, contributed an essay comparing American monuments to those of Egypt and other ancient civilizations. David Bailie Warden’s (1772-1845) composition explores the antiquities and peoples of North and South America, including the earthworks of Ohio and comparative linguistic material (Lord’s Prayer in Otomí, selections from St. Matthew and St. John in Esquimaux as spoken in Labrador and Greenland, the Cherokee alphabet, sign language used by North American Indians, etc.). French artist, printer, and writer, Charles-François Farcy (1792-1867) wrote the preliminary essay, in which he suggests that the Mesoamerican monuments are more 'civilized' and in the Old World tradition than the recently discovered burial mounds of the Mississippi and Ohio Valley regions. Other minor contributors run the gamut from Humboldt to Santa-Anna.
The work was generated under the editorship of French ecclesiastic and publisher Abbé Jean-Henri Baradère (1792-1839?), who received permission from the Mexican government to print an authorized version of Dupaix’s expeditions. Although Baradère’s version 'remained more textually and pictorially faithful to the original documents, like [Kingsborough], Baradère used the text as a springboard for the reflections of scholars with no firsthand knowledge of the monuments.... These treatises bore little connection to Dupaix’s work, yet the inclusion of Warden’s essay cast Dupaix’s expeditions in a new light.... [Warden] used the Dupaix expedition to support his theory of a unified pan-American antiquity. In introducing Warden’s essay, Baradère spoke in celebratory terms of the ‘reunion’ that would shape the writings of subsequent American explorers and eventually the doctrines of the Mormon church' (pp. 35-36, R. Tripp Evans, Romancing the Maya: Mexican Antiquity in the American Imagination, 1820-1915, University of Texas Press, 2004). If one can peel away the accoutrements added to the basic expeditionary papers and drawings and focus on the eye-witness reports of those who were there—Dupaix and Castañeda—it becomes clear that Dupaix was indeed a pioneer of considerable merit.
The map called for on the title page, which certainly appeared in the 1844 edition, does not appear in the contents lists for either volume of the 1834 edition. Sabin does not call for it, and Leclerc records it at the end of part 2 (which was from the 1844 edition in his copy). Palau and OCLC report it in some copies of the 1834 edition, but it was apparently not yet ready when the book first appeared. The reports of Palau and OCLC may be in error, with some cataloguers mistaking plans for maps"--Dorothy Sloan Books website, viewed September 26, 2013.
t. 1 [Text] -- [t. 2. Atlas/Plates]. - Genre
- Bookplates (Provenance)
Embossed stamps (Provenance) - Notes
- Tome 1, deuxième partie, has contributions of Lenoir (Parallèle des anciens monuments mexicains avec ceux de l'Égypte, de l'Inde et du reste de l'ancien monde) and Warden (Recherches sur les antiquités de l'Amérique du Nord et de l'Amérique du Sud et sur la population primitive de ces deux continents) with their own special title-pages and separate paging; no general title page in t. 2, Atlas, which has an engraved t.-p.
Spanish text of the "Relation des trois expéditions du capitaine Dupaix" with the French translation by C. Farcy; some pages printed in double columns in French and Spanish.
Attribution: accompagnée des dessins de Castañeda membre des trois expéditions et dessinateur du Musée de Mexico, et d'une carte du pays exploré; suivie d'un parallèle de ces monuments avec ceux de l'Égypte, de l'Indostan, et du reste de l'ancien monde, par M. Alexandre Lenoir, créateur de Musée des Monuments Français, membre de la Société Royale des Antiquaires de France, de celle de Londres, etc., d'une dissertation sur l'origine de l'ancienne population des deux Amériques et sur les diverses antiquités de ce continent, par M. Warden, ancien Consul-Général des États-Unis, correspondant de l'Institut de France, membre de la Société Royale des Antiquaires de France, et de plusieurs autres sociétés savantes, avec un discours préliminaire par M. Charles Farcy, de la Société Royale des Antiquaires de France, et de la Société Libre des Beaux-Arts de Paris; et des notes explicatives, et autres documents, par MM. Baradère, de St. Priest, et plusieurs voyageurs que ont parcouru l'Amérique. - Series
- Dumbarton Oaks Digitization Project. Pre-Columbian Studies. Rare books
- Repository
- Tozzer Library, Harvard University
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Harvard University
