Karte von Egypten

Title

Karte von Egypten

Description

Map shows Egypt with the red sea and parts of Sudan and Ethiopia. With map of the new harbour of Alexandria.

dated 1798

Artist

Walch (1757-1815)

Johann Walch ( 1757 in Kempten-Allgäu- 1815 Augsburg ) was a german painter, drawer, printer and publisher. He was the son of Sebastian Walch and married in 1786 the daughter of the printer and publisher Johann Martin Will and worked with his father in law. In 1789 he was able to pruchase the herritage material of the copper printer and publisher Matthäus Seutter und Tobias Conrad Lotter with 208 copper plates and 25000 maps material. With this material he expanded the company into the famous map publishing company called „Joh. Walch’sche Landkarten Handlung“. Later then, it was called "Druckerei Joh. Walch".

Historical Description

Egypt: The ancient Egyptian country name Kemet means "Black Land" and refers to the fertile soil of the Nile Valley in contrast to the "Red Land" of the neighboring deserts. The European terms Egypt, engl. Egypt comes from the Latin Aegyptus and thus ultimately from the ancient Greek Aigypto. The Copts claim to be the direct descendants of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs. From their name came the Greek Aigyptos, which became Egypt in German. Islamic Arabs conquered the Nile valley around 640; From now on Egypt was dominated by changing power centers - Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo. Under the Umayyads (661–750), Arab tribes settled in the fertile plains and from then on determined the cultural appearance of Egypt. With the coming to power of Saladin, the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty (1171–1249), Cairo became the center of Muslim resistance to the Christian crusades. Around 1250 the palace guard, which was made up of Mamluks, originally mostly Turkish military slaves, rose and took over. At the end of the 13th century, the Mamluks destroyed the last Crusader states on Asian soil. Even after Egypt was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1517, administration remained in their hands. The economic decline resulting from the discovery of the sea route to India (1498) made Egypt one of the poorest provinces of the Ottoman Empire. It was not until the landing of the French expeditionary force under Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798 that the Ottoman rule ended. When the French had to abandon their Oriental campaign after the British Admiral Nelson won at Abukir in the same year, the Albanian officer Muhammad Ali Pasha used the situation to seize power (1805–1849). He and his successors were able to achieve a certain independence under Ottoman rule, pursued an expansionary policy and initiated the history of modern Egypt.