Tombs of the Memlooks, Cairo, with an Arab funeral

Title

Tombs of the Memlooks, Cairo, with an Arab funeral

Description

View of the Memlooks tombs in Cairo

ca. 1835

Artist

Vaugondy, de (1723-1786)

Didier Robert de Vaugondy (1723 -1786) also known as Le Sieur or Monsieur Robert, and his son, were leading cartographers in France during the 18th century. In 1757, Gilles and Didier Robert De Vaugondy published The Atlas Universel, one of the most important atlases of the 18th century. To produce the atlas, the Vaugondys integrated older sources with more modern surveyed maps. They verified and corrected the latitude and longitude of many regional maps in the atlas with astronomical observations. The older material was revised with the addition of many new place names. In 1760, Didier Robert de Vaugondy was appointed geographer to Louis XV. Gilles and Didier Robert De Vaugondy produced their maps and terrestrial globes working together as father and son. Globes of a variety of sizes were made by gluing copperplate-printed gores on a plaster-finished papier-mache core, a complicated and expensive manufacturing process, employing several specialists. In some cases it is uncertain whether Gilles or Didier made a given map. Gilles often signed maps as M.Robert, while Didier commonly signed his maps as ""Robert de Vaugondy"", or added ""fils"" or ""filio"" after his name. The Robert de Vaugondys were descended from the Nicolas Sanson family through Sanson's grandson, Pierre Moulard-Sanson. From him, they inherited much of Sanson's cartographic material, which they combined with maps and plates acquired after Hubert Jaillot's death in 1712 to form the basis the Atlas Universel.

Historical Description

Until his death in 1848, Muhammad Ali Pasha instituted a number of social and economic reforms that earned him the title of founder of modern Egypt. The immense debt resulting from Isma'il's projects provided a pretext for increasing European control, which culminated with the British invasion in 1882.The city's economic centre quickly moved west toward the Nile, away from the historic Islamic Cairo section and toward the contemporary, European-style areas built by Isma'il.Europeans accounted for five percent of Cairo's population at the end of the 19th century, by which point they held most top governmental positions. The British occupation was intended to be temporary, but it lasted well into the 20th century. Nationalists staged large-scale demonstrations in Cairo in 1919,five years after Egypt had been declared a British protectorate. Nevertheless, while this led to Egypt's independence in 1922, British troops remained in the country until 1956. During this time, urban Cairo, spurred by new bridges and transport links, continued to expand to include the upscale neighbourhoods of Garden City, Zamalek, and Heliopolis.