Ordnance Survey of the Peninsula of Sinai, by Charles William Wilson and Henry Spenser Palmer. Southampton (England): Ordnance Survey Office, on the title page: 1869 (the preface is dated 1871). English. Part I (out of three).
Part I of the Ordnance Survey of the Peninsula of Sinai by Charles William Wilson and Henry Spenser Palmer, under the direction of Colonel Sir Henry James, Director-General of the British Ordnance Survey. The volume contains an account of the survey of the Peninsula of Sinai, the methods of survey and the findings. Twenty plates (some in color) with illustrations, plans and sections. A photograph of Oyun Musa (The springs of Moses, Sinai) is mounted on the title page.
Charles William Wilson (1836-1905) was a British Royal Engineers officer, geographer and archaeologist, a pioneer of the modern survey of Palestine. In 1868, he and the British engineer and officer Henry Spenser Palmer (1838-1893) embarked on an expedition to the Peninsula of Sinai on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund. The findings of the survey were published in three parts (five volumes): a review of the survey, map portfolio and three photograph portfolios. This is the first part, reviewing the survey and its archeological findings.
One of the participants in the expedition was the scholar and orientalist Eduard Henry Palmer (1840-1882), who headed another expedition to Sinai in 1882 (in the midst of the 'Urabi Revolt against the British involvement in Egypt) and was murdered by Bedouins together with the other members of the expedition.
[3] leaves, 323, [1] pp. + XX plates, approx. 48 cm. Good-fair condition. The leaves are detached. Stains and some creases. Small tears and wormholes to margins of several leaves (the book was fumigated). An ex-library copy (stamps to several leaves; label to inside front board). Detached binding, worn and slightly damaged.