Panorama d'Égypte et de Nubie, avec un portrait de Méhémet-Ali et un texte orné de vignettes

Hector Horeau was an architect and Egyptologist who travelled around the Eastern Mediterranean from 1837 to 1839 and made numerous watercolors of many of the monuments in Egypt. Upon his return to France, he worked with the printmaker Sigismond Himely to produce Panorama d’Egypte, a lavishly illustrated book based on his journey. In a prospectus for the work, Horeau stated that the exactitude of its reproductions was due to drawings made on site along with the "benevolent communication of daguerreotype views." Horeau’s statement has been variously interpreted, but it is likely that he consulted the collection of daguerreotypes amassed by Noël Marie Paymal Lerebours for his multi-volume work, Excursions daguerriennes, in order to augment his own watercolor views. At the very least, Horeau was aware of the work of the French-Canadian explorer and daguerreotypist Pierre-Gustave Joly de Lotbinière, who is credited as the author of one of the vignettes in Horeau’s book. Panorama d’Egypte is thus an unusual hybrid of printmaking and photography before the advent of photographically illustrated books and the development of photomechanical printing.