Ruines du Temple d'Herment (Hermentis)
1849–50
Medium
Salted paper print from paper negative
Dimensions
Mount: Approximately 32 x 47 cm (12 5/8 x 18 1/2 in.)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.376.87
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the sun-baked sands of ancient Egypt with Maxime Du Camp *Ruines du Temple dHerment (Herment)*, a salted paper print from 1849–50. Captured during Du Camp's groundbreaking journey through Egypt alongside writer Gustave Flaubert, this image immortalizes the crumbling grandeur of the Temple of Hermopolis Magna (Hermentis), a Ptolemaic-era sanctuary dedicated to the god Thoth. As one of the earliest photographers to document Egypt's archaeological treasures, Du Camp brought distant ruins into sharp focus for 19th-century European audiences, fueling fascination with the Nile Valley's mys...
About the Artist
Maxime Du Camp · 1822–present
Maxime Du Camp (1822–1894) was a pioneering French photographer and writer whose adventurous spirit and technical innovation bridged literature and visual art during the mid-19th century. Born in Paris on February 8, 1822, to a prosperous family—his father a successful surgeon—Du Camp received a solid bourgeois education at the Collège Bourbon (now Lycée Condorcet), where he cultivated interests i...