West Coast Obstetrician Discovers Bible Illustrated by David Roberts

My profession is medicine, but my passion is Egyptology. Whenever I travel, I visit museums and used-book stores. So it was that I found myself in a modest little bookshop in Seattle. “I do have something that’s sort of on Egypt,” the proprietor told me. “It’s a Bible, but I haven’t been able to learn much about it. It has some great lithographs in it.”

Indeed, it did—32 prints and six maps. The prints were by David Roberts, the 19th-century illustrator who painted what are probably the most popular pictures of the Holy land of all times. We struck a deal, and I started the search for more information.

As Roberts’ work was and is of such enormous popularity, I thought it would not be too difficult to 035obtain information about the publication of this Bible. I was wrong. I could not locate a copy in any major American library. The New York Public Library did not have a copy. Neither did the Library of Congress.

Nor does the catalogue of the British and Foreign Bible Society’s Library list this Bible. However, since the society is concerned with the text rather than the illustrations, it has not attempted to record every publisher of the essentially unchanged text the Authorized (King James) Version during 19th century.

Turning to publications about Roberts, I could find no mention of a Roberts-illustrated Bible.