[MAP] General map of Egypt / Carte Generale de L'Egypte

Alexandria: A. Nicohosoff, c1940.

Original folding coloured map of Egypt by A. Nicohosoff, issued in Alexandria, Egypt in circa 1940, which folds away into a buff pictorial wallet printed with navy blue lettering. Extended measurements 35 x 25 inches. Many features are highlighted including, towns, villages, railway lines, rivers, canals (Suez), drains, roads and tracks, Mudiriya boundaries, Markaz boundariesm ruins, S/S lines, landing grounds for aeroplanes, and aerodromes. The map was drafted by Alexandere Nicohosoff, an engineer and the proprietor of the Establissement des Arts Graphique, one of Egypt's leading publishers of maps and guides from around 1920 to 1950. A fine copy loosely housed in the original, slightly creased, printed wallet.

During this era, Alexandria was one of the most fashionable and cosmopolitan cities in the world, the haunt of writers, adventurers and businessmen. The present map was made in the first half of World War II, when Egypt (a British Protectorate) was fighting off a German invasion led by General Erwin Rommel's famed Afrikakorps. At the climax of the harrowing Western Desert Campaign, the British Allied armies under Generals Harold Alexander and Bernard Montgomery decisively defeated the Germans at the Second Battle of El Alamein (23 October 23 - November 11, 1942), saving Egypt for the remainder of the war. Map itself is in superb condition, wallet slightly rubbed.