A pioneer of British Egyptology, Sir John Gardner Wilkinson (1797?1875) first travelled to Egypt in 1821, the year before Champollion published his breakthrough work on the Rosetta Stone. As public interest in Egypt grew, Wilkinson studied and sketched the country's major archaeological sites, and several of his works, describing what the increasing numbers of British travellers could expect to see, have been reissued in this series. This 1857 work was published as 'a companion to the Crystal Palace Egyptian Collections', and includes an introduction to Egyptian hieroglyphs by Wilkinson's friend Samuel Birch, of the British Museum. The Crystal Palace had been moved to a site in Sydenham in 1854, and housed a permanent collection of Egyptian antiquities, upon which Wilkinson draws in his highly illustrated account of the domestic life of the Egyptians. Birch's piece on hieroglyphs describes the decipherment, the ideograms, and the basics of phonetics and grammar.

This 1857 work was published as 'a companion to the Crystal Palace Egyptian Collections', and includes an introduction to Egyptian hieroglyphs. The Crystal Palace at Sydenham housed a permanent collection of Egyptian antiquities, upon which Wilkinson draws in his highly illustrated account of the domestic life of the Egyptians.