Full title: Deux lettres A Mylord Comte d'Aberdeen, sur l'authenticité des inscriptions de Fourmont. Par M. Raoul-Rochette, Membre de l’Institut Royal de France, conservateur du cabinet des medailles et antiques de la Bibliothèque du Roi, l’un des Rédacteurs du Journal des Savans, &c. &c.

4to. pp. [4], 139, [1], including 4 plates. Signatures: A-R4, S2. Later blue cloth.

Only of two known copies of this first and only edition of an entirely credulous response to the charges of fantasy and forgery laid on Michel Fourmont by the English scholars Richard Payne Knight (1791, see Bib# 9736966) and (via the Rev. Robert Walpole (1817-18, see Bib# 1074399)) George Hamilton Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen. The dispute came to constitute ‘an episode in the diplomatic war between France and Great Britain in which archaeology was often exploited’ (O. Gengler, ““Deux lettres à Mylord Comte d’Aberdeen”: Öffentliche Briefwechsel und Kontroverse über die Inschriften von Michel Fourmont am Anfang des 19. Jh.”, in K.R. Krierer et I. Friedmann (ed.), Netzwerke der Altertumswissenschaften im 19. Jahrhundert. Vienna, 2016, pp. 61-71), and triggered a sequence of devastating replies, culminating in the rout of Fourmont’s apologists. See also Gengler’s particular study of this text in K. B. Krierer & I. Friedmann (eds.), Netzwerke der Altertumswissenschaften im 19. Jahrhundert (Vienna, 2016).

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