The wealthy numismatist and archaeologist Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey (1804−1892) undertook a long journey around the eastern Mediterranean from 1842 to 1844 after learning the daguerreotype process. The plates he brought back, which were only discovered in 1920, are the earliest known photographs of Greece, Palestine, Egypt, Syria and Turkey. The view of the mosque in Jerusalem is one of his largest daguerreotypes, occupying half a plate.