Part of Potocki's journey was made to search for the origins of the ancient Scythians. In 1828 the German Orientalist and traveler Heinrich Julius Klaproth asked the American Philosophical Society's permission to have an additional copy made of this manuscript, from which he prepared the work for publication, entitled "Voyage dans les steps dAstrakhan et du Caucase . . . Histoire primitive des peuples qui ont habité anciennement ces contrées (2 v., Paris, 1829).