15 - 21 February 2001
Issue No.521
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 15 - 21 February 2001 Issue No.521 |
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The bridegroom blows away the dust
The gods of publishing play fickle games, and when a writer, however much against his will, accepts 'no' for an answer the world may remain a poorer place, writes Jenny Jobbins. Had the British firm of John Murray fulfilled its agreement to publish the young Edward William Lane's Description of Egypt, the science of Egyptology would have proceeded at a faster pace. As it is, we are more fortunate than the deprived readers of other unpublished books. A hundred and seventy years after the original publisher failed to keep its promise, The American University in Cairo Press has resurrected Lane's abandoned work.
Portrait of Lane, ca. 1829, by his brother Richard
At an illustrated lecture at AUC the book's editor, associate professor of history Dr Jason Thompson, described how he rescued the manuscript from the shelves of the British Library, which had purchased it from Lane's widow. Lane's handwriting, Thompson said, was remarkably easy to decipher: of the 300,000 words, there was only one he could not read.
When Lane, an accomplished artist (he was a nephew of Gainsborough), arrived in Egypt in 1825 he had already learned as much about it as he could. "As I approached the shore [of Alexandria]," he wrote, "I felt like an Eastern bridegroom, about to lift up the veil of his bride, and to see, for the first time, the features which were to charm, or disappoint ... him. I was about to throw myself entirely among strangers, to adopt their language, their customs and their dress."
This was the aspect of Lane's study the public would come to know. His section on Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, removed from the original text of the Description at the request of John Murray, who dismissed it as irrelevant, was published separately; the first edition sold out in a few days, and the book has never been out of print.
Lane's first interest and love, though, was Egyptology. "In the Description, we see Lane the Egyptologist as well as Lane the scholar of the Egyptian people," Thompson said. "Had the book been published then it would have been the best book about Egypt ever written in English."
Lane was intensely disappointed over his failure to find a publisher for his Description. Excuses ranged from the contemporary British occupation with its own political affairs to the book's having "too many words, and too many pictures."
"He finally accepted that the Description would never be published," Thompson said. "But what he thought was a failure was merely an unusually long delay."
The lecture will be repeated at 7 pm on Monday 19 February in Room 600 of the Cairo American College in Maadi. Visitors are requested to bring ID.
Description of Egypt, Edward William Lane, edited and with an introduction by Jason Thompson, The American University in Cairo Press, 2000. pp588.
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