Sifting through time
Traveling through Egypt: From 450 BC to the Twentieth Century, ed Deborah Manley and Sahar Abdel-Hakim, American University in Cairo Press, 2004.
Walk through the second court of the mortuary temple of the Ramasseum on the West Bank of Luxor and behold the compelling fallen colossi of Ramses II. Know, then, that you are not the first to be moved by the sight of unabashed self- glorification in ruins, which inspired Shelly's famous sonnet, Ozymandias :
"On the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my words ye Mighty and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Thousands of years before tourism became both government policy and a mega million-dollar business employing agencies, the media and modern technology to bring as many tourists as possible into the country, Egypt was a popular stop on adventure routes of travellers crossing from west to east. And one consequence of the fact is that all across the country from Alexandria to Aswan, from St Catherine to the Western Desert, you cannot help associating what you see today with the perceptions of those who saw it before you; layers of tourist history, if you will, are piled imperceptibly under the sand.
While failing to mention Ozymandias, Traveling Egypt: From 450 BC to the Twentieth Century does bring together the writings of those who travelled through this ancient land. In one slick hard-cover volume that slips easily into the backpack, Strabo, Ibn Haukal, Mark Twain and Amitav Gosh all share their impressions of Egypt. And in presenting their work the editors have managed to weave a rich tapestry of Egyptian history from the viewpoint of outsiders covering a time span of centuries.
Testimonies and anecdotes vividly illustrate not only these writers' observations but the changes that have informed the Egyptian travel industry, if it can be so called, through time: the construction of the Mahmoudiya Canal in the 19th century, which created a new route connecting Alexandria and Cairo; the construction of the Suez Canal, which gave birth to a new itinerary for those crossing Egypt on their way to India; and the introduction of steam navigation, which brought more women tourists to the country; not to mention Thomas Cook's revolutionary "organised tours" as of 1869.
As editors Deborah Manley and Sahar Abdel-Hakim point out in their introduction, "by bringing together a patchwork of travellers' voices and testimonies that tell of the palimpsest that is Egypt, this book reflects today's Egypt just as it probes into its history. It reveals not only what is present but also how it came into being and how it was perceived and encountered. It speaks of both what has been and what is."
The writings collected in this book are organised according to place: Accounts of disembarking in Alexandria by Herodotus, Ibn Jubayr and Edward Lane all come together. The point -- well taken, more or less -- is to create "a new narrative of Egypt". Thus R R Madden, writing in 1825, tells us that the water of the Nile "exceeds that of any other river in the world"; Abdel-Latif Al Baghdadi (1200) describes traditional Egyptians stews as a mixture of meat, nuts and rose hips; Samuel Bevan (1849) takes a lesson in donkey riding in Alexandria to see Cleopatra's needle; Eliza Fay mounts her "ass" on 24 July in 1779 and sees the "outside of St Athanasius's Church, who was Bishop of this Diocese, but it being now a mosque [we] were forbidden to enter, unless on condition of turning Mahometans, or losing our lives, neither of which alternative exactly suited my ideas, so I deemed it prudent to repress my curiosity."
Two hundred twenty one pages of travel writing in the most diverse sense possible: Some accounts explain in great detail what it was like to stand beneath the as yet still standing Pharos -- the great lighthouse of Alexandria and one of the seven wonders of the world -- out on the Mediterranean Sea; others describe "ferocious animals" such as lions and jackals that lived in abundance in Nubia; Robert Curzon, for his part, describes the wonders of a Philae Temple whose wall paintings -- which have since been washed away by the waters of the Nile and the construction of two dams in Aswan ---- are, to his eyes, as vivid as the day they were painted.
But this is the kind of book I would suggest you take along on actual trips -- a travel reading companion. Reading one short text after another on the balcony on a sunny afternoon is rather not the best way to go about utilising the material compiled. And if you do not recognise all the names mentioned, not to fret: a friendly list of brief biographies supplies relevant dates and commentaries for everyone quoted.
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