ARISTOCRATS AND ARCHAEOLOGISTS

Sub-titled 'An Edwardian Journey on the Nile' this is a quality The American University in Cairo Press publication, very well illustrated throughout. A collection of letters in a small painted box passed down through three generations of a London family is the starting point for a vivid account of a three-month journey up and down the Nile, and like a time capsule, they bring to life a lost world of Edwardian travel and social mores, of Egypt on the brink of the modern age, of the great figures of Egyptology, and of aristocrats and archaeologists. In 1907-8 Ferdinand Platt, known as Ferdy, travelled to Egypt as the personal physician to the ailing 8th Duke of Devonshire, one of the giant statesmen of the late Victorian age, and his family party, recounting his adventure in letters to his young wife in England. Ferdy reported on the sights of the country around him with his amateur Egyptologist's eye and the people he met along the way including Howard Carter and Winston Churchill. He also recorded his private thoughts and intimate observations of a formal and stratified society, soon to be witness to its own extinction. The affectionate husband in his detailed letters, particularly from on board the Serapis in 1907, writes about visiting the temples of Rameses II and Seti I. 'I was delighted to see the beautiful sculptured and painted walls in the former once more.' And 'You won't find the Bridge or railway marked on any of the maps: they are all too old but Nag Hamadi is between Beliana and Kena. The hills are just beginning to get pink. Natives sitting outside a sort of caffee playing some game like draughts. The Nile is quite smooth, not a ripple and the smoke from sugar factory chimneys goes straight up...' Beautifully captures the golden age of Egyptology and travel during the Belle Epoch. Dozens of colour photographs, illustrations such as the Egyptian swallow and Sacred Lake at Karnak, a complete itinerary and map of the journey. A must for armchair travellers and historians. 144pp, colour.