NILE ANTHOLOGY: Travel Writing Through the Centuries

Egypt is the gift of the Nile, as ancient writers observed, and the rising of the Nile was a life-giving event for the people of ancient Egypt who depended on its water. For the Arab traveller Ebn Haukal in the 10th century, Egypt was mysterious territory, and the source of the crocodile-infested Nile was a great unknown. Ten centuries later, a visitor in 1910 describes the men who work the shadufs that supply water as having "muscles that work like metal bands". Most of the descriptions in this fascinating pocket-sized book come from the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1873 Amelia Edwards travelled up the Nile on a Dahabiya, which she describes as being like an "Oxford University barge". The women have their own cabin deck and there is a general sitting room with space for the men's guns and women's hats. Making a similar journey, Florence Nightingale describes the effect of a sandstorm with visibility at nil and danger of collision. Prince Puckler-Muskau is impressed by the Temple at Luxor and in 1930 Princess Marta Bibescu remembers the perfume of mimosa as she is entertained to a lavish dinner on a high terrace, to the accompaniment of music from a phonograph. Veteran travel writer H. V. Morton describes the "grim and desolate" approach to the Valley of the Kings by donkey in earlier times, and other famous travellers including Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle comment on the magnificent engineering of the Aswan Dam. Designed on cream paper stock and beautifully illustrated with line drawings and archival photographs. 152pp.