View all 16 comments. Aug 27, Timothy Ferguson rated it really liked it Shelves: Are these people sociopaths? Seriously, the way these people behave toward the Arabs is just amazing A great book about Victorian tourists in Egypt.
AMELIA B. EDWARDS
Their cluelessness is shocking. Aug 01, Kay rated it really liked it Shelves: A Victorian travel classic. May 12, Hella rated it it was amazing Shelves: Wat een verrukkelijk boek is dit. Toen reizen nog een avontuur was, toen Egyptische oudheden nog half onder het zand lagen, toen je zelf onderweg nog eens een tombe kon openen, of een waterpijpje roken met een lokale sjeik. In reisde Amelia Edwards met de boot de Nijl af, met een klein reisgezelschap en een grote bemanning die roeide, trok, eten verzorgde en met lokale overheden onderhandelde. Rijke buitenlanders maakten Nijlreizen, op eigen gelegenheid of met de stoomboot van Thomas Cook.
Edwards is ontzaglijk belezen en bereisd, en ze maakt prachtige tekeningen bij haar minutieuze en sfeervolle verslagen. Smakelijk vertelt ze over de reisavonturen, gedegen doet ze verslag van alle bezienswaardigheden. De Abu Simbel tempel later, na de bouw van de Aswan dam naar een plek hogerop verplaatst lag nog vlak aan de Nijl, half door zand overstroomd.
De tempel van Esneh lag tot aan de kapitelen onder het zand. Natuurlijk is Edwards een dame van haar tijd.
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Bij de armoede van de bevolking of de bemanning staat ze niet erg stil. Wel lijkt de positie van de iets beter gesitueerde vrouwen haar afschuwelijk, die zitten alleen maar binnen en vervelen zich dood, terwijl Edwards zelf al die schatten ziet, en onverschrokken stikdonkere graftombes betreedt, of de piramides beklimt dat mocht toen nog gewoon.
Een leven en een reis om jaloers op te zijn. Heerlijk om zo'n levendig verslag te mogen lezen. Feb 13, Liz rated it really liked it Shelves: A really fun travel book; that is, fun to read while travelling, even if one is not sailing up the Nile. I find it harder to complain about modern travel, for one thing. One commenter called the book "slow". What, exactly, would you expect? It's a travel journal, after all: There is, however, writing like this: Now, although the most delightful occupation in life is undoubtedly sketching, it must be admitted that the sketch A really fun travel book; that is, fun to read while travelling, even if one is not sailing up the Nile.
Now, although the most delightful occupation in life is undoubtedly sketching, it must be admitted that the sketcher at Abu Simbel works under difficulties… Lastly, there are the minor inconveniences of sun, sand, wind, and flies. The whole place radiates heat, and seems almost to radiate light.
The glare from above and the glare from below are alike intolerable. Dazzled, blinded, unable to even look at his subject without the aid of smoke-coloured glasses, the sketcher whose tent is pitched upon the sand slope over against the great temple enjoys a foretaste of cremation. When the wind blows from the north…, the heat is perhaps less distressing, but the sand is maddening. It fills your hair, your eyes, your water-bottles; silts up your colour-box; dries into your skies; and reduces your Chinese white to a gritty paste the colour of salad-dressing.
As for the flies, they have a morbid appetite for water-colours. They follow your wet brush along the paper, leave their legs in the yellow ocher, and plunge with avidity into every little pool of cobalt as it is mixed ready for use. Nothing disagrees with them; nothing poisons them — not even olive-green. Jun 16, Gail Carriger rated it it was amazing Shelves: One of the best ways to get a feel for not just the Victorian behavior abroad but also what Egypt was like during the s and the style of writing during this time.
A must read for writers of historical fiction. Sep 28, E. Jan 20, Magali rated it really liked it Shelves: Wonderful Best description of Egypt and sights and artifacts I have ever read. Her skills as an author made the place and the people come alive. No wonder Elizabeth Peters, who is my favorite author, was inspired by her. The reading was good and there was some interesting info about the geography of Egypt.
But so much racism Jul 07, Sandy rated it really liked it Recommends it for: This was a great book to read. I really enjoyed, for the most part, her descriptions of Egypt. It was very interesting to get a feel of what travel was like during the Victorian era. She really has a way of describing the landscape of Egypt and all of her travel adventures in the Victorian era in a very interesting and entertaining way.
It takes a little to get into the Victorian style of writing, but it is quite enjoyable. One thing I found a little over-done were the descriptions of ruin sites This was a great book to read.
A Thousand Miles up the Nile: a momentous journey.
One thing I found a little over-done were the descriptions of ruin sites. It was interesting to have them described in great detail as really none of the sites had yet to be excavated at the time this book was written, but at times for me she went into too much detail and it got a bit dry. I think she was really trying to document what she saw in great detail as she already had knowledge around how the sites were being plundered and defaced even in this early time of Archeology, which is great for a historical record, but tedious to read.
I really had mixed emotions while reading this book. If I did not feel like I was on such a time crunch, I probably would have enjoyed reading it at a more leisurely pace.
Amelia Edwards - Wikipedia
I really enjoyed it and got a lot out of it, it will serve me well in my upcoming adventures ……at times I just felt over it. I am very glad I read it though. Jun 04, Kathy rated it liked it Shelves: Amelia Edward's account of her travels in Egypt, in the mids I only read pieces of chapters of this book She gives a sort of documentary feel to her travels Jun 19, Lucy rated it really liked it Shelves: Some of her adventures and her opinions are truly outrageous, but none can argue that she was not committed to saving the antiquities in Egypt.
I reread Elizabeth Peters 's Crocodile on the Sandbank recently and was struck anew by how similar it is to this tale.
Amelia's "restoration" of Abu Simbel is particularly overwhelming. Nevertheless, it is a life that is gone from the Nile and there is a certain sadness in reading of it. It is surely not least among the glories of learning, that those who adorn it most and work hardest should ever be readiest to share the stores of their knowledge.
I am anxious also to express my cordial thanks to Mr. Pearson, under whose superintendence the whole of the illustrations have been engraved. To say that his patience and courtesy have been inexhaustible, and that he has spared neither time nor cost in the preparation of the blocks, is but a dry statement of facts, and conveys no idea of the kind of labour involved.
Where engravings of this kind are executed, not from drawings made at first-hand upon the wood, but from water-colour drawings which have not only to be reduced in size, but to be, as it were, translated into black and white, the difficulty of the work is largely increased. In order to meet this difficulty and to ensure accuracy, Mr. Pearson has not only called in the services of accomplished draughtsmen, but in many instances has even photographed the subjects direct upon the wood. Of the engraver's work — which speaks for itself — I will only say that I do not know in what way it could be bettered.
Text: Sabine Huebner
It seems to me that some of these blocks may stand for examples of the farthest point to which the art of engraving upon wood has yet been carried. The principal illustrations have all been drawn upon the wood by Mr. Percival Skelton; and no one so fully as myself can appreciate how much the subjects owe to the delicacy of his pencil, and to the artistic feelings with which he has interpreted the original drawings.
Of the fascination of Egyptian travel, of the charm of the Nile, of the unexpected and surpassing beauty of the desert, of the ruins which are the wonder of the world, I have said enough elsewhere. I must, however, add that I brought home with me an impression that things and people are much less changed in Egypt than we of the present day are wont to suppose.
The household life and social ways of even the provincial gentry are little changed. Water is poured on one's hands before going to dinner from just such a ewer and into just such a basin as we see pictured in the festival-scenes at Thebes. Though the lotus-blossom is missing, a bouquet is still given to each guest when he takes his place at table. The head of the sheep killed for the banquet is still given to the poor. Those who are helped to meat or drink touch the head and breast in acknowledgment, as of old. The musicians still sit at the lower end of the hall; the singers yet clap their hands in time to their own voices; the dancing-girls still dance, and the buffoon in his high cap still performs uncouth antics, for the entertainment of the guests.
Water is brought to table in jars of the same shape manufactured at the same town, as in the days of Cheops and Chephren; and the mouths of the bottles are filled in precisely the same way with fresh leaves and flowers. The cucumber stuffed with minced-meat was a favorite dish in those times of old; and I can testify to its excellence in Little boys in Nubia yet wear the side-lock that graced the head of Rameses in his youth; and little girls may be seen in a garment closely resembling the girdle worn by young princesses of the time of Thothmes the First.
In these and in a hundred other instances, all of which came under my personal observation and have their place in the following pages, it seemed to me that any obscurity which yet hangs over the problem of life and thought in ancient Egypt originates most probably with ourselves. Our own habits of life and thought are so complex that they shut us off from the simplicity of that early world. So it was with the problem of hieroglyphic writing. The thing was so obvious that no one could find it out. As long as the world persisted in believing that every hieroglyph was an abstruse symbol, and every hieroglyphic inscription a profound philosophical rebus, the mystery of Egyptian literature remained insoluble.
Then at last came Champollion's famous letter to Dacier, showing that the hieroglyphic signs were mainly alphabetic and syllabic, and that the language they spelt was only Coptic after all. If there were not thousands who still conceive that the sun and moon were created, and are kept going, for no other purpose than to lighten the darkness of our little planet; if only the other day a grave gentleman had not written a perfectly serious essay to show that the world is a flat plain, one would scarcely believe that there could still be people who doubt that ancient Egyptian is now read and translated as fluently as ancient Greek.
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Yet an Englishman whom I met in Egypt — an Englishman who had long been resident in Cairo, and who was well acquainted with the great Egyptologists who are attached to the service of the Khedive — assured me of his profound disbelief in the discovery of Champollion. As I then knew nothing of Egyptian, I could say nothing to controvert this speech. Since that time, however, and while writing this book, I have been led on step by step to the study of hieroglyphic writing, and I now know that Egyptian can be read, for the simple reason that I find myself able to read an Egyptian sentence.
The study of Egyptian literature has advanced of late years with rapid strides. Papyri are found less frequently than they were some thirty or forty years ago; but the translation of those contained in the museums of Europe goes on now more diligently than at any former time. Religious books, variants of the Ritual, moral essays, maxims, private letters, hymns, epic poems, historical chronicles, accounts, deeds of sale, medical, magical and astronomical treatises, geographical records, travels, and even romances and tales, are brought to light, photographed, facsimiled in chromo-lithography, printed in hieroglyphic type, and translated in forms suited both to the learned and to the general reader.
Not all this literature is written, however, on papyrus. The greater proportion of it is carved in stone. Some is painted on wood, written on linen, leather, potsherds, and other substances. So the old mystery of Egypt, which was her literature, has vanished. The key to the hieroglyphs is the master-key that opens every door.
Each year that now passes over our heads sees some old problem solved. Each day brings some long-buried truth to light. Some thirteen years ago, 2 a distinguished American artist painted a very beautiful pictured called The Secret of the Sphinx. In its widest sense, the Secret of the Sphinx would mean, I suppose, the whole uninterpreted and undiscovered past of Egypt. In its narrower sense, the Secret of the Sphinx was, till quite lately, the hidden significance of the human-headed lion which is one of the typical subjects of Egyptian Art.
Thirteen years is a short time to look back upon; yet great things have been done in Egypt, and in Egyptology, since then. Edfu, with its extraordinary wealth of inscriptions, has been laid bare. The whole contents of the Boulak Museum have been recovered from the darkness of the tombs.
The very mystery of the Sphinx has been disclosed; and even within the last eighteen months, M.