The exceptional beauty of Egypt’s monuments and landscapes has thrilled visitors for centuries.
From the beaches of the Red Sea Coast to the lush palm groves of Egypt’s oases, from the heritage of the Roman and Coptic periods to the architectural riches that followed the arrival of Islam, from the magnificent tombs and temples of ancient Egypt to medieval souks to Cairo’s bustling energy today, there is just so much to feast on in Egypt.
Featuring 165 color photographs and captions explaining the stories behind each image, Egypt is a stunning visual journey through an astonishing country.
Trevor Naylor is the author of Egypt Inside Out (AUC Press, 2020) and Cairo Inside Out (AUC Press, 2016, hardbound; AUC Press, 2020, paperback) and co-author of A Roving Eye: Head to Toe in Egyptian Arabic Expressions (AUC Press, 2014). He has been a visitor to, and resident of, Egypt since 1986.
From the earliest resthouses serving travelers on the Overland Route between Britain and Bombay to the grand Edwardian palaces on the Nile that made Egypt the exotic alternative to wintering on the Riviera, the hotels of Alexandria, Cairo, Luxor, and Aswan were always about far more than just bed and board. As bridgeheads for African exploration, neutral territories for conducting diplomacy, headquarters for armies, providers of home comforts for writers, painters, scholars, and archaeologists in the field, and social hubs for an international elite, more of importance happened in Egypt’s hotels than in any other setting. It was through the hotels that visitors from the west—the earliest adventurers, then the travelers and, finally, the tourists—experienced the Orient. This book tells the stories of Egypt’s historic hotels (including the Cecil, Shepheard’s, the Mena House, Gezira Palace, Semiramis, Winter Palace, and Cataract) and some of the people who stayed in them, from Amelia Edwards, Lucie Duff Gordon and Florence Nightingale to Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle, Winston Churchill, and TE Lawrence.
Strap on your sturdiest sandals and start planning your trip to Egypt in 1250 BC. You may have heard the rumors: the language is perplexing, there are no tourist facilities, and an aggressive, egocentric pharaoh rules the land. But Egypt will be a must-see vacation destination for millennia to come! So don’t delay—visit now, before the Roman tourist hordes arrive. Drawing on contemporary sources and years of experience excavating in Egypt, archaeologist Donald P. Ryan guides the time-traveling tourist on a journey up the Nile, taking in the sights of Memphis, the pyramids, Thebes, and beyond. En route he offers useful advice on everything from deciphering hieroglyphs to deciding which god to petition in the event of a scorpion sting. So leave the protective amulets at home and banish all fear of being sold as a galley slave. This imaginative guide is all you need to survive and enjoy your visit to Egypt in its glorious age of empire.
In 1872, Ismail Pasha, the khedive of Egypt, was the first to adopt the European custom of positioning heroic statues on public display as a symbolic message of the continuing authority of the ruling Muhammad Ali dynasty to which he belonged, but it was not until the early twentieth century and the determination of sculptor Mahmoud Mukhtar that such public art gained general acceptance, and today statues stand, ride, or sit in the streets, squares, and gardens of Cairo. Each sculpture adds a piece to the jigsaw of history spanning personalities and events that shaped the city and wider Egypt from 1805 to 1970, and here Cairo-based author Lesley Lababidi provides a unique perspective on Egyptian history through looking at more than thirty statues and monumental sculptures and the stories behind them. Between statues, she explores Cairo’s growth and its multidimensional identity, as manifested in the development and changing use of city space over the centuries, and examines the relationship of Cairo’s modern denizens with the landscapes, districts, palaces, archaeological sites, cafés, bridges, and gardens of their great and maddening city, the Mother of the World. Illustrated throughout with color photographs and archival pictures, Cairo’s Street Stories presents a unique and lively view of the history that fashioned the city’s streets and open spaces, and of the many and often unexpected uses to which its inventive inhabitants put them.
The stretch of the longest river in the world that nurtured the world’s first great civilization has drawn and impressed visitors since ancient times. The Greeks were fascinated by the mysterious annual flood of the Nile that brought both water and nourishing silt to the lands along its banks, while nineteenth-century travelers were amazed by the magnificent tombs and temples of Upper Egypt.
A Nile Anthology brings together the accounts and reflections of visitors and travelers to the Nile between Luxor and Aswan through the ages, from Herodotus in the fifth century BC, and the Arab geographers of medieval times, to such nineteenth-century luminaries as Amelia Edwards, Florence Nightingale, Jean François Champollion, Edward Lane, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. From the practicalities of river travel to descriptions of the pharaonic monuments, via the sights, sounds, and smells of the teeming souks, our writers guide us through a world and an age long gone.
About the series: The elegant, pocket-sized volumes in the AUC Press Anthology series feature the writings and observations of travel writers and diarists through the centuries. Vivid and evocative travelers’ accounts of some of the world’s great cities and regions are enhanced by the exquisite vintage design in small hardback format that make the books ideal gift books as well as perfect travel companions. Designed on cream paper stock and beautifully illustrated with line drawings and archival photographs.
