The American in Egypt, with Rambles through Arabia Petræa and the Holy Land, during the years 1839 and 1840.

£175 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

The author was an observant traveller and witty writer, here producing one of the most amusing accounts of contemporary Egypt and the people encountered during his travels. In chapter XI, for example, he lambasts the pompousness of the illustrious British orientalist J.S. Buckingham, whom he had heard lecture on Egyptian artefacts, in New York: “If I am right in my recollection, Mr. Buckingham, the ‘ex-member of Parliament,’ in his fanciful lecture with which he enlightened the dark and benighted inhabitants of the obscure city of New York, in the winter of 1838, speaking of this ‘Pompey’s Pillar’ told us that it was not ‘Pompey’s Pillar,’ or rather it was not Pompey the Great’s Pillar — but a pillar that was erected to the memory of a certain Popaios, who had imported a quantity of corn into Alexandria, at a time when there was a great scarcity of that article in Egypt, and distributed it among the inhabitants gratis…” (p. 149). Ibrahim-Hilmy I, 143.

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