A Thousand Miles up the Nile - book review
Photo: Edwards’ book (2008) copy of the original printed in 1890
Being on vacation gives one the time to read a book that has been on my shelves for some time, but had never seemed to have the time to finish.
A Thousand Miles up the Nile, by Amelia B. Edwards, is a travel log of her excursion throughout Egypt and Lower Nubia by dahabeeyah[1] in 1873-1874. This should be mandatory reading for any Egyptology student, not only for its ample descriptions of the temples along her route, but to understand the history of ‘archaeology’ in Egypt from that period. The book is written with a supremely colonial attitude and is quite racist, but is perhaps an accurate picture of how many British viewed all their colonies at the time.
As a founder of the EEF it is quite shocking to hear the Writer intone, “We soon became quite hardened to such sights (finding human bones), and learned to rummage among dusty sepulchres with no more compunction than would have befitted a gang of professional body-snatchers.” (p. 51) The idea that everything in Egypt belonged to them and they had every right to take whatever they chose is prevalent throughout the text.
As an environmentalist I was also immensely disturbed by the following description – and the complete disregard for the wanton exploitation of African fauna for the pleasure of ownership by wealthy foreigners.
“I shall not soon forget an Abyssinian caravan which we met one day just coming out from Mahatta. It consisted of seventy camels laden with elephant tusks…There must have been about eight hundred and forty tusks in all…Following these, on the back of a gigantic camel, came a hunting leopard in a wooden cage, and a wild cat in a basket…Anything more picturesque that this procession, with the dust driving before it in clouds, and the children following it out of the village, it would be difficult to conceive. One longed for Gerôme[2] to paint it on the spot.” (p. 204-205)
Despite the bad taste left in my mouth throughout various passages, I feel that the importance of the work comes from the many beautiful and exacting descriptions of the sites and the lovely illustrations. I highly recommend this work to all who have a passion for understanding the history of Egypt.
[1] A dahabeeyah is a type of passenger vessel used on the Nile. It is normally a shallow-bottomed, barge-like vessel with two or more sails.
[2] Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1824 – 1904, was a French painter and sculptor in the style known as ‘academicism’.
