The Nile Read online

  With the coming of Christianity to the Roman Empire, the “pagan” temples and tombs of the ancient Egyptians rather lost their appeal, and it was Egypt’s deserts that drew new visitors, in the form of hermits seeking a life of prayerful asceticism and solitude. The Islamic conquest of the Nile Valley in the mid seventh century AD changed all that. While Christian monasteries in the wilderness continued to flourish, Arab scholars showed renewed interest in Egypt’s ancient past, and a particular fascination for the River Nile upon which the country’s prosperity depended—and which was so different from anything to be found in the Arab homelands. The wonders of the Nile inspired writers based in Egypt, many of them teachers at Cairo’s al-Azhar mosque, as well as visitors from further afield, such as the Persian traveller Naser-e Khosraw who visited Cairo in the eleventh century and the German monk Rudolph von Suchem who saw the pyramids in 1336. In 1589, an anonymous Venetian reached as far upstream as Luxor, becoming one of the first Europeans since Roman times to comment on the ruins of ancient Thebes.

  It was not until the eighteenth century, however, that Egypt really started to impinge on European consciousness. In the wake of the Enlightenment, many of the early visitors were devout Christians in search of concrete proof of the Old Testament stories. Hence the first Englishman to travel up the Nile much beyond Cairo was an Anglican clergyman, Richard Pococke, who came to Egypt in the winter of 1737–8. After visiting the pyramid of Meidum and the low-lying Fayum depression, both accessible by donkey from Cairo, Pococke hired a dahabiya to take him upstream all the way to Aswan and beyond. The published account of his travels, A Description of the East and Some Other Countries (1743), contained the first drawings and descriptions of many of Egypt’s major monuments, including the temples of Karnak and Luxor, Esna and Edfu, Kom Ombo and Dendera, stimulating further interest in pharaonic civilisation. At the same time, a Danish naval captain named Frederik Norden travelled to Egypt at the command of King Christian VI to make a full and detailed account of the country; Norden reached as far south as Wadi Halfa (at the foot of the Second Nile Cataract, now in Sudan) and published the first description by a European of the temples of Nubia. By the middle of the eighteenth century, European explorers had opened up the entire Nile Valley, from Cairo to the First Cataract, and brought its ancient monuments to a wider audience than ever before. Popular interest in Egypt had begun in earnest.

  The Napoleonic expedition to Egypt in 1798 and the resulting publication of the monumental Description de l’Egypte, together with Nelson’s famous victory at the Battle of the Nile and the decipherment of hieroglyphics by Jean-François Champollion, all fed a growing fascination with the Nile and its ancient civilisation. A steady flow of European travellers made their way to Egypt, often as part of a wider “grand tour” of the Holy Land. Most tourists (such as Florence Nightingale in 1849) chose to hire a dahabiya to sail up the Nile, and at the start of the season some two or three hundred craft could be found moored up at Bulaq, the main river port of Cairo, awaiting hire. Tourists in the know would employ a local guide to choose a suitable boat and make all the arrangements for them. It was important to select the right craft, for, with no hotels south of Cairo, a dahabiya would need to serve as a floating home for at least two months, the typical journey time up the Nile to Aswan and back again.

  On hiring a boat, the first thing to be done was to scuttle it in the river, to rid it of rats, snakes and other infestations of vermin. Those who failed to take this precautionary measure were invariably afflicted by all sorts of biting insects throughout their trip up the Nile. After immersion in the river for a few hours, the dahabiya would be brought out to dry, and then the provisions could be taken aboard. The standard list of requisites recommended for any journey up the Nile included basics such as tea and coffee, sugar and flour, rice and potatoes. Baedeker suggested, in addition, sixty bottles of Médoc supérieur, thirty-five further bottles of red and twenty-five of white wine, a bottle each of brandy, cognac, whisky and vermouth, plus champagne for festival days and entertaining guests. The daughter of the British financier Ernest Cassel insisted on taking a cow on board her dahabiya, to provide her with fresh milk daily. Other wealthy patrons took a piano for evening entertainment.

  By the second half of the nineteenth century Egypt had carved out a distinctive niche for itself as a fashionable winter resort for the wealthy. From late November to the end of March, consumptive aristocrats and arthritic financiers abandoned their cold, damp, foggy homes in London or New York for the clear blue skies and warm dry air of the Nile Valley. The Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII) took a trip up the Nile in 1862 and liked it so much he returned six years later, giving the country a royal seal of approval. The grand opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 put Egypt in the international spotlight as never before and increased demand for Nile travel yet further. Suddenly, there was an opportunity to make money from mass tourism. One enterprising man from Leicester seized it, changing the face of Nile travel—and of Egypt—for ever.

  Three extracts from his travel company’s 1887 programme tell the story:

  The events of the last four or five years have created a greater desire than ever in the minds of those who can afford the necessary time and money to visit Egypt and the Nile;21

  Prior to 1869 the only mode of travelling on the Nile was by the luxurious and expensive dahabeah, or by small steamers, worked at irregular dates and at considerable inconvenience to travellers, by what was termed the Azizeeh Company;22

  This was the position when … the founder of our business, engaged, in February, 1869, two of the small steamers for the first publicly-advertised party to the First Cataract and back.23

  The Leicester entrepreneur was none other than Thomas Cook. Together with his equally business-minded son John Mason Cook, they revolutionised tourism to Egypt, in terms of price, speed and reliability. In January 1870, J. M. Cook hired from the Khedivial administration (for the princely sum of £1,848, payable before departure in English and French gold) a new, large steamer called Beherah, with beds for forty-four guests (ten times the number usually accommodated on a dahabiya), and thus “personally conducted to the First Cataract and back the largest party of English and American tourists that had to that date ascended the river as one party.”24 The trip was a great success, and gave Cook & Son “the idea that the traffic of the Nile might be considerably developed, and that through its development the fellaheen might be considerably benefited.”25 Thus was Victorian entrepreneurship dressed up as philanthropy, and by the autumn of the same year Cook’s had been granted the sole agency for a passenger service by Nile steamer.

  With their monopoly and their Victorian efficiency, Cook’s were able to announce the first regular, reliable fortnightly service from Cairo to Wadi Halfa and back, calling at points of interest at fixed dates—and all for a fixed price (inclusive of all travel expenses and guides). What had previously taken two or three months by dahabiya could now be accomplished by steamer in three weeks (departure from Cairo on day one, arrival in Luxor on day seven, Aswan on day twelve, and back in Cairo on the evening of day twenty). The cost, too, had come down dramatically, from £90–120 per month for a dahabiya to £44 for the whole holiday by steamer. A trip up the Nile was suddenly both affordable and safe. That first season of 1870, three hundred American tourists registered at the U.S. consulate in Cairo before embarking on an Egyptian cruise.

  To cater for this growing number of visitors, further developments were undertaken both inside and outside Egypt. A new steamship service cut the journey time from Italy to Alexandria to just three-and-a-half days; a train from Alexandria to Cairo obviated the need for a hazardous boat-trip or overland journey; carriages were laid on in Cairo for the excursion to the pyramids, sparing patrons the discomfort of a donkey-ride; and official guides were provided at all the major sites throughout the Nile Valley. Tourism as we know it today had arrived.

  Some travellers bemoaned such panderings to convenience and lamented the rapi
d development of the country that followed in its wake: within just a few years of the steamers’ arrival, the once sleepy village of Luxor could boast post and telegraph offices, tennis courts and sporting clubs, a bar, a barber and an English church complete with its own chaplain. Those with the time and money could still opt for the romance of travelling by dahabiya, but for the thousands who patronised Cook’s offices in London (Ludgate Circus), New York (261 Broadway) and Cairo (at Shepheard’s Hotel), the convenience and price of a Nile steamer were a winning combination. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, Cook’s was in buoyant mood and expansionary mode. Just six years after launching its first steamer service from Cairo to Aswan, the company inaugurated a connecting service between the First and Second Nile Cataracts. The following year, 1877, Cook’s opened the first hotel in Luxor, to accommodate visitors who wanted to stay longer amidst the glories of ancient Thebes. Cook’s also had offices in all the principal towns along the Nile Valley, where tourists could send and receive mail and make onwards travel arrangements. (For example, steamer passengers could telegraph ahead before reaching Cairo to ensure their hotel carriages were waiting at the quay to meet them.) At Saqqara, Cook’s even paid to have the pyramid of Unas opened and cleaned, to provide customers with another monument to visit.

  For the winter season of 1886–7, Cook’s brought into service a new fleet of first-class steamers “fitted with every modern improvement”26 to cater to the same wealthy patrons that used to hire dahabiyas. According to the promotional literature,

  Each steamer has a piano, a small library, containing a few of the most interesting books upon Egypt, facilities for amusement in the saloon and on deck at night, a European doctor, and medicine chest fitted with all the drugs and appliances we consider most likely to be required on a Nile voyage … Each steamer is under the control of a competent European manager, in addition to the dragoman who acts as guide and interpreter on shore. The waiters and servants of every description are the best we can obtain in Egypt.27

  The first-class fare of £70 from Cairo to Wadi Halfa and back included accommodation for ladies’ maids. The ships were named after Egyptian royalty, ancient and modern—Tewfik, Prince Abbas, Prince Mohammed Ali and Ramesses—and attracted a corresponding clientele. A list of the VIPs who travelled up the Nile with Cook’s in its first two decades of business reads like a who’s who of Victorian high society:

  TRH the Duke & Duchess of Edinburgh

  HRH the Duke of Connaught

  the Emperor & Empress of Brazil

  HM the Queen of Denmark

  HRH Prince Alexander of Hesse

  Prince Jerome Napoleon

  HH the Maharajah of Baroda

  HH the Rao of Kutch

  HH the Thakore of Morvee

  four sons of the King of Siam

  His Grace the Late Archbishop of Canterbury

  Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone M.P.

  From first-class steamers and luxurious steam dahabiyas to cheaper express steamers and mail boats, Thomas Cook & Son had Nile travel effectively sewn up. In the company’s own modest opinion, “It will thus be seen that all who wish to travel on the Nile … need not hesitate to place their arrangements in our hands.”28

  Not all visitors to Egypt, however, fell under Cook’s spell. The company enjoyed an effective monopoly, but catered mainly for customers interested in “doing the sights” in as short a time as possible and having a relaxing holiday against an exotic backdrop (plus ça change). Individuals of a more romantic disposition, or with a genuine interest in Egyptian civilisation, still preferred—if time and money were no object—to travel the old-fashioned way, by dahabiya. And it is the dahabiya set who have provided the most evocative and enduring accounts of sailing on the Nile during the golden age of travel. Two such writers stand out—very different in character and disposition, but equally influential in the history of Egyptology.

  Amelia Edwards (1831–92) was a journalist and author whose literary career began at the tender age of seven, when one of her childhood poems was published in a weekly journal. In adulthood, as well as writing for various Victorian periodicals such as the Morning Post and the Saturday Review, Edwards edited popular books on history and art, and wrote novels of her own with titles such as Miss Carew, Monsieur Maurice and Half a Million of Money. But it was Egypt that became her abiding passion, sparked by an early introduction to John Gardner Wilkinson’s best-selling Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians and confirmed during a trip up the Nile by dahabiya in the winter of 1873–4. Edwards observed Egypt with a journalist’s eye—noting the “poverty, sickness and squalor”29 of the towns—and described it with the flair of a popular novelist. (Her evocation of life on the Nile, where “the skies are always cloudless, the days warm, the evenings exquisite,”30 is characteristic.) The resulting book, A Thousand Miles up the Nile (first published in 1877), remains a classic of travel writing. Her accounts of the ancient monuments are as memorable as her observations of nineteenth-century Egyptian life. Behind every pen-portrait there is a sensibility combined with a sharp wit that together make Edwards’ prose irresistible—and eminently quotable. Yet Edwards was no dilettante or mere observer. Appalled at the widespread destruction and mutilation of monuments she witnessed throughout the Nile Valley, on her return she founded the Egypt Exploration Fund (later Society) of London, with the express purpose of conducting scientific recording and publication of Egypt’s heritage before it was too late. In the work of the EES, and of the successive holders of the chair in Egyptology established by Edwards at University College London, her legacy lives on.

  In her noble aims for Egyptology, Amelia Edwards would have found a kindred spirit in another, near-contemporary writer on Egypt. The Reverend Archibald Sayce (1845–1933) would have concurred wholeheartedly with Edwards’ waspish observation that “the people in daha-beeyas despise Cook’s tourists; those who are bound for the Second Cataract look down with lofty compassion upon those whose ambition extends only to the First.”31 Unlike Edwards, Sayce was an academic and intellectual. He held the professorship of Assyriology at Oxford for nearly three decades and made pioneering contributions to the decipherment of the ancient Carian and Hittite scripts. But it was Egypt, rather than Assyria, which held a special place in Sayce’s affections, beginning with his first trip up the Nile in the early 1880s:

  Every day was a fresh revelation to me, the cloudless skies and warm air … gave me a sensation of life such as I had never felt before, and for the first time since I was born I found it a pleasure to live for the mere sake of living. The fellahin were still simple and unsophisticated, and the European was still to them a sort of prince who had dropped for a moment from another world. The Nile, with its myriad sails, was still the great highway of the country, untramelled by barrages and railway bridges.32

  Sayce was no romantic, however, and acknowledged the very real privations and dangers of rural Egyptian life:

  Two of the provinces still bore the marks of the famine of the preceding year, and in the more out-of-the-way places the peasantry and their children still held out their hands with the plaintive cry: loqmet êsh, “a crumb of bread.” Here and there the eastern bank was infested with bandits.33

  Sayce laid much of the blame for Egypt’s parlous state at the feet of the British imperial authorities, accusing Gladstone’s government of “making desperate efforts to escape from its responsibilities in Egypt,”34 with the consequence that “Upper Egypt that winter was in a state of anarchy … The Beduin on the outskirts of the desert … were plundering and murdering the fellahin.”35 In the absence of an effective government, “there were scarcely any tourists” and the infrastructure in Upper Egypt “had practically ceased.”36 (A visitor to Egypt over a century later, at the end of 2012, could easily have formed the same impression. In the wake of the Arab Spring, continuing political unrest was keeping the tourists away and dealing a hammer-blow to the already beleaguered Egyptian economy. In Aswan and Luxor, all government project
s had ceased, new roads and bridges had been abandoned half-built and there were mile-long queues outside every petrol station. Tourists were few and far between, and hotel occupancy in Luxor, even in high season, was a dismal 5 per cent.)

  Despite such difficulties, Sayce fell in love with the Nile Valley. He resigned his chair at Oxford and his teaching duties, moved to Egypt and bought a dahabiya: “On the 3rd of January 1891 I went on board my new home and entered upon a new life.”37 His boat was one of the largest of its type on the Nile and required a crew of nineteen, plus two servants. For the next eighteen years, Sayce spent his winters on the Nile, copying inscriptions, meeting Egyptologists, and entertaining various aristocratic visitors: “The Marquess of Northampton, then Lord Compton, with his wife and daughter, hired a dahabia and accompanied us up and down the river. At Assuan we found Lord and Lady Amherst of Hackney on board another dahabia …”38

  But the march of modernity could not be stopped, and the time of the Nile dahabiya was coming to an end, just as surely as the age of aristocracy. By the winter of 1907–8, Sayce felt that

  Life on the Nile had ceased to be the ideal existence it once was. Modern conditions had made the sailing dahabia an impossibility. Instead of sailing beside the banks and watching the ever-changing scenes on the shore it was now necessary to remain always in the middle of the stream and to substitute the smoke of the steamer for the sights and scents of the fields … The race of dahabia sailors was becoming extinct; they found it more profitable to serve on the steamers, where wages were higher and work less.39