David Roberts, born in humble circumstances in Scotland in 1796, developed a passion for both art and travel that brought him moderate fame and success in his lifetime but also enabled him to leave a historical treasure for all time.
In September 1838 Roberts traveled to the Middle East, visiting Egypt and the Holy Land, to record in painstaking detail the ancient monuments and temples then just beginning to capture the fancy of Europe.In Egypt he sailed down the Nile as far as Abu Simbel, then made his way slowly back, stopping at such places as Luxor, Karnak, Thebes, the Valley of the Kings, Dendara, Edfu, Giza and more.
In this elegant, oversize volume - a companion to a book on the Holy Land produced earlier - Fabio Bourbon gives us a day-by-day account of Roberts' Egyptian sojourn, using the artist's lithographs and excerpts from his diary to illustrate and illuminate the story. For each lithograph, there is also a modern photograph to show in striking detail how some things change and some things don't. Together they form a delightful package: time-travel extraordinaire.
We see, of course, the comparison between then and now; we see in the photographs the trappings of modern civilization and can easily ponder how the world has turned. But we also see in the lithographs many monuments that were half buried in sand in these pre-restoration days and can puzzle over the massive task it was to unbury them. Roberts also shows original settings for some of the great temples and monuments (including Abu Simbel) that had to be moved when the Aswan Dam was built. Some of those were rebuilt on higher ground; a few of the minor temples were given to other countries to be reconstructed in museums.
Roberts' main focus was the architecture, but he occasionally turned his attention to local people and thus also provides a look at the exotic customs and dress of the period.
In Cairo, Roberts was fascinated by the great mosques of the sultans, who then controlled the country. He was even granted per-mis-sion to enter one of them - provided he disguised himself as a Turk. He did - and all went well until he made the mistake of touching a holy piece of silk, an offense punishable by death had it become known that he was an infidel. But he escaped unharmed.
That adventure aside, for the most part the journey was rather pleasant given the extreme conditions. Heat was often a problem, but Roberts was able to get where he wanted to go and see what he wanted to see. And he felt quite satisfied with his work. After spending three days in Dendara, for example, he noted in his diary that he had about a hundred drawings. "Not bad for a month's work," he wrote. "Perhaps I did not do justice to these ancient relics, but few other artists in my circumstances could have afforded to stay longer, and I wonder how many of them could have produced more in the same time."
Few would argue that Roberts not only did the relics justice, but that he created an unsurpassed historical record in marvelous, artistic detail. He captured the imagination of Victorian England, and his work still has the power to do the same today.
Although many of these pieces have been published numerous times before, they are here arranged chronologically for the first time. And with the juxtaposition of modern views and the readable text, the book brings past and present together in a unique way.