An Artist in Egypt

Woman so seldom figures in the history of the Mohammedan world that when she appears in the long records of the khalifs, the emirs and the vizirs, she is as welcome as a treble...

I had placed my bed on a rock high enough to get the benefit of any breath of cooler air which the north breeze might bring; the nightly drop in the temperature usual in the des...

From 1905 and onwards I spent five long seasons in Upper Egypt. I was engaged during a part of that time in reproducing a series of eighteenth dynasty bas-reliefs for four diffe...

From the end of March, when the wind shifts to the south, we get a taste of summer’s heat. The talk in the hotels is of home-returning steamers, and Cook’s offices are besieged...

I propose now to break the sequence of events during my second season at Thebes, and attempt to describe a desert journey I took early in November. During the months I spent at...

It is unfortunate that an artist, residing in Cairo for the purpose of painting its people and its buildings, cannot live in the city where his chief interests lie. For there ar...

We slumbered till the sun beat down on our tents. There was enough water obtainable to fill our collapsible baths to the brim, and good enough for the camels to drink--poor brac...

Amongst the guests who halted at the Villa Victoria, it was my good fortune to make the acquaintance of Mr. Palmer-Jones, an enthusiastic architect who had measured up some of t...

We had not long to wait before the _Mudir_, or Governor of Kosseir, arrived to welcome us. He was a stout, good-natured, middle-aged Maltese; he spoke English fluently, but with...

From the middle of January till the beginning of March not a day went by but some parties of visitors passed through Der el-Bahri to see Hatshepsu’s temple. They usually went to...

The promise I had made to my acquaintances in the Khan Khalil, to come again, was soon fulfilled. This great bazaar attracts me most when the season in the modern quarters of Ca...

The few incidents which occurred during the following six months, after I was reinstalled in my hut at Der el-Bahri, have been related in previous chapters. During the short sea...

I had not far to go along the filled-in canal before a partly pulled down housefront enabled me to see the court of a once important dwelling. It was similar in plan to many I h...

I returned to Cairo little the richer in artistic material, but feeling much the better for the few days of desert air. Though Cairo stands on the fringe of a desert, the three-...

I have never passed a season in Cairo without making a study of some sort in the Blue Mosque. There are many mosques of much greater architectural pretensions, as well as of mor...

I found a man, who was used to attending artists on their rounds, sooner than I had hoped for. He was a rougher type of man than my last one, but one to whom I took much more re...

Now the first thing to do was to look up my former servant, Mohammed el-Asmar, now a dragoman known as Mohammed Brown, the surname being the English interpretation of Asmar. I h...

My friend explained to the Sheykh my desire to set up an easel in some parts of his house. A suspicious fear added to his wish to please gave me an uncomfortable feeling of havi...

After a lapse of some years, I returned to Cairo to attempt once again to paint its ancient buildings, as well as the picturesque incidents seen in the shadows they cast or bath...

We left Lakéta at dawn the next day. Being on higher ground and so much further in the desert, we felt the cold more than on the previous morning, and it was hard to realise tha...

Passing once more the mosque of Kalaûn, I was attracted to one of its windows; not on account of its particular interest as such, but of its possibilities as a point of vantage...

I well remember how sentiment was shocked when it was proposed to construct a tram-line to the Pyramids of Gizeh: I may also have turned up the whites of my eyes at the mere tho...

The religious observances, the festivals, and the superstitions of Islam have been so fully described by Lane that it seems presumptuous to attempt to do so here. But they are s...