Old Algiers
Category Archives: Travel
Travels in Arabia
One of the books I picked up over the years was a summary of early travelers to Arabia by Bayard Taylor, a noted traveler and poet. The 1892 edition I have is also available at archive.org as a pdf. It is well worth reading for its description of several classic travelogues. It starts with a discussion of the Niebuhr expedition.
Who Owns the Holy Land?
As another year draws to a close, it is hard not to think in larger terms of the course of the last century. The world has seen two world wars and far too many atrocities to think of our technological and commercially driven age as golden. But in it all there has been humor. The American writer Mark Twain was a humorist with political insight. His greatest books belong to the century before, from the mother of all Holy Land travelogues, Innocents Abroad, to Huckleberry Finn and his adventurous friend Tom Sawyer. Surely one of the greatest humorists ever, Mark Twain did more than tell funny stories. His work survives in part because it uses humor to remind us of the unfairness and unwavering mundaneness of life.
In Tom Sawyer Abroad Twain offers a vivid critique of the kind of Orientalism that Edward Said rightly views as a style for dominating the Orient. Tom is not the ugly American abroad but the naive traveler finding out that the world has problems beyond flooding of the Mississippi. One of the more poignant passages goes straight to the core of the contemporary political crisis over Palestine. Who owns the Holy Land? The dialogue, as is often the case in Twain’s homespun rendering, speaks for itself:
Continue reading Who Owns the Holy Land?Loti on Palestine
First English translation of ‘La Galilée’, an account of Pierre Loti’s travels in the Holy Land from Jerusalem to Beirut, via Damascus and many other interesting places, in 1894.
Pierre Loti (1850-1923) was born Louis-Marie-Julien Viaud into a Protestant family in Rochefort in Saintonge, South-West France (now Charente Maritime). He was an officer of the French Navy and a prolific author of considerable note in 19th-/early-20th-century France, publishing many novels and numerous accounts of his travels around the world. He was a member of the French Academy. Apart from his literary talents, Loti was a pioneer photographer and this translation of his journey from Jerusalem to Beirut in 1894 is greatly enhanced by the reproduction of some of the photographs he took at the time.
Volume includes 12 historic photos taken by Pierre Loti and 1 map.
For details. click here:
With Pierre Loti in Persia
My friend, the historian G. Rex Smith, has recently translated into English a marvelous travel diary by the French military official and traveller Pierre Loti (1850-1923). It is also available on Amazon as a Kindle Book. This day-by-day diary details Loti’s trip along the caravan trail of 1900 from the coast at Bushire to Shiraz and his ultimate goal of Isfahan in order to visit the area during the season of roses. One might expect such an account to be dry, but Loti comments on what he saw, including the people, along the way and one gets a first-hand sense of what it was like to travel a treacherous route that was at times over pure desert and at other times up or down seemingly impenetrable mountain heights. There is also a brief account of his stop at Muscat on the way to Persia. Smith, with the aid of his son, has done an admirable job in reflecting the flavor of the original French and includes 24 photographs taken by Loti. This is a book well worth reading, whether you are interested in Persia at the time or not.
The original French version is available as a pdf here. Archive.org has quite a few of his works.
For information about Loti online, check out https://biography.yourdictionary.com/pierre-loti and https://museeprotestant.org/en/notice/pierre-loti-1850-1923-2/.
Tim MacIntosh Smith
Rethinking Egyptian Cosmology and the Grand Canyon
By El-Sayed el-Aswad
This article relates to a previous paper entitled “Egyptian Cosmology and the Grand Canyon” published by Tabsir on September 1, 2007. I revisited the Grand Canyon in October this year (2021) to have a closer look that might help with rethinking earlier views. In this present thesis I aspire to shed more light on the obfuscated issue of ancient Egyptians and other past people who are thought by several explorers to have impacted the Grand Canyon and other places in the North America prior to the arrival of Columbus. In fact, there has been ongoing debate since the appearance of a front-page story of the Arizona Gazette on April 5, 1909 reporting on an archeological expedition of the Grand Canyon in which an underground network of tunnels, caves and cities was found above the Colorado River, containing various oriental and ancient Egyptian artifacts, statues, hieroglyphs, and mummies, among other items. The report in the Arizona Gazette relied on the findings of G. E. Kinkaid and Professor David Jordan (McEwen, 2000; Reyes, 2019). It is interesting to note that, preceding them, John Wesley Powell, an American geologist and the first director of the Smithsonian’s Bureau of Ethnology, made several expeditions funded by the government, to the area in 1868 and 1871-1872, and proposed the name of the “Grand Canyon” instead of the previous name, the “Big Canyon.” Powell and other explorers coined historically and mythically inspired names of temples and towers including those of Isis, Osiris, Horus, Ra, Set, Cheops Pyramid, and Shiva, for example (Carpenter, 2020) for some of the outstanding and poignant geographical features/sites in the Canyon.
The following points highlight the controversial aspects or pros and cons concerning the findings of Kinkaid reported by Arizona Gazette.
1- The Smithsonian Institute, motivated by conspiracy theories, rejected both the findings of Kinkaid and the Gazette’s report.
2- The Smithsonian Institute described the report of the Arizona Gazette as a hoax aimed at gaining publicity and selling more copies.
3- The Smithsonian’s Department of Anthropology denied hiring Kincaid and Professor Jordan for conducting any research. It also denied any records verifying the existence of Kincaid or Professor Jordan (Carpenter, 2020).
4- Government institutions have been involved in protecting what they consider a forbidden zone encompassing secret caves and sensitive areas in the Grand Canyon, even guarding them with armed forces. People have not been allowed to approach these caves. This forbidden zone contains Egyptian and oriental monikers as well as ancient manmade chambers (Carpenter, 2020).
5- Those who support the findings of both Kinkaid and the Arizona Gazette’s report argue that the Smithsonian Institute intended to cover up archeological discoveries in order to preserve the current view that there was no transoceanic contact in pre-Columbian time (Eisten, 1999) and that the ancient Egyptians never ventured outside of the river Nile (CNY Artifact Recovery, 2013).
6- Several authors have indicated that the Smithsonian, in its rejection of the historical findings, referred to the Phoenix Gazette rather than the Arizona Gazette, which might be considered an error, but might also be viewed as a cover-up (CNY Artifact Recovery, 2013; McEwen 2000).
7- The government has been criticized for its role in covering up historical and archeological discoveries that oppose traditional academic teachings (Carpenter, 2020). As Don Lago (2009) put it, when the Smithsonian and the government deny the reality of the Egyptian cave, they are denying the existence of the spiritual world; they become symbols of the secular worldview.
8- Supporters of the findings of Kincaid and Jordan state that Professor D. S. Jordan, who served as President of Indiana University (1885-1891), and as President and then Chancellor of Stanford University (1892-1916), was affiliated with the Smithsonian for a 30-year period (1880-1910), when he was offered a top job at the Smithsonian in 1906. In 1898, Jordan made an expedition down the Grand Canyon. He, accompanied by T. Kincaid, also made an expedition to Alaska. He is also prominently found in many Smithsonian publications from the 1800s (Newswire, 2014). In a word, despite their denial of any association with him, Professor Jordan’s photo can be found within the Smithsonian Archives (See, Accession 90-105, Science Service Records, Image No. SIA2008-4524: https://collections.si.edu/search/detail/edanmdm:siris_arc_397686?q=Professor+David+Starr+Jordan&fq=online_media_type%3A%22Images%22&record=14&hlterm=Professor%2BDavid%2BStarr%2BJordan&inline=true)
9- Despite the denial of the existence of Egyptian caves, there are caves named after the explorers of Kincaid and Powell (Reyes, 2019). Forensic geologist, Scott Wolter (2014), funded by the History Channel, produced a video documenting caves and other sites in the Grand Canyon pertaining to Egyptian treasures discovered in the Grand Canyon.
10- In conclusion, there is an urgent need to objectively rethink historical and archeological discoveries in the Grand Canyon and elsewhere without disturbing cultural and historical chains.
References
Carpenter, Mark A. (2020, 1 November). Forbidden Zone of The Grand Canyon: Legends, Landmarks & Lies. Ancient Origins: 17-51. Retrieved from https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-americas/grand-canyon-forbidden-zone-0014481
CNY Artifact Recovery (2013, Dec. 29). Egyptian Treasure in the Grand Canyon. Retrieved from https://cnyartifactrecovery.wordpress.com/tag/phoenix-gazette/
Lago, Don. (2009). The Origins of the Grand Canyon Egyptian Cave Myth. Grand Canyon Historical Society, 20(2), 2-11. Retrieved from http://grandcanyonhistory.org/uploads/3/4/4/2/34422134/top_2009_2.pdf
McEwen, Barry (2000, December 1). Ancient Egyptian treasures in the Grand Canyon: Suppressed archeological information and metaphysical paradox? TETRA-MATRIX@prodigy.net (McEwen). Retrieved from https://www.cyberspaceorbit.com/text/0000tx09x.html
Newswire. (2014, Sept. 12). Smithsonian’s Enigmatic Prof. Jordan, Linked to 1909 Arizona Newspaper Article, Identified. Retrieved from https://www.newswire.com/news/smithsonians-enigmatic-prof-jordan-linked-to-1909-arizona
Reyes, Anita (2019, July 19). Legend of Egyptian Artifacts in the Grand Canyon. See The Southwest. Retrieved from https://seethesouthwest.com/the-legend-of-the-egyptian-artifacts/
Wolter, Scott (2014). American Unearthed: Egyptian Treasure Discovered in the Grand Canyon (S2 E5) | Full Episode. Channel History, YouTube Video #39 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPBgFAETrF4&ab_channel=HISTORY ?
Yemen Military in the early 19th century
The Library of Congress has an online print of an engraving by Andrea Bernieri. It does not appear to be based on an actual observation by the artist. Below is the description on the website:
This hand-colored engraving of a work by Andrea Bernieri (flourished 1826–42) depicts Yemeni horsemen with lances exercising in the courtyard of a fort. The horsemen are watched by a soldier holding a musket, and civilians are looking on in the foreground. Bernieri was one of the Italian artists who contributed works to a 15-volume set by Giulio Ferrario (1767-1847) entitled Il costume antico e moderno, o, storia del governo, della milizia, della religione, delle arti, scienze ed usanze di tutti i popoli antichi e moderni (Customs old and new, or the history of government, militia, religion, arts, sciences, and the ways of all nations, ancient and modern) published in Italy in 1823–38. Ferrario was a Milan publisher, printer and librarian whose monumental work contained more than 1,500 hand-colored plates depicting clothing from the classical period through the early 1800s, as well as many architectural drawings and engravings. The engraving appeared as plate 29 in Asia, volume 5 of Ferrario’s work. It is from the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection at the Brown University Library.
Bernieri, Andrea, flourished 1826-1842.
I have not been able to find the exact match of the volume with the image above, although an edition from 1833 includes two engravings of Arabs of the Peninsula in a chapter that is primarily about Mecca. These come across as rather fanciful, especially the females with no veils. These images are attached below.
As pointed out by Noha Sadek, the military image above is a copy of an earlier image in an edition of Niebuhr’s travel account. Below is the earlier image it is based on from the 1774 French edition:
