Letters from Pharaoh's Land Part I: Tourist Service on the Nile River

Cairo to Assouan: Map of the Nile River

 Twenty-one Days’ Trip from Cairo to First Cataract and Back, including the various Excursions as specified in the Itinerary, inclusive of Philae, donkeys (where required) to places visited on the river bank, provisions (wine excepted), and all the advantages in the Programme; FIRST-CLASS THROUGHOUT.

The above text, from an advertisement for the Thewfikieh Nile Navigation Company, appeared in the December 1895 edition of Gaze’s Tourists Gazette, the official publication of Henry Gaze and Sons, Ltd, a London travel agency. As the sole booking agent for the Thewfikieh Co., H. Gaze and Sons often advertised for the company, which provided tourist services on the Nile River. The same advertisement from which the above text is excerpted also outlined other important information, including price and the carrying capacity of the company’s fleet of steamships. In 1895, for the price of $171.50, a tourist could book passage on a steamship and spend three weeks on the Nile, soaking in the natural landscape and studying all the ancient ruins alongside the river.

Through late January and early February 1895, Dr. Freeman Allen, future husband of Mary Ethel Gibson, booked passage on the S.S. Memphis of the Thewfikieh Co. and took the same three-week trip on the Nile as advertised in Gaze’s Tourists Gazette. Departing from Cairo, the doctor sailed for Aswan at the first cataract in southern Egypt. Along the way, he traveled by donkey to explore all the principal archeological sites between Cairo and Aswan. These included the Karnak temple complex at Luxor and the Temple of Isis on the island of Philae. And he also got acquainted with a few of the tourists on board.

The details of Freeman Allen's trip and his impression of Egypt and his fellow travelers are recorded in letters to Mary Ethel Gibson written during his stay in Egypt. These letters not only provide us with a glimpse into the doctor’s personal impressions of the country, its history, and its tourists, but also provide a window into the fascinating history of Egyptian tourism in the late nineteenth-century—particularly travel on the Nile River, a booming enterprise with several prominent companies competing for customers.

Until the late nineteenth-century, the only way to travel on the Nile River was by dahabiya, a large, slow-moving sailing vessel. Typically, only wealthy individuals could afford to travel this way, taking leisurely three-month cruises on the river. There were no tourist agencies in Egypt to commission ships, provide accommodations, or supply the crews necessary to pilot the boats. So only those individuals with the funds and connections needed to organize these cruises could go on them.

However, this changed in the 1870s when businessman Thomas Cook introduced his fleet of steamships to the Nile cruise industry, significantly shortening the trip and cutting its cost. Soon similar companies, like the Thewfikieh Company, began to offer cruises of their own. Now what was once only available to the wealthy was open to the rising middle classes of Europe and North America, who increasingly found themselves with the disposable income and the leisure time necessary to go on long-distance vacations.

Advertising poster for Thomas Cook's Nile Flotilla, ca. 1889

By 1895, the tourism industry in Egypt had been well established, so when Dr. Allen embarked on his Nile cruise he entered an already existing world of middle- and upper-class American and European tourists seeking exotic locales to spend their newfound leisure time. In our next post, we will consider Dr. Allen’s experience on the Nile in greater detail, traveling with him as he explores Egypt’s ancient history and socializes with fellow tourists aboard the S.S. Memphis.

By Timothy Spezia, museum docent

Image Sources:
Egypt Map: http://imagesearchnew.library.illinois.edu/cdm/ref/collection/africanmaps/id/2326
Dahabiya: Khedive's Dahabeah(1906). From Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA). http://hdl.handle.net/1911/20898
Flotilla Advertisement: http://www.aucpress.com/t-AndrewHumphreys.aspx

Sources:
Freeman Allen to Mary Ethel Gibson, letters, January-February, 1895.

F. Robert Hunter, "Tourism and Empire: The Thomas Cook and Son Enterprise on the Nile, 1868-1914," Middle Eastern Studies 40, no. 5 (2004), pp. 28-54 via JSTOR.

"Gaze's Nile Tours: Winter 1895 and Spring 1896," Gaze's Tourists Gazette 8, no. 2 (December 1895), pp. 64-67

"The Nile Cruise, 1847 and 1897," from Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA), Rice University. www.timea.rice.edu/NileCruise.html. Accessed November 10, 2015.