Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Letters from Pharaoh's Land Part II: Aboard the S.S. Memphis, 1895



In a previous post (see “Letters from Pharaoh’s Land, Part I,” December 1, 2015), I outlined a brief history of tourism on the Nile River in the late nineteenth-century and indicated that Dr. Freeman Allen, future husband of Mary Ethel Gibson, took a cruise there in 1895. By the late decades of the nineteenth-century, American and European tourists regularly vacationed in Egypt, staying in luxurious hotels, visiting local markets, exploring archaeological sites, and—thanks to the services of businesses like Thomas Cook and Sons and the Thewfikieh Nile Navigation Company—cruising the Nile River. In this, the second part of a two-part post on Nile River cruises, we discuss Dr. Allen’s 1895 cruise—adding a more personal dimension to our story of late-nineteenth-century Egyptian tourism.

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

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.