From the Nile to the Cedars of Lebanon, Volume I: Marseille, Alexandria and Cairo

Friedrich Dieterici's Reisebilder aus dem Morgenlande was published in Berlin by Wiegandt und Grieben in 1853, in two parts: the first devoted to Egypt, the second to Sinai, Petra and Palestine. Two copies of this edition, both digitized by Google and made available on Internet Archive, were compared. The Bodleian Library copy in Oxford brings the two parts together in a single file of 754 pages; the New York Public Library copy, which has 397 pages, reproduces the same edition and adds nothing further. The text we selected for our work is therefore the 1853 edition, in the Oxford copy.

The scan, printed in Gothic type, has been converted into text, then proofread and cleaned. The author's preface has been partly set aside: his apologies to the reader, the list of works he had taken with him and the mention of the accompanying map belong to the book's apparatus. The long meditative preamble that follows, written by the traveller from his own experience, has on the other hand been kept. This first volume corresponds to the first part of the edition, Egypt, which Dieterici divides into titled sections, from the journey through France and by sea to the scenes of life in Cairo. The text thus established runs to about 42,000 words.

How we transform the text. This book is neither a literal translation nor a facsimile: it is a rewriting in today's language, carried out in three stages. Modernisation renders the text in contemporary English; each place and person receives a single modern form, and period terms (currencies, measures, titles) are kept, with a light gloss where needed. Clarification untangles the long sentences of the period, one idea per sentence, adding nothing and removing nothing. Shaping the narrative divides the text into titled chapters and restores its flow; repetitive passages are condensed, but no dated, numbered or named fact is removed. Each stage is followed by a review of fidelity to the original text.