From the Nile to the Cedars of Lebanon, Volume II: The Nile, Nubia and Thebes
Modernized, illustrated English edition of Reisebilder aus dem Morgenlande by Friedrich Dieterici (1848-1849).
From Egypt to Petra by way of Sinai, Berlin Arabist Friedrich Dieterici presses on to Palestine.
Read more ↓- about 200 pages
- Paperback
- English
Countries covered: Egypt · Sudan
About this book
On 1 November 1848, in Cairo, a young Berlin orientalist barely recovered from a long illness greets the Nile with three rifle shots. His doctor has prescribed three months on the river: Friedrich Dieterici boards a small dahabieh with his servant Ali and a Nubian crew.
Carried south between the palm groves and the desert, he hunts geese and ducks, watches for crocodiles, and listens to the almehs improvising verses under the lamp. He passes the first cataract, lands on the sacred island of Philae, shares a meal with a Nubian chief, weathers sandstorms and at last reaches the second cataract, at Wadi Halfa.
Then the boat drifts back downstream, from temple to temple: Abu Simbel and its colossi, Kalabsha, Kom Ombo, Edfu, Esna, where the dancers banished from Cairo live in exile, and the proud Safia. On Christmas Eve 1848 he enters the ruins of Thebes: Memnon, Karnak, Luxor, the Valley of the Kings.
On his return, the Cairo of Abbas Pasha awaits him: the house with its garden, the Oriental bath, the snake charmer, the lessons of an old Arabic master, the whirling dervishes, the slave market, the city lit up at night. What will he take away from this Egypt as he sets off for the Orient?
Product details
- Publisher
- Itinerarium Éditions
- Series
- The Old Orient
- The author
- Friedrich Dieterici
- Modern edition by
- Erik de Boisgrollier
- Language
- English
- Format
- Paperback, 6 × 9 in (15.2 × 22.9 cm)
- Pages
- about 200
The author
Friedrich Dieterici
Friedrich Dieterici was born in Berlin in 1821, the son of a statistician in the Prussian civil service, and trained in Arabic at Halle, Leipzig and Berlin. An orientalist, he left for Egypt in 1847, sailed up the Nile into Nubia, crossed Sinai and reached Palestine and Syria; he brought back the Reisebilder aus dem Morgenlande (1853). Professor of Arabic literature at the University of Berlin from 1850, he is best known for his editions of the poet al-Mutanabbi and his translations of tenth-century Arabic philosophy, notably the Brethren of Purity. He died in Berlin in 1903.
All books by Friedrich Dieterici →Sources
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, were compared. The Bodleian Library copy in Oxford brings the two parts together in 754 pages; the New York Public Library copy, in 397 pages, reproduces the same edition and adds nothing further. The text we selected for our work is therefore the 1853 Berlin edition, in the Oxford copy available on Internet Archive.
The scan, printed in Gothic type, has been converted into text, then proofread and cleaned. Dieterici's footnotes, explanations and references to the scholars he had read, have been kept: they belong to the traveller's narrative. This second volume corresponds to the continuation of the part devoted to Egypt. The narrative is not divided into numbered chapters: an untitled preamble opens the journey up the Nile, then the author's unnumbered subheadings mark its stages and scenes. The text thus established runs to about 38,500 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.
| Status | Edition | Copy | Language | Note | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Selected | Reisebilder aus dem Morgenlande, Berlin, Wiegandt und Grieben, 1853, 2 parts (I: Egypten; II: Sinai, Petra, Palästina), 754 pp. | Bodleian Library, Oxford, digitized by Google, Internet Archive | German | Complete copy of both parts of the 1853 edition, brought together in a single 754-page digitization. | View |
| Set aside | Reisebilder aus dem Morgenlande, Berlin, Wiegandt und Grieben, 1853, 397 pp. | New York Public Library, digitized by Google, Internet Archive | German | Another copy of the same edition, in only 397 pages; it contains nothing that the Oxford copy does not. | View |
The journey mapped
In the Same Place, Through the Centuries
-
Gustave Flaubert, Voyage en Égypte (1849-1850)
A year after Dieterici, Flaubert and Maxime Du Camp sail up the Nile in their turn, from November 1849 to the summer of 1850, as far as Wadi Halfa and the second cataract.
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Florence Nightingale, Letters from Egypt (1849-1850)
In the same winter as Flaubert, a young Englishwoman of twenty-nine sails up the Nile by dahabieh to Abu Simbel and the second cataract.
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Lucie Duff Gordon, Letters from Egypt (1865)
Suffering from tuberculosis, Lady Duff Gordon settles in Egypt in 1862 for the climate, as Dieterici had come there to recover his health.
Read a free edition → -
Amelia Edwards, A Thousand Miles up the Nile (1877)
In the winter of 1873-1874, an English novelist who came to Egypt almost by chance hires a dahabieh and sails up the river to the second cataract.
Read a free edition →
The modern editor
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