The Treaty of Ghent signed in 1814, ending the War of 1812, allowed Americans once again to travel abroad. Medical students went to Paris, artists to Rome, academics to Gottingen, and tourists to all European capitals. More intrepid Americans ventured to Athens, to Constantinople, and even to Egypt. Beginning with two eighteenth-century travellers, this book then turns to the 25-year period after 1815 that saw young men from East Coast cities, among them graduates of Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, travelling to the lands of the Bible and of the Greek and Latin authors they had first known as teenagers. Drawing on unpublished letters and diaries together with previously neglected newspaper accounts, as well as a handful of published accounts, this book offers a new look at the early American experience in Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean world. More than thirty illustrations complement the stories told by the travellers themselves.

*A fascinating study of the early American experience in Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean *Includes previously unpublished and rarely seen personal travel accounts complemented by more than 30 illustrations

About the Author
Andrew Oliver is a retired art historian and museum administrator with degrees from Harvard College and the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. He was director of the Museum Program at the National Endowment for the Arts and a curator in the Greek and Roman Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has written and lectured on the decorative arts of the ancient world for many years and has travelled widely in the Mediterranean. Mr. Oliver is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Reviews
"The highly readable book is a major contribution to the history of Egyptology and to the study of East-West encounter." --Jason Thompson, author of A History of Egypt from Earliest Times to the Present "Andrew Oliver has rescued an earlier, happier American encounter with the Middle East - when American came to admire, to explore and to record. In many cases these American accounts, mostly unpublished, are less arrogant and more original than those by contemporary Europeans. Indispensable for anyone interested in the history of travel, and of the Middle East in the age of Mohammed Ali Pasha." --Philip Mansel, author of Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean. "This book on the little-known history of the American presence in Egypt, which was to have a continuing influence on American art and taste, fills a much-needed gap in both the modern history of Egypt and America" --Morris Bierbrier, Department of Egyptian Antiquities, British Museum. "For those interested in the study of travellers and travel in Egypt, this book is a welcome new source of information about many forgotten journeys and will be valuable for descriptions of Egypt and its monuments" --Neil Cooke, Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East; "a thorough compendium of travellers' tales, accompanied by appropriate and meticulously researched illustrations... this book is a significant contribution to the history of travellers from the United States to the lands of the Ottoman Empire ...The book could almost be a work of reference it is so packed with encyclopaedic detail ... a fascinating picture of two nations first emerging onto the world stage from the shadow of two great empires." Sheila McGuirk, ASTENE Bulletin 64;



Book Information
ISBN 9789774166679
Author Andrew Oliver
Format Hardback
Page Count 432
Imprint The American University in Cairo Press
Publisher The American University in Cairo Press
Weight(grams) 910g
Dimensions(mm) 230mm * 150mm * 36mm