From the heights of these pyramids, forty centuries look down on us… Napoleon Bonaparte

View of colossal figure,
probably Ramses II, carved into rock that
is the Great Temple at Abu Sunbul, Egypt

Temples, tombs, & hieroglyphs: a popular history of ancient Egypt New York: William Morrow, 2007 Barbara Mertz Egypt History To 332 B.C. Hardcover. 2nd ed., 1st William Morrow ed. and printing. xxvi, 324 p., [16] p. of plates: ill. (some col.), maps; 24 cm. Includes index. Clean, tight and strong binding with clean dust jacket. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text. VG/VG 

Egypt. Pyramids. Pyramid & camel
rider reflected in Nile overflow

Writing as Elizabeth Peters, world-renowned Egyptologist Barbara Mertz is the author of the  popular bestselling mystery series featuring archaeologist Amelia Peabody. In Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs, Dr. Mertz explores the breathtaking reality behind her fiction by casting a dazzling light on a remarkable civilization that, even after thousands of years, still stirs the human imagination and inspires awe with its marvelous mysteries and amazing accomplishments.

Egypt. Pyramids. Pyramids,
‘shaddouf’ in foreground

A fascinating chronicle of an extraordinary epoch — from the first Stone Age settlements through the reign of Cleopatra and the Roman invasions — Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs brings ancient Egypt to life. Illustrated with pictures, maps, photographs, and charts, it offers glimpses into Egyptian society and everyday life; stories of the pharaohs and the rise and fall of great dynasties; religion and culture; folklore and fairy tales; stories of the explorers, scientists, and unmitigated scoundrels who sought to unravel or exploit the ageless mysteries; and insights into the magnificent architectural wonders that rose up from the desert sands.

Egypt. Pyramids. Entrance to the
Great Pyramid of Cheops

Revised and updated to include the results of the most recent historical research and archaeological finds, Dr. Mertz’s book is unhampered by stuffy prose and dry academic formality. Instead, it is a vibrant, colorful, and fun excursion for anyone who’s ever fantasized about exploring the Valley of the Kings, viewing up close the treasures of the temple of Queen Hatshepsut, or sailing down the Nile on Cleopatra’s royal barge.

Egypt – Beni Hassan – Entrance to
Painted Tombs

Red land, black land: daily life in ancient Egypt New York: William Morrow, 2008 Barbara Mertz Egypt Civilization To 332 B.C. Hardcover. Originally published: New York: Coward-McCann, 1966. 2nd ed., 1st William Morrow ed. and printing. xxi, 410 p., [16] p. of plates: ill. (some col.); 24 cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. [391]-396) and index. Clean, tight and  strong binding with clean dust jacket. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text. VG/VG

Egypt. Pyramids. Ascent of the Great Pyramid

Displaying the unparalleled descriptive power, unerring eye for fascinating detail, keen insight, and trenchant wit internationally renowned Egyptologist Barbara Mertz brings a long-buried civilization to vivid life. In Red Land, Black Land, she transports us back thousands of years and immerses us in the sights, aromas, and sounds of day-to-day living in the legendary desert realm that was ancient Egypt.

Egypt. Pyramids. Nile Valley from
summit of Great Pyramid

Who were these people whose civilization has inspired myriad films, books, artwork, myths, and dreams, and who built astonishing monuments that still stagger the imagination five thousand years later? What did average Egyptians eat, drink, wear, gossip about, and aspire to? What were their amusements, their beliefs, their attitudes concerning religion, childrearing, nudity, premarital sex? Mertz ushers us into their homes, workplaces, temples, and palaces to give us an intimate view of the everyday worlds of the royal and commoner alike. We observe priests and painters, scribes and pyramid builders, slaves, housewives, and queens — and receive fascinating tips on how to perform tasks essential to ancient Egyptian living, from mummification to making papyrus.

Cairo and the pyramids. Pyramids
and the Sphinx. Taken from the S.E.

An eye-opening and endlessly entertaining companion volume to Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs, Mertz’s extraordinary history of ancient Egypt, Red Land, Black Land offers readers a brilliant display of rich description and fascinating edification. It brings us closer than ever before to the people of a great lost culture that was so different from — yet so surprisingly similar to — our own.

Egypt. Pyramids. The Step Pyramid at Sakkara

But my estimates, for instance, based upon book information, were simply ridiculous, fanciful images of African attractions were soon dissipated, anticipated pleasures vanished, and all crude ideas began to resolve themselves into shape… Henry Morton Stanley

Although grossly misrepresented and inadequate the only thing that epitomizes the English in Africa in the 19th century more than Stanley’s search for Livingstone is a view of the former, in a pith helmet, being served tea by a native.  Livingstone was a Scottish Congregationalist pioneer medical missionary with the London Missionary Society who filled the various roles of Protestant missionary martyr, somewhat incongruously of a rags to riches British Horatio Alger, of scientific explorer, an imperial reformer[sic], an anti-slavery crusader, and prehaps most incongruously of all as an advocate of empire. Interestingly enough he had resigned from the London Missionary Society after they demanded that he do more evangelizing and less exploring and he is only credited with converting one African – Sechele who was the chief of the Bakwena tribe. He may have repented of his choice since he took his final breaths while kneeling in prayer at his bedside dying from malaria and internal bleeding caused by dysentery while in present day Zambia. In any event his subsequent glorification as posthumous national hero – buried in Westminster Abbey, no less – in 1874 led to the founding of several major central African Christian missionary initiatives and the London Missionary Society was laying claim to his greatness as late as 1901.

Having had success as a missionary and as a missionary explorer – traveling without a retinue that included soldiers – he was the first Victorian to reach Mosi-oa-Tunya (“the smoke that thunders”) waterfall which he promptly anglicized to Victoria Falls. This book covers his Zambezi Expedition which was, for the most part,  a failure  although he revealed his character with his famous statement,  I am prepared to go anywhere, provided it be forward. While he had failed in most of his objectives the memoir does not dwell on those failures and in the superlative English prose of the 19th century gives the reader a very British view of Africa.

Henry Morton Stanley had been sent to find him by the New York Herald newspaper in 1869 and finally succeeded at the shores of Lake Tanganyika on November 10, 1871 uttering the famous words, Dr. Livingstone, I presume?, ironic since Livingstone was the only other white man for hundreds of miles. But Stanley did not bring him back. Livingstone had made explorations and received the plaudits of the Royal Geographical Society for them but he was not finished with Africa.  He still wanted to find the source of the Nile and so he explored the Lualaba and, failing to find connections to the Nile, returned to Lake Bangweulu and its swamps to explore possible rivers flowing out northwards. He never did find the object of his explorations but I often wonder if maybe he didn’t find himself.

Narrative of an expedition to the Zambezi and its tributaries: and of the discovery of the lakes Shirwa and Nyassa, 1858-1864 London: Duckworth, 2001      David and Charles Livingstone Livingstone, David, 1813-1873 Journeys  Africa, Central; Livingstone, Charles, 1821-1873 Journeys  Africa, Central; Zambezi River; Africa, Central Description and travel Hardcover. Facsim. of ed. published: London: John Murray, 1865. xviii, 458 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.  Clean, tight and strong binding in black cloth binding with gilt title on edge. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text. VG

Commissioned during Britain’s golden age for expeditions to chart the Zambesi river for minerals and trade, David Livingstone left England in 1858 for what is today Zimbabwe and discovered an area whose sharp contrast between misery and natural beauty bewitched him.  Outraged by the racial injustice he found during the eight-year expedition, Livingstone wrote this gripping account in a refreshingly contemporary style. Worthy of the best writers of the time, the book was an instant success and turned him into one of Britain’s most famous public persona.

I shot an elephant in my pyjamas this morning… Dr. Livingstone I. Presume

The Perfect Victorian hero : The Life and Times of Sir Samuel White Baker Edinburgh : Mainstream, 1982  Michael Brander Samuel White Baker Hardcover. 1st. ed. and printing. 184 p., maps on endpages, 24 cm. Includes bibliographical information and index. Clean, tight and strong binding with clean dust jacket. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text. VG/VG

Samuel White Baker was an English explorer born in London on the 8th of June 1821.  After two years in Mauritius the desire for travel took him in 1846 to Ceylon, where in the following year he founded an agricultural settlement at Nuwara Eliya, a mountain health-resort. Aided by his brother, he brought emigrants from England, together with choice breeds of cattle, and before long the new settlement was a success. During his residence in Ceylon he published The Rifle and the Hound in Ceylon (1853), and two years later Eight Years’ Wanderings in Ceylon (1855).

After a journey to Constantinople and the Crimea in 1856, he found an outlet for his restless energy by undertaking the supervision of the construction of a railway across the Dobrudja, connecting the Danube with the Black Sea. After its completion he spent some months in a tour in south-eastern Europe and Asia Minor.  In March 1861 he started upon his first tour of exploration in central Africa. This, in his own words, was undertaken “to discover the sources of the Nile, with the hope of meeting the East African expedition under Captains Speke and Grant somewhere about the Victoria Lake.”

After a year spent on the Sudan-Abyssinian border, during which time he learnt Arabic, explored the Atbara and other Nile tributaries, and proved that the Nile sediment came from Abyssinia, he arrived at Khartum, leaving that city in December 1862 to follow up the course of the White Nile. Two months later at Gondokoro he met Speke and Grant, who, after discovering the source of the Nile, were following the river to Egypt. Their success made him fear that there was nothing left for his own expedition to accomplish; but the two explorers generously gave him information which enabled him, after separating from them, to achieve the discovery of Albert Nyanza, of whose existence credible assurance had already been given to Speke and Grant.

Baker first sighted the lake on the 14th of March 1864. After some time spent in the exploration, during which Baker demonstrated that the Nile flowed through the Albert Nyanza he started upon his return journey, and reached Khartum in May 1865. In the following October he returned to England and in recognition of the achievements by which Baker had linked his name with the solution of the problem of the Nile sources, the Royal Geographical Society awarded him its gold medal, and a similar distinction was bestowed on him by the Paris Geographical Society. In August 1866 he was knighted. In the same year he published The Albert N’yanza, Great Basin of the Nile, and Explorations of the Nile Sources, and in 1867 The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia, both books quickly going through several editions.

In 1868 he published a popular story called Cast up by the Sea. In 1869 he attended the prince of Wales, afterwards King Edward VII., in a tour through Egypt. In the same year, at the request of the khedive Ismail, Baker undertook the command of a military expedition to the equatorial regions of the Nile to suppress the slave-trade there. Before starting from Cairo with a force of 1700 Egyptian troops – many of them discharged convicts – he was given the rank of pasha and major-general in the Ottoman army. The khedive appointed him governor-general of the new territory for four years at a salary of 10,000 Pounds a year; and it was not until the expiration of that time that Baker returned to Cairo, leaving his work to be carried on by the new governor, Colonel Charles George Gordon.

He had to contend with innumerable difficulties – the blocking of the river by sand, the bitter hostility of officials interested in the slave-trade, the armed opposition of the natives – but he succeeded. He returned to England  in 1874, and in the following year purchased the estate of Sandford Orleigh in South Devon, where he made his home for the rest of his life. He published his narrative of the central African expedition under the title of Ismailia (1874). Cyprus as I saw it in 1879 was the result of a visit to that island. He spent several winters in Egypt, and travelled in India, the Rocky Mountains and Japan in search of big game, publishing in 1890 Wild Beasts and their Ways. He kept up a correspondence strongly opposing the abandonment of the Sudan and subsequently urging its reconquest. Next to these, questions of maritime defence and strategy chiefly attracted him in his later years. He died at Sandford Orleigh on the 30th of December 1893.