In this category we want to introduce and present the lives of antique travelers and their accounts of the journeys they made through Egypt, especially around the First Cataract. Aswan, Roman Syene, had been a place of fascination to many ancient and modern travelers. Beginning in 430 BCE with the so-called ‘father of history’ Herodotus we journey, alongside many different people with a variety of ethnical and social backgrounds, into the 20th century.
The focus will be on the Coptic Christian travelers from the 5th to the 9th century, and excavators that worked in and around Syene. To see what they saw, to experience what documentary sources can only hardly grasp – that is the aim of this section. We want to comment and discuss these antique travel reports and highlight their importance over time.
Travelers and Mentions
Antique Travelers and Historians who mentioned Aswan:
- Aelian (born ca. 165-170 CE, died ca. 230-235 CE)
- Aelius Arisitides (ca. 141 CE)
- Ammianus Marcellinus (wrote ca. 391 CE)
- Arrian (wrote in the first half of the 2nd century CE)
- Cicero (wrote ca. 54-52 BCE)
- Clement of Alexandria (ca. 195 CE)
- Dio Cassius (ca. 230 CE)
- Diodorus Siculus (ca. 49 BCE)
- Dionysius Periegetes (wrote ca. 124 CE)
- Eusebius (ca. 315 CE)
- Ezekiel (wrote in the 6th century BCE)
- Heliodorus (ca. 280 CE)
- Herodotus (ca. 440 BCE)
- Juvenal (ca. 130 CE)
- Lucan (wrote presumably ca. 65 CE)
- Martial (ca. 100 CE)
- Nearchos (ca. 90-133 CE)
- Ovid (wrote ca. 8 CE)
- Pausanias (wrote ca. 150-180 CE)
- Philostratos (wrote between 217 and 237/38 CE)
- Plinius the Elder (ca. 77 CE)
- Plutarch (ca. 102 CE)
- Pomponius Mela (wrote ca. 43-44 CE)
- Procopius (ca. 553 CE)
- Ptolemy (wrote presumably ca. 150 CE)
- Seneca the Younger (ca. 62-64 CE)
- Servius (ca. 420 CE)
- Solinus (ca. 300 CE)
- Stephanus of Byzantium (ca. 500 CE)
- Strabo (ca. 24 BCE)
- Tacitus (wrote ca. 110-20 CE)
- Theophrastus (ca. 300 BCE)
- Varro (ca. 49 BCE)
- Vitruvius (wrote in 20s BCE)
Medieval Writers and Historians who mentioned Aswan:
- Al-Maqrizi (wrote before 1442)
- Ibn Salim al-Aswani (probably 975 CE)
- Leo Africanus (1517)
Modern Travelers to Aswan:
- Bankes, William John (1815, 1818-19)
- Beamont, William (1860-61)
- Belzoni, Giovanni (before 1817)
- Borchardt, Ludwig (1895-99)
- Brugsch, Heinrich (1853)
- Bruce, James (1768-73)
- Brunel, Isambard Kingdom (1858-1859)
- Budge, Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis and Grenfell, Francis Wallace (1885-86)
- Burgon, Rev. John William (before 1862)
- Burton, James (1825)
- Canney, Leigh (before 1896)
- Carey, Mrs. M. (before 1840)
- Cecil, Mary Rothes Margaret (1901-2, 1904)
- Çelebi, Evliya (1672/73)
- Chester, Rev. Greville John (1865-1892)
- Cox, Samuel (1882)
- Curzon, Robert (before 1833)
- Dawson, Sir John William (before 1884)
- Denon, Dominique-Vivant (1798-9)
- Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan (before 1897)
- Ebers, Georg (before 1880)
- Edwards, Amelia (1873-4, 1877)
- Erbkam, Georg (1844)
- Finati, Giovanni (before 1817)
- Fuller, John (before 1819)
- Gau, Franz Christian (before 1822)
- Gadsby, John (before 1855)
- Hahn-Hahn, Countess Ida von (1844)
- Hamilton, William (1801, 1802)
- Hawkshaw, John Clarke (1865)
- Hay, Robert (before 1827)
- Irby, Captain Charles and Mangles, James (before 1817)
- Jomard, Edmé François (1798-1801)
- Kingsford, W. E. (1899)
- Lancret, Michel Ange (1798-99)
- Lane, Edward William (1825-28, 1833-35)
- Legh, Thomas (1812-13)
- Lepsius, Karl Richard (1842-45)
- Lindsay, Lord (before 1836)
- Lucas, Paul (1699-1703)
- Lyons, Henry George (1898, 1905-7)
- Madden, Dr. R. R. (before 1825)
- Martineau, Harriet (1846-7)
- Maspero, Sir Gaston (1902, 1908)
- Minutoli, Heinrich, Freiherr von (1820/21)
- Monocour, Charles Sonnini de (1777)
- Newbold, Thomas John (1840)
- Norden, Frédéric-Louis (1737-38)
- Parthey, Gustav (1823)
- Petrie, Flinders (1887)
- Prime, William C. (before 1855)
- Prokesch, Anton (1827)
- Pococke, Richard (before 1743)
- Ramsay, William (before 1836)
- Revillout, Eugène (before 1874)
- Richardson, Dr. Robert (1817)
- Richter, Otto Friedrich von (1815)
- Roberts, David (before 1836)
- Sandys, George (after 1610)
- Savary, Claude-Étienne (1785-6)
- Schildt, Göran (1955)
- Sitwell, Constance (before 1927)
- Stanley, Dean Arthur Penrhyn (before 1852)
- St. John, Bayle Frederick (before 1852)
- Stuart, Henry Windsor Villiers (1879)
- Stuart, Viliers (before 1879)
- Thiersch, Hermann (1900)
- Unger, Franz (1858)
- Uxkull, Baron Alexander von (1822-3)
- Weidenbach, Maximilian (1842-5)
- Werner, Carl (before 1872)
Baedeker Travel Guides:
- Ägypten, 1st Volume: Unter-Ägypten bis zum Fayûm und die Sinai-Halbinsel
- 1st Edition (1877)
- Ägypten, 1st Volume: Unter-Ägypten und die Sinai-Halbinsel
- 2nd Edition (1885)
- 3rd Edition (1894)
- Egypt, 2nd Volume: Upper Egypt and Nubia as far as the second cataract
- Ägypten
- 4th Edition (1897)
- 5th Edition (1902)
- Ägypten und der Sudân
- 6th Edition (1906)
- 6th Edition (1906), with postscripts until 1910
- 7th Edition (1913)
- 8th Edition (1928)