Through the eyes of 19th-century women
In the late 1800s, female explorers sailed the Nile, sending back vivid accounts of Egypt’s riches. A 21st-century writer travels in their wake
MICHELLE GREEN
Huddled on a chaise on the upper deck of the Orient, the dahabiya that I had chosen for a cruise down the Nile, I sipped hibiscus tea to ward off the chill. Late in February, it was just 52 degrees in Aswan, where I had boarded the sailboat, but the scenery slipping past was everything the guidebooks had promised: tall sandbanks, c curved palms and the mutable,
i h i f history.
I’d been obsessed with Egypt since childhood, but it took a cadre of female adventurers to get me there. Reading “Women Travelers on the Nile,” a 2016 anthology edited by Deborah M l I’df dki d d i icled their expeditions to Egypt in the 19th century, and spurred on by them, I’d planned my trip.
Beside my chair were collections of letters and memoirs wwwritten by intrepid female jour- nalists, intellectuals and noveli llB i i h E wwwomen’s stories reflected the Egyptomania that flourished after Napoleon invaded North AAAfrica in 1798. The country had become a focal point for artists, architects and newly minted photographers — and a fresh
h ll f ffl d
Their dispatches captured Egypt’s exotica — vessels “laden wwwith elephant’s teeth, ostrich fffeathers, gold dust and parrots,” in the words of Wolfradine von Minutoli, whose travelogue was published in 1826.
And they shared the thrill of discovery: Harriet Martineau, a groundbreaking British journalist, feminist and social theorist, described the pyramids edging into view from the bow of a boat.