A Thousand Miles Up the Nile

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In addition, Edwards became an artist. She would illustrate some of her own writings and also paint scenes from other books she had read. [7] She was talented enough at the age of 12 to catch the eye of George Cruikshank, who went so far as to offer to teach her, but this talent of hers was not supported by Edwards's parents, who saw art as a lesser profession and the artist's way of life as scandalous. [8] Their negative decision haunted Edwards through her early life. She would wonder frequently whether art would not have been her true calling. [9] some loftier. In some the descent is gradual; in others it is steep and sudden. Certain leading features are common to all. The great serpent,

naval officers sent out by the French in 1831 to remove the obelisk which now stands in the Place de la Concorde. They loved the things of this life, and would fain have carried their pursuits and pleasures with them into the land beyond the grave. So they decorated the walls of their tombs with pictures of the way in which their lives were spent, and hoped perhaps that the mummy, dreaming away its long term of solitary waiting, might take comfort in those shadowy reminiscences. The kings, on the contrary, covered every foot of their last palaces with scenes from the life to come. The wanderings of the soul after its separation from the body, the terrors and dangers that beset it during its journey through Hades, the demons it must fight, the accusers to whom it must answer, the transformations it must undergo, afforded subjects for endless illustration. Of the fishing and fowling and feasting and junketing that we saw the other day in those terraces behind the Ramesseum, we discover no trace in the tombs of Bab-el-Molûk. In place of singing and lute-playing, we find here prayers and invocations; for the pleasant Nile-boat, and the water-parties, and the chase of the gazelle and the ibex, we now have the bark of Charon, and the basin of purgatorial fire, and the strife with the infernal deities. The contrast is sharp and strange. It is as if an Epicurean aristocracy had been ruled by a line of Puritan kings. The tombs of the subjects are Anacreontics. The tombs of their sovereigns are penitential psalms. Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards, Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys: A Midsummer Ramble in the Dolomites (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1873), 20. Manual of Egyptian Archaeology and Guide to the Study of Antiquities in Egypt: for the use of students and travellers by Sir G. Maspero, translated by Amelia B. Edwards

The central, or gateway-tower, is substantially perfect. The Writer, with help, got as high as the first chamber; the ceiling of which is painted in a rich and intricate pattern, as in imitation of mosaic. The top room is difficult of access; but can be reached by a good climber. Our friend F. W. S., who made his way up there a year or two before, found upon the Explore the royal regalia of the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt and maybe spot some on your next museum visit!

Edwards for her part, showed an early talent for art, focusing on pencils and watercolors, and music, making a name for herself playing the Organ. She also showed an early interest for adventure. She would spend her summer abroad with her mother in the Irish hills and fields climbing over and investigating the ruins of the past (Adams 2010:19). Early on she made a comforatble living for herself as a moderately successful romance writer. She had a comfortable savings when the next phase of her life unfolded before her (Adams 2010:19).These tableaux are supposed to illustrate the home-life of Rameses III, and to confirm the domestic character of the pavilion. Even the scarab-selling Arabs that haunt the ruins, even the donkey-boys of Luxor, call it the Hareem of the Sultan. Modern science, however, threatens to dispel one at least of these pleasant fancies.