Saddling the Dogs: Journeys Through Egypt and the Near East

The majority of the papers collected here were delivered at ASTENE's VII Biennial Conference, held at the University of Southampton in July 2007. They cover a range of journeys in Egypt, Greece and east as far as Persia and are linked by the light they shed on the experience of travel in these regions from the 17th to the early 20th century. It is not so much what was seen that is assessed here but how one got there and how one got around once arrived; the vicissitudes and travails, both expected and strange, that characterized the passage. The purpose of the trips examined range from religious pilgrimages to diplomatic, commercial and military journeys, to middle-class package tours. Each of them is of interest for what it reveals about the realities of travel in Egypt, the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East at different times: the means by which travel was carried out, the dangers and discomforts encountered and the preparations made.