Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn. Sinai and Palestine. In Connection With Their History.

€ 850.00

Fifth edition. Stanley (1815-81) was a progressive Anglican priest and ecclesiastical historian who would go on to serve as Dean of Westminster from 1864 until his death.

"Stanley was able to make an extended tour of Egypt and the Holy Land in 1852 and 1853. Starting from Cairo he and his companions sailed up the Nile, which he found intolerably dull, but the great granite statues of Rameses and two other pharaohs at Thebes impressed him. They went as far south as Abu Simbel, but turned back to Cairo, climbed the pyramids, and then set out on camels for the Sinai peninsula, at that time visited only by the most intrepid of European travellers. In the monastery of St Catherine at the foot of Mount Sinai they found the great German scholar Tischendorf, who on a previous visit had discovered there an important biblical manuscript, the Codex Sinaiticus. After moving on to the Gulf of 'Aqabah, they turned up the defile that led to Petra, which Stanley pronounced to be a city not of bright colours, but of dull crimson, indigo, yellow, and purple. They reached Jerusalem on Easter eve 1853, from where they made expeditions to Nazareth, Damascus, Jericho, and the Dead Sea. The tour led to the publication of 'Sinai and Palestine' in March 1856, Stanley's powers of observation and description, together with the unfamiliarity of the places that he had visited, making the book an instant success. It reached a fourth edition within a year, and as late as 1881 was still being reprinted" (ODNB).

Occasional slight browning, but very well preserved in a later library binding.