ABOUT THE COVER IMAGE
David Roberts, The Temple of Dendera, Upper Egypt, 1841. Bristol Museum & Art Gallery
If you were to visit Egypt in the 19th century, you would have seen Egypt as experienced by the Scottish artist David Roberts (1796-1864). His watercolour paintings were extensively reproduced in the 20th century in many forms, particularly in Egypt in the form of post cards and calendars, so you could enjoy his representations of ancient Egyptian temples and tombs and 19th century Cairo continually throughout the year. These images invoked what I believe can be described as nostalgia in the modern Egyptian population, particularly Egyptian Egyptologists like myself - we loved them! These images answered a desire to see how these historical sites looked before archaeological excavations took place. In Roberts’ paintings the sand is still covering some of the architectural features. The first such designs that I would have seen were the black and white prints that accompanied the text of Description de l'Égypte (1809-1829) which aimed to comprehensively catalogue all known aspects of ancient and 28
