DAVID ROBERTS (EDINBURGH 1796-1864 LONDON)

Roberts travelled up the Nile as far as Abu Simbel and back to Cairo between October and December 1838. He arrived at Aswan on the journey upstream on 29th October and visited Philae the following day, describing it as ‘a paradise in the midst of desolation’ (MS Eastern Journal, 30 October 1838, National Library of Scotland, Acc 7723⁄1). Returning there on 17th November, he ‘took a complete survey of this interesting island’ (ibid, 17 November 1838), and two days later made some large drawings of the colonnades and pylons commenting that the ‘brilliant and tasteful colouring of the walls and pillars still testify the exquisite taste and finish of the whole. Many of the emblematic figures upon this wall are so good that I was enabled to copy several of them, and this is the case even with the embroidery of the dresses’ (ibid, 19 November 1838).
Roberts’s view shows the massive Second Pylon of the Temple of Isis, with its colossal deeply cut figures of Ptolemy XII Neos Dionysos, making offerings to Horus; Hathor and other deities are also represented. This forms the entrance to the inner sanctum of the temple. On the left is the mammisi (birth house). The view does not appear in Roberts’s three-volume series of lithographs, Egypt & Nubia, 1846-49.
We are grateful to Briony Llewllyn for her help in preparing this catalogue entry.