"You need a lot of credulity when you go to Egypt, and a superb contempt for anything less than three thousand years old. If you don’t have these, you spoil your holiday by questioning the wonderful stones told by dragomans and you fill your hand-bag with antiques of a mere yesterday. The more one looks about the world, the more disgusted one becomes with the average globe-trotter. When he goes to Egypt – unless he happens to be a mad Egyptologist as well, and burns all the skin off the back of his neck and pants all day long under awnings up at Luxor". The Travellers in Egypt website has been updated, and is currently carrying this very enjoyable article on its home page, written by John Foster Frase and published in The Quiver Magazine in 1897. It is beautifully written and succeeds in bringing Memphis and Saqqara to life as it was in the late 1800s: "Time is a cruel cynic, and Memphis the Glorious is now about as picturesque as a brickfield. Indeed, it is uncommonly like a brickfield."
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