Die Zeit selbst lag nun tot darnieder: Die Stadt Assiut und ihre Nekropolen nach westlichen Reiseberichten des 17. bis 19. Jahrhunderts. Konstruktion, Destruktion und Rekonstruktion.

AuthorTheis, Christoffer

Die Zeit selbst lag nun tot darnieder: Die Stadt Assiut und ihre Nekropolen nach westlichen Reiseberichten des 17. bis 19. Jahrhunderts. Konstruktion, Destruktion und Rekonstruktion. By JOCHEM KAHL. The Asyut Project, vol. 5. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWRRZ VERLAG, 2013. Pp. x + 438 + *162, illus. [euro]68.

The aim of this book by Jochem Kahl is to present a collection of travel reports from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century AD that are stored in various museums and collections throughout the world. Its main achievement is collecting the information presented in these Asyut travel reports and making the material available to researchers. It is Kahl's merit to have presented a voluminous study of the view of European and American travelers on this city in Middle Egypt during the aforementioned period. The picture of the city, as it is mentioned in the various sources, becomes very clear to the reader and one can get a good insight into the condition of the remains to which the authors refer, at least those that seemed important enough to them to mention. The necropolis of the city seems to be a part of the collective memory, as Kahl points out (p. 1). One of the most important aspects of the book is the fact that in some of the travel reports, buildings, architectural features, etc., that are now destroyed are described, so that these statements are sometimes the only sources that can be used for restoring Egyptian monuments as they looked in antiquity.

After a short introduction concerning the aims of the study and the sources it is based on (pp. 1-5), Kahl gives a summary of the motivations of the travelers (pp. 7-10) and Orientalism in general (pp. 11-18). In these chapters, the available sources of the travelers are quoted, presenting the individuals' very own statements, which is one of the advantages of the book.

The two main chapters with elaborations follow. The third chapter deals with the city of Asyut itself (pp. 19-58). Kahl collects the travelers' sources with a focus on their own views. This chapter is divided into their own reports about their arrival in Asyut (pp. 19-29) and especially the effect of this on the European and American wayfarers (pp. 29-33). An important aspect is the focus on the population of Asyut (pp. 34-39), which reveals an (often) negative view of the lives and the conditions during the last centuries. Other subchapters deal with antiquities in general (pp. 39-42), chapels and baths (pp. 42-44), economic...

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