Meroë, a remote kingdom south of Egypt; a ‘land shadowing with wings’; ruled by formidable queens called Kandake; beyond were remoter regions where snakes strangled elephants, ants ate gold, people were ruled by a dog… Meroë appeared in Greek and Roman encyclopaedias, novels, and histories from Herodotus, through Diodorus and Pliny, to Heliodorus and the Alexander Romance. The Acts of the Apostles tells us that eunuch chamberlain of the Kandake was converted by St Philip. What was the reality of his fabled kingdom?

Following extraordinary circumstances, the French noblewoman Louise Phélippes de la Marnierre (1781-1840) and her husband, a certain Dr Castaldi, quitted Europe to settle in Tabriz in 1819. However, the latter died only one year later leaving his wife alone and completely forgotten by the French government. Eventually, she managed to obtain the post of French tutor to the princes of the Qajar dynasty and became a reference point for European travelers and diplomats in Persia. In the years 1836-1837 she undertook an adventurous journey to Fars accompanied by a Persian scribe and a painter in order to explore the Achaemenid and Sasanian antiquities of the region. The result of her exploration was the creation of an illustrated manuscript whose intended audience was for the first time Iranian.

During the 19th Century, travelling rises as a cultural phenomenon among a growing group of people. The most popular routes are Istanbul, Palestine, Egypt, hunting for archaeological antiquities. Few are the ones pushing themselves over eastern Turkey or Persia, mostly English and French. Italian travel accounts represent a major source for the history of Persia, especially that of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Among those, during the 19th century the artist and patriot Felice De Vecchi (1816-1862) and the naturalist Gaetano Osculati (1808-1894) begin a two-year journey, crossing Ottoman Turkey and Persia heading to India, and going back home throughout the Red Sea and Egypt. Sketches, paintings and the diary written by De Vecchi (Giornale di Carovana) record this journey: a narrative that casts a glance on the rhetoric, the expectations and images built around Persia and the East in general.

ASTENE is proud to present the inaugural Postgraduate Research Competition. This competition is intended to reward the most promising and engaging research in the interdisciplinary and cross-period fields of Near Eastern studies and travel history.

The final lecture in our Spring series.

The fourth lecture in our Spring series.