Archaeology Magazine - Passport to Antiquity - Passport Stamp 4

Stamp text: "Suez Canal Police, Port Said. Passport Office Departure. By SS City of Benares. Destination Palestine Via India. Date 18/2/1920. Signature []."

As Breasted left Egypt, he began to visit places he had never seen. Typical, perhaps, of archaeologists, he saw these places first as landscapes inhabited by historical figures, rather than by modern people. Passing through the Red Sea, he wrote, "Here were the desolate rocky islands, so long infested by Arab pirates, and the scene of many an adventure of our old friend Sindebad. …The African side is the land of Punt, which the first Egyptian ships began to visit some 5,000 years ago, and here lived the fair fat queen, who was visited by the fleet of Queen Hatshepsut which you have seen so beautifully sculptured and painted on the walls of the Dêr el-Bahri temple at Thebes."

Members of the University of Chicago Expedition party on board the steamer City of Benares, February 18, 1920. From left to right: James Henry Breasted, Daniel David Luckenbill, William Shelton, William Edgerton, and Ludlow Bull (Courtesy Oriental Institute)

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