a traveller…in the desert…on the sand…lifeless…lone and level…far away.
-words from a sonnet…
Strange that the greatest English language Orientalist sonnet was written by someone who had never been to the Middle East, about a portrait statue containing the cartouche of the subject’s throne name User-Ma At-Re, Sun of Princes- better known in Diodorus Siculus’ Greek rendition- that he had never seen, misidentified by Belzoni as Amenhotep III, whose Upper Nubian temple at Soleb KhairAllah had detoured the dabouka towards on the Nile’s west bank to show me. He knew the American might like the Athaar, the Ruins, but he didn’t know the name Amenhotep or the name of the sonnet’s author. Hint, Arabs pronounce their Ps as Bs.