A Curious and Convivial Traveller: Edward Roger Pratt in Greece and Egypt 1832-34

In 2001 the British Museum acquired the first of two ancient Egyptian

stelae from the collection of the traveller Edward Roger Pratt

(1789-1863) of Ryston Hall, Norfolk, and discovered his 1832-34

unpublished journals for Greece and Egypt and the 136-page album with

his own drawings, watercolours, and paper impressions of bas-reliefs

from a solo Nile voyage to the Second Cataract. Pratt recorded ancient

monuments and sites, many later damaged or destroyed. In Greece Pratt

travelled widely and adventurously with scholarly architects and artists

studying ancient Greek sites, while in Egypt his guides were the works

of the French Egyptologists Jean-Francois Champollion and Dominique

Vivant Denon. A gregarious and enthusiastic traveller, Pratt was

supported by extensive consular networks, expatriate communities and

other travellers. In this volume his life and travels are reconstructed

from his many journals, the travel journals for Greece and Egypt are

transcribed and annotated, his maps and plans reproduced, his dispersed

antiquities collection reconstructed, and the album drawings are

identified and published in colour.