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158 x 220 mm. A view showing the facade of the great temple at Abu Simbel with the colossal statues of Rameses II seen in profile. Probably the most photographed of the Ancient Egyptian sites from Maxime du Campe (1849) onwards. The temple was moved to higher ground to protect it from the effects of the Aswan High Dam.

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150 x 212 mm. A view showing the square stone sepulchre with a spine standing on the rocky hillside in the Valley of Jehosphaphat east of Jerusalem.

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155 x 211 mm. A view showing the square stone sepulchre with a spine standing on the rocky hillside in the Valley of Jehosphaphat east of Jerusalem.

Scope and Contents This collection consists of printed published volumes illustrated with albumen prints tipped on to the leaves with detailed text accompanying each photograph.The landscape and monumental remains of Egypt and the Middle East had exercised a profound fascination upon the European imagination for centuries, but it was only in the 19th century - and particularly after the impetus of Napolean's Egyptian campaign of 1798 - that visitors arrived in any great numbers. Scholars, adventurers...

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232 x 153 mm. A view showing the temple ruins in the foreground with the granite formation beyond which looks over the island of Philae. Frith was obviously pleased with this composition: 'Ah, brother Photographers! With a sky like that, and such subjects, and a bottle of splendid pale - not ale - but, collodion, you only can imagine the glory of such a day.'

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228 x 157 mm. A fine landscape taken from the top of a hill opposite the Isle of Elephantine and looking north along the Nile. Two Europeans stand in the foreground watching the scene below where dhows are moored along the riverbank unloading produce. The town itself is visible on the skyline in the distance.

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235 x 157 mm. A general view looking towards the massive remains of the temples of Baalbek, 35 miles north-west of Damascus. The photograph shows the six standing columns of the Great Temple, with the more complete smaller Temple at the right of the print.

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230 x 153 mm. A general view looking towards the massive remains of the temples of Baalbek, 35 miles north-west of Damascus. The photograph shows the six standing columns of the Great Temple, with the more complete smaller Temple at the right of the print.

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229 x 162 mm. A view showing overgrown and crumbling ruins at Banias, forty miles south west of Damascus, with hills in the background.

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222 x 158 mm. A view showing overgrown and crumbling ruins at Banias, forty miles south west of Damascus, with hills in the background.

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231 x 157 mm. A view looking over the village of Bethany and showing small fields enclosed by stone walls with the houses of the inhabitants beyond.

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226 x 156 mm. A view looking up the hillside towards the church built by the Empress Helena on the supposed site of the nativity, with terraced fields and the low square houses of Bethlehem at the right of the print. Frith considers Bethlehem and its situation 'truly picturesque and beautiful. It is one of the few places in Palestine which will not disappoint the imaginative traveller.'

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227 x 161 mm. A view looking up the western slope, dotted here and there with olive trees, towards the church and tower of the Ascension.

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226 x 160 mm. A view looking along the city wall towards the dome of the mosque of Omar and 'El Haram-esh-Sherif', the Holy Sanctuary, with the houses of the city beyond. With wasteland and cactus in the left foreground.

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157 x 229 mm. A view showing the ruins of Cleopatra's Temple (about five miles south of Thebes) with an Arab sitting on broken rubble in the foreground.

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211 x 160 mm. A view showing the standing columns of the Temple at Erment (also spelt Armant) with piles of rubbish and a seated figure in the foreground. In his commentary Frith condemns the contemporary prejudice that anything less than three thousand years old is considered 'degenerate', modern - of no interest.

Scope and Contents 217 x 151 mm. A view showing the two scarred colossi with their guardian sphinxes in the desert at Wady Saboua, near Korosko. Frith supplies a conventionally romantic remark on their desolation: 'The reader will conjecture that the desolate figures which form my picture are the two statues which terminated the dromos, and some of the mutilated bodies of the androsphynxes. The pylon of the temple is rude, and very much dilapidated; and it appeared to me that these figures were most...

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226 x 121 mm. A view looking over the convent rooftops towards the sheer cliffs in which the caves of ascetics can be seen.

Scope and Contents 229 x 164 mm. A view looking over the convent rooftops towards the sheer cliffs in which the caves of ascetics can be seen. Frith comments: 'The magnificently wild and deep ravine forms a sternly appropriate clinging-place for this old ascetic pile. We don't pretend to have done anything like justice to the subject in our photograph. The view should be taken from the other side of the ravine, from which the whole of the building and the entire depth of the ravine could perhaps be...

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233 x 156 mm. A view showing a large crocodile (probably dead) on the banks of the Nile in the Philae region.

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214 x 161 mm. A view taken from a rooftop near the east gate, looking over the flat rooftops of Damascus towards a distant mountain. The commentary contains a disquisition on the romanticism of writers' and artists' views of the east and the counterbalance provided by photography.

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222 x 152 mm. A view looking towards the distant city from Salihiyeh with a ruined church (unidentified) in the foreground.

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223 x 158 mm. A view looking towards the distant city from Salihiyeh with a ruined church (unidentified) in the foreground.

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229 x 164 mm. A pleasing composition looking up towards the ruined mosque and the rocky hillside from the bank of the Nile, with a clump of palms in the foreground.

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156 x 203 mm. A view of the ruins of Wady Kardassy, taken from the side of the building facing the Nile.