Includes bibliographical references (pages 319-383) and index.

1. Americans in Eighteenth-Century Egypt -- 2. Napoleon and the French Savants in Egypt -- 3. Mehmet Ali and His New Egypt -- 4. The American Navy and Trade in the Mediterranean -- 5. The European Presence in Egypt from 1815-1825 -- 6. Americans Return to Egypt -- 7. American Missionaries on Tour -- 8. The Eastern Question -- 9. The Lure of Egypt -- 10. The US Naval Squadron: Egyptian Curios and Civilian Passengers -- 11. Keepers of Diaries: 1833 to 1835 -- 12. Traveling in Egypt -- 13. John L. Stephens and Fellow Tourists of the Mid-1830s -- 14. Steamship Travel -- 15. Professional Visitors -- 16. Mills, Giraffes, and Skulls (and Even the Telegraph) -- 17. Shall We Meet in Egypt? -- 18. Philip Rhinelander and His Friends -- 19. After 1839.

The Treaty of Ghent signed in 1814, ending the War of 1812, allowed Americans once again to travel abroad. Medical students went to Paris, artists to Rome, academics to Gottingen, and tourists to all European capitals. More intrepid Americans ventured to Athens, to Constantinople, and even to Egypt. Beginning with two eighteenth-century travellers, this book then turns to the 25-year period after 1815 that saw young men from East Coast cities, among them graduates of Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, travelling to the lands of the Bible and of the Greek and Latin authors they had first known as teenagers. Drawing on unpublished letters and diaries together with previously neglected newspaper accounts, as well as a handful of published accounts, this book offers a new look at the early American experience in Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean world. More than thirty illustrations complement the stories told by the travellers themselves.