Tony Perrottet

This turned out to be a combination of modern and ancient travelogue. Perrottet stumbled across and account of Marcus Aggrippa's huge map of the ancient world on which all the great tourist sites of the ancients were laid out and he was fascinated. He started looking at the ancient accounts of travelers from the Roman world, in particular the travel account written by Pausanias. It is the only ancient guidebook that has survived to the present day.

At first the author and his wife intended to follow Pausanias's route through Greece and end their trip with that. They started out in Rome and then traveled to all the major tourist sites in Greece that were mentioned in Pausanias. Of course, that led them to Turkey and the Greek cities of Ephesus, Pergamum, and Symrna. Once there it was on to Troy and from there the trail led to the greatest of all Roman holiday trips - Egypt. The last third of the book was about the Roman fascination with Egypt and how wrong the Romans got the history and religion of Egypt. It turns out that the Romans were fascinated by the funerary customs of Egypt along with their mummification rites. They were also enthralled with the worship of Sobek - the crocodile god. The Egyptians had created an entire city devoted to this cult in the Faiyum Oasis. The city was named Crocodilopolis and was one of the must see's on the Roman tourist list for Egypt. The author says that the Egyptian priests had developed tourist spectacle to rival those found in Las Vegas hotels. His description of the place made it seem to be an impossibility - but it wasn't.

The author states clearly at the end of the book that this work was not intended to be a scholarly account. Nevertheless he takes great pains to quote from Roman and Greek authors from the Pax Romana and his has an extensive timeline and source list. He also has a glossary of Who's Who at the end of the book.

This was not the more scholarly type of travel book that I was expecting. It is a rather light hearted take on ancient tourism and what is left of those sites for the modern traveler. Some of the places are changed beyond recognition and some are simply not there anymore due to the active geology of the Mediterranean and the desertification of parts of Egypt.… (altro)