Abou Simbel, Nubia
1857
Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
David Hunter McAlpin Fund, 1966
Accession Number
66.640.2.32
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the sun-baked grandeur of ancient Nubia with Francis Frith's *Abou Simbel, Nubia* (1857), an albumen silver print that captures the awe-inspiring rock-cut temples Ramses II. Perched along the Nile in southern Egypt, these colossal ruins—adorned with towering statues over 65 feet tall—stand as testaments to pharaonic power and engineering from the 13th century BCE. Frith, a pioneering British photographer, ventured into remote Egypt during his 1856–1857 expedition, risking harsh deserts to document these wonders for Western audiences hungry for exotic antiquity. This photograph exemp...
About the Artist
Francis Frith · 1822–1898
Francis Frith (1822–1898) was born on 7 October 1822 in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, into a prosperous Quaker merchant family as the second child and only son of Francis Frith Sr. and Alice Walker. Educated at Quaker schools including Ackworth and Camp Hill in Birmingham from around 1828 to 1838, he apprenticed in the cutlery trade before establishing himself as a wholesale grocer in Liverpool, suppl...