Among Cambridge University Library’s 200 miles of shelving and eight million books are three soft leather folders and a scrap book volume sitting alongside countless other items in the manuscripts and archives of its Near Eastern collection.
Unremarkable to the casual observer, the contents of the folders include personal letters, sketches, bills of sale, letters of introduction and other papers.
Contained within, however, are first-hand documents relating to the travels leading up to the rediscovery of one of the lost wonders of the world – Petra, in Jordan – which took place exactly 200 years ago.
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Image: A portrait of John Lewis Burckhardt from his ‘Travels in Syria and the Holy Land’.
Credit: Cambridge University Library
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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