Title
1910s Egypt Beni Souef Camel Caravan Mosque Minaret Street Scene Vintage Postcard
Front
A chromolithographic colour-printed view, the image bled to the edges of the card. Printed caption at upper left in red, in two lines: “Beni Souef” above “Partie de Beni Souef” (part of Beni Suef).
The view shows a broad, sunlit sandy roadway at the edge of the town of Beni Suef, on the west bank of the Nile in Middle Egypt, beneath a pale turquoise sky. Dominating the middle distance is a slender Ottoman-style mosque minaret in warm ochre stone, cylindrical and tapering, with a projecting muezzin’s balcony carried on a corbelled gallery with an iron railing, an upper stage of small arched openings, and a conical pink-tinted cap.
Below and around it are the low buildings of the town. At left is a long single-storey range of red-brown mud brick and fired brick with a flat roof, small barred windows painted green, and a whitewashed lower course; a small ventilation or pigeon opening pattern is visible in the upper wall. Behind it rises a tall date palm. To the right of the minaret are ochre-washed two-storey houses with shuttered windows, a projecting timber balcony, and an awning or reed shade over a shopfront, with dense green trees behind. At far right stands a larger red brick building of two storeys with white rendered upper walls, green shuttered windows, a roof parapet, and a low iron railing along the roadside; a large spreading acacia or tamarisk shades the frontage.
The foreground is filled by a loaded camel caravan moving across the picture from left to right along the sandy street. Five or six dromedaries are visible in file, each carrying bulky corded baggage bales in dark green, grey, and red over wooden pack saddles. The leading animals are led on head ropes. Beside the camels walk their drivers in long light-coloured galabiyas, one at far left in a short dark tunic and red tarboosh bending to the road, another in white robe and turban at centre right. At the right, a man in a white robe with a red waistcoat holds the bridle of a white horse or donkey standing beside a heavily laden camel that carries a green parasol or canopy over its load. Further small figures stand near the railing at the right.
Condition notes visible on the front: bright colour retention, a vertical crease running from the top edge down through the sky at centre, light toning and small nicks at the upper left and lower left corners, minor edge wear.
Back
Divided back printed entirely in red-orange ink. Printed text and elements, in full:
A solid vertical dividing rule down the centre.
Upper right: a stamp box formed of a dotted square rule.
Right panel: four dotted address rules across the address side.
Lower left: a small publisher’s device or monogram, an Art Nouveau style trefoil or shield-shaped mark, followed by the series reference “Ben 8.”
Lower right corner: the printing control number “54263”
No handwriting, no address, no stamp, and no postmark. The card is unposted and unused.
Reverse condition: cream stock with pinkish-buff age toning, scattered light foxing, a vertical crease at the upper centre corresponding to that on the front, edge and corner wear with a bump to the lower left corner, no album or hinge remnants.
Estimated Era
Circa 1910s, with a probable production range of about 1908 to 1920.
The evidence is typological rather than documentary, as the card is unposted and carries no dated postmark. The divided back places manufacture after the international adoption of the divided format in 1906. The layout, printed wholly in red-orange with a dotted stamp box, dotted address rules, a small Art Nouveau publisher’s device, and a five-figure control number at the lower right, is characteristic of the German and Austrian lithographic houses that supplied large quantities of Egyptian view cards to Cairo and Alexandria dealers in the decade before and immediately after the First World War. The “Ben 8.” reference indicates a numbered Beni Suef sub-series within a larger Egyptian set.
The printing itself supports this bracket. It is a fine-screen chromolithograph with strong flat colour, tinted sky, and hand-applied colour separations of the kind common from roughly 1905 to 1920, before the coarser photo-tinted and real photo formats came to dominate Egyptian tourist cards in the 1920s and 1930s.
The subject content agrees. The caption is in French, the language of the Egyptian tourist trade under the British protectorate and the preceding Khedivate. There are no motor vehicles, electric standards, or paved surfaces in the street, and transport is entirely by camel and horse. The dress shown, long galabiyas with turbans and the red tarboosh, is consistent with provincial Egyptian towns of the early twentieth century.
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