Journal of a residence in Egypt, Smyrna, Italy via Zante

George Rivers Hunter travelled in Egypt in 1826-1827 and was invited to Cairo in 1827 by Henry Salt, British consul-general for Egypt. (See Salt's correspondence in the Wellcome Library, Ms. 7578/8.)

This is a day-book or journal of Hunter’s stay in the Levant. It is not a continuous text, but jottings of happenings during his travels. In July he bought a Greek slave girl, Argyri Sporeï, aged 14, who had been taken prisoner at the Massacre of Chios in 1822. Her father was Constantinos Sporeï, or Tholopotamitis, of Tholopotami, Chios. A copy of the contract of sale, in Italian and dated from Cairo, 2 August 1827, is at the end of the journal. Hunter purchased the girl in order to free her from slavery, but it is clear from the journal that many problems arose from his good intentions, mainly involving the future of the girl once he had left Egypt. There is a description of the celebrations in Smyrna on 15 August, the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin. He mentioned the traveller Charles Leonard Irby, Consul Maltass, John Maddox, MacPherson the Wesleyan missionary, the Egyptologists Wilkinson, Hay, Lane and Caviglia, Commander Foote, Adolphus Slade, Craddock, Briggs and Co., William Turban and others.

Hunter, son of Robert Hunter, was the George Rivers Hunter of Wadham College, Oxford, who was rector of Okeford Fitzpaine, Dorset, in 1854. An album of drawings of antiquities he collected in Egypt is in the possession of the Sackler Library, Oxford (under the title Antiques Collected in Egypt during 1826-1827 by George Rivers Hunter, call no. 339 Hun [fol.]). In 1854 he sold a large collection of scarabs and other Egyptian antiquities to the British Museum.