1861 Hammerschmidt Albumen Silver Print Photograph: Great Pyramid, Giza, Egypt

A c. 1861 Wilhelm Hammerschmidt albumen silver print from a glass negative depicting the Great Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops), Giza, Egypt. The image looks on the images from a point on the Nile - likely during a high-water period. In the midground, a group lounges near stone rubble, possibly a small ruin. This image is number 181 from Hammerschmidt's corpus.

Great Pyramid of Khufu

The Great Pyramid of Khufu, also known as the Pyramid of Cheops, is the largest and most famous of the pyramids in the Giza pyramid complex, Egypt. Built as a tomb for the IV Dynasty Egyptian Pharaoh Khufu around 2580-2560 BC, it is a marvel of ancient engineering and architectural genius. Constructed from approximately 2.3 million blocks of stone, each weighing an average of 2.5 tons, the pyramid originally stood at 146.6 meters (481 feet), although it now measures around 138.8 meters (455 feet) due to the loss of the outer casing stones. The precise methods used in its construction remain a subject of research and debate. The Great Pyramid was originally covered with casing stones that formed a smooth outer surface; what is seen today is the underlying core structure. It was the tallest man-made structure in the world for over 3,800 years and is considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Provenance

These images were from the collections of Roswell Dwight Hitchcock (1817 - 1887). Hitchcock was a congregationalist minister and professor at Bowdoin and later at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. His ministry took him to Germany in the 1840s. Afterwards, he visited Italy and Greece in 1866; and in 1869 and 1870 he traveled to Egypt and Palestine. He was appointed president of the American Palestine Exploration Society in 1871, and vice-president of the American Geographical Society in 1880. Whether he acquired these before traveling to Egypt, there, or on his way back to America, is unknown.

Publication History and Census

Scarce. We see a single other example of this photograph, located at the Griffith Institute.