One of four sites chosen to be the first National Monuments in the United States in 1906, Montezuma’s Castle was built by the Sinagua people, who were related to the better-known Hohokam. This cliff house was built about 1100 A.D. and occupied for four hundred years. The main structure was five stories high. Obviously, you don’t build your home that high on a cliff-side unless you need a defensive position, an that was the case here, with conflicts between local groups over access to water and food resources. The population peaked about 1325 A.D. There was an even larger pueblo at the foot of the cliff, but it is not so well preserved.

This public domain photograph is another image by Dr. Edgar Alexander Mearns (1856-1916), whom we profiled under his image of Emma and Mex. This further confirms a date of 1887 for that image, as this one is dated that same year and notes it is just “3 miles from Fort Verde”.

This is a nice public domain image of Egyptian ruins. The site is sometimes spelled Medinet Habu. On the large version (just click on the image above to see the full sized version) you can see the shadowed wall is covered in hieroglyphs. This is part of one of the courtyards in the Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III. Modern photos show the cracks have been filled-in and the rubble removed. There are six of of these images of Ramesses III along one wall of the courtyard, with a hallway running along behind them. Two of the statues are nearly gone, like the right one here, and two more have the upper half missing.

This photograph was taken by the famed English photographer, Francis Frith (1822-1898), in the late 1850s. Frith, a founding member of the Liverpool Photographic Society, married Mary Ann Rosling (sister of Alfred Rosling, the first treasurer of the Photographic Society). While his mid-Eastern views are well known and highly appreciated, it is the local U.K. photographs he took that brought him to fame. He set out to photograph every village and town in Britain, paying particular attention to notable or historic features. He started a company, ‘F. Frith & Co.’ in the 1860s that lasted over 100 years. They published most of his images as postcards, which helped to make those images, and Frith, widely known.

I am assuming ‘Haarem de Mauret’ would translate as Mauret’s Harem, though I’m not sure if Mauret is a placename or personal name. A google search on the full phrase does not return any results, nor could Yahoo do any better. The name Mauret is found as a placename in France, but the bedouin costume of the gent in the picture would look rather out-of-place in France. Also, since the photographer was known to operate in the Ottoman Empire (Turkey and surrounding area), it seems more likely the image is from that area. The caption is French, as the photographer was of French ancestry, so he probably transcribed the name as he thought it should be spelled — which means it could be very different in Arabic. Wherever it is, this is a fantastic building, with intricately worked walls, griffins, lions, twining plants and rosettes.

This is another photograph attributed to Tancréde R Dumas, but unlike our previous example (Snake Charmer), this one probably was actually taken by Dumas. He has signed it over a rock in the foreground, and the subject matter suggests it may have been from the Ottoman Empire where he was working. The image dates from 1876.

This image shows a well preserved example of late Roman architecture in the ‘colonies’. It is the Kiosk of the Emperor Trajan on the Island of Philae in Egypt. Taken ca 1880s, the building shown was constructed under direction of the emperor Trajan, dating it between 53 and 117 A.D. Certainly not up to the aesthetic qualities of the classic Roman works, it does have some very nice pillars with impressive capitals, but then the effect is ruined at top and bottom by chunky block construction.

The photograph was taken by Antonio Beato. Less famous than his brother Felice, also a photographer, Antonio was an Italian who became a British citizen, and was born ca 1825. He died in Luxor Egypt in 1906. At times he and his brother worked together, and some works are signed with both names — Felice Antonio Beato — which has caused a great deal of confusion. Antonio worked primarily in Egypt 1860-1900, while his brother traveled much more widely.