Oil on canvas, laid down.

In the 19th century, Westerners were fascinated with the Orient. Tired of the industrial revolution and the confines of Victorian morality, people looked to the near and middle east as lands of mystery and sensuality. Writers such as Byron, Victor Hugo and Goethe and artists such as Delacroix, Holman Hunt, Leighton and Fromentin were part of the Orientalist movement which spread throughout Europe in the last half of the 19th century.

The Kiosk of Trajan is a monument to the pharaoh Trajan who lived around 100 AD. Inside the 14 column structure are reliefs showing Trajan making offerings to Osiris, Isis and Horus. Originally built on the Island of Philae, the Kiosk of Trajan was moved to the nearby island of Agilika in the 1960s by UNESCO. UNESCO undertook the rescue of Nubian monuments that had been flooded after the building of the Aswan Dam fifty years earlier.