Agatha Christie and her life with Egypt.

Her first visit to Egypt she describes as “a dream of delight”.

At age 17 in 1908 Agatha Christie and her mother went on a three month long journey to the more sunnier and warmer climate in Egypt during the winter months. The end goal was clear - to find a suitable husband for the young Agatha by letting her make her entrance into society - as a debutante in Cairo. Little did she know by then, but Egypt would be the land that most people identifies with the later famous author Agatha Christie.

The reasons behind this first trip to Egypt was of more of a practical sort. Living in Egypt was far cheaper than in England at the time, so spending three months with dances, bespoke dresses, polo matches and tea on the sunny terracces of multiple luxury hotels was appealingly cheaper in Egypt than in London and tours to the region were regularly organized by Thomas Cook & Son - so Egypt is was. During this period of Belle Epouqe a lot of wealthy people spent the winter months in the mild climate in Egypt where they also took part in the exciting excavations and discoveries along the River Nile.

The mother and daughter stayed at the Gezireh Palace Hotel Cairo. It was originally a historical palace with a great story of royalty and forbidden love ( which you can read about here) and it offered a great location, luxury and practical services as a telegraph office, a daily concert and an electric tram service going straight to the Giza plateau with its amazing pyramids and the Sphinx.

At this first visit to Egypt Agatha was not that much into the antiques and sightseeing - she was there for the dances at the great hotels in Cairo.

She was happy mingling with young men of the British regiments stationed in Cairo while dancing. She recalls she must have been to at least 50 balls these three months in Cairo. Christie described her three months in Egypt as a “dream of delight”.

She did return to England without a husband - her mother had turned down the one proposal she received. But the visit to Cairo became the inspiration to her first novel “Snow upon The Desert”. In the novel readers might recognize The Gezirah Palace and its european guests. This was the beginning of a life long journey that entangled the name Agatha Christies with Egypt in at tight knob.

Later on in life Agatha got married to an archeologist named Max Mallowan. Almost every winter they would spend some time in Egypt during breaks froms Max’s excavations in Syria and Iraq. In Egypt the couple befriended the famed archeologist Howard Carter, who in 1922 discovered the Tutankamon grave in Valley of the Kings after years of searching. The three of them would sit on the terracce of Old Winter Palace in Luxor and play bridge.

In 1933 the couple went on a trip traveling along the Nile to end at the Old Catact Hotel in Aswan - and with this journey “Death On The Nile” was born, and it is no secret that the other guests at the Nile Cruise SS Sudan was of some sort of inspiration for several of the characters in the masterpiece. The SS Sudan is still in function after having been restored several times - and of course you can book the Agatha Christie suite on the boat.

Agatha Christie did not only write crime fiction. She also wrote several plays - and among them were a historical play “Akhenaton”. The play is based on the real life Pharaoh Akhenaton, who tried to change the traditional religion in Egypt during his reign only to be castigated following his death. Much of its dialogues were adapted from the ancient texts themselves and Agatha Christie displayed a deep knowledge of the pharaonic period in Egypt.

In 1978 when she was 81 she had another encounter with Egypt in a way that catapulted her fame as the author that is synonymous with Egypt - by coincidence the famous exhibition of the treasures of the Tutankamon grave from 1922 came to USA just at the same time as the movie “Death on The Nile” with great actors like Peter Ustinov, Jane Birkin, Bette Davis and Mia Farrow was on the cast. It became a huge block buster together with the Tutankamon exhibition - and Agatha Christie became forever entangled with Egypt.