Three Wise Men

We have several photos in our Documentary Photographic Archive taken by soldiers serving in Egypt and Palestine during the Great War.

These are now on our Manchester Archives flickr photostream.

We will be sharing more of these photos through future posts, as one of our volunteers is doing some research on the Cameliers and the Camel Corps in World War One.

As Christmas approaches, I have been looking at old photos of school nativity plays to share on our Twitter feed, @mcrarchives .
Did any of these soldiers ever take the part of the one of the Three Wise Men in their school nativity play?

Could they have imagined that one day they would find themselves in Egypt, riding camels and visiting the Sphinx?
Tutankhamun’s tomb wasn’t discovered until 1923, so Egypt hadn’t hit the headlines in the popular press.

Their impressions of the Middle East would have been based on Bible Stories and Sunday School picture books.

We know that the Great War created new and unexpected opportunities for social mobility and travel for those involved. Those who survived certainly had experiences beyond their childhood dreams.