IDNO

P.50989.RDG

Description

Arab marriage procession of the band that accompanies the bride on her way to her new husbands house. The three camels are each led by a man or a boy, with the first two camels wearing ceremonial trappings of beaded, embroidered, mirrored and fringed saddle cloths, as well as bells and feather plumes on their nose pieces. Riders on the first two camels play two semi-spherical drums supported by a wooden structure. The men and boys wear tunics and skull caps or turbans. In the background are large buildings and what appears to be a covered alley.

Physical Condition: Rips along the bottom edge which is missing fragments and creasing around all edges. There is also a large white mark in the upper right.

Place

N Africa; ?Egypt; ?Cairo

Cultural Affliation

Named Person

?C. Zangaki or ?G. Zangaki

Photographer

C. & G. Zangaki Brothers

Collector / Expedition

Ridgeway, William

Date

circa 1880 - 1900

Collection Name

Ridgeway Collection

Source

Ridgeway, William

Format

Print Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

The print was found in an envelope now marked C239/ which was inside the wooden drawer I.

Exhibition: The print was exhibited in Collected Sights in the section The Collections with the descriptive label:
“This souvenir photograph was produced commercially by the Zangaki brothers, originally from Greece. They worked all over the Mediterranean world and opened a studio in Port Said, Egypt, in the late 1860s to cash in on the growing tourist interests in north Africa, a region made newly accessible to the western world through the Suez Canal”. [Sudeshna Guha 26/11/02]

Related Image: A lantern slide of the same image is in the holdings of George Eastman House, and the title on the object is: (illegible) de mariage arabe. [transparency, gelatin on glass 3 1/4 X 4 in. Gift of Edward Lennert 88:0355:0006] Sudeshna Guha 20/05/2003.

Related Image: Another Zangaki photo of a wedding procession showing the bride in a palanquin carried between two camels. See Bernard J Sapero Gallery web page for this and a duplicate image.
http://gallery.shapero.com/stock-images/PHOTOS/THUMBNAILS/ [JD 2/10/2008]

Context: As part of a traditional Egyptian Islamic wedding, after the marriage contract was signed, the bride was transferred to her new house on a horse or a camel with a musical band, and the attendants sprayed the cortege with green wheat as a symbol of fertility. [Source: Egyptian Marriage Customs of the Past and Present, by Ahmed Negm, www.zawaj.com/weddingways/egypt_customs.html, JD 2/10/2008]

Named Person: It has been suggested that the figure of a European man in the background is one of the Zangaki brothers. [JD 2/10/2008]

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [JD 2/7/2007]

Publication: The photograph has been digitised for the European Collected Library of Artistic Performance (ECLAP) and is accessible on the portal http://www.eclap.eu/drupal/. [SG 30/10/2012]