The late 1880s were a difficult time for Cornell's first president, Andrew Dickson White. The retired scholar missed university life, his wife had recently died, a lawsuit was blocking an important gift to Cornell, and his physical condition was deteriorating after he had spent several months in London. His doctors recommended that he spend the winter of 1889 in Egypt to restore his health.

"Now came a new chapter in my life," he wrote. "This journey in the East, especially in Egypt and Greece, marked a new epoch in my thinking."

That journey turned out to be a huge boon to Cornell University Library. White -- who visited Cairo and Alexandria with former professor and University Librarian Willard Fiske -- brought back many photographs, books and other materials to donate to the university. That material is now housed in the library's Rare and Manuscript Collections, located on level 2B of Carl A. Kroch Library and available for anyone to view.

Included in the collection are 140 matted albumen prints of the pyramids, the Sphinx and other recognizable Egyptian landmarks, from famous photography studios of the time. White also returned with books about travel to Egypt, including the 10-volume history of Napoleon's expedition, contemporary publications and tourist handbooks of the time, such as Baedeker guidebooks.

The former president wrote prolifically during the trip. He kept a diary and sent extensive letters home to family and friends. Excerpts from his letters were published as an article in Cornell Magazine, a student/faculty journal. Years later, in his autobiography (published in 1905), he detailed the three months he and Fiske spent in Egypt, including their five-week journey down the Nile on a steamer.

In one letter, White mentioned a copy of a Book of the Dead that he bought from a dealer specifically to donate to the library. White called the detailed explanation of practices and ablutions after death "a papyrus of much interest," and it remains the only complete original papyrus scroll in the library's collection.

"The materials he brought back are special because they are a complete set from a very defined time period," said University Archivist Elaine Engst. "They document and illustrate the impressions of a highly educated tourist of the period."

White called Cornell "the institution which I loved better than my life" in his autobiography, and he noted that his Egypt trip served as "not only a refuge from trouble and sorrow, but a portal to new and most fascinating studies."

The library has preserved his collection so that the results of those studies can be accessed more than 120 years later.

Gwen Glazer is a staff writer for Library Communications.