Thorkild Hansen · 1962 · global

Thorkild Hansen's acclaimed history of the Royal Danish Expedition of 1761 to 1767. Six scientists sailed from Copenhagen for Arabia Felix, present-day Yemen, a land barely known to Europe, charged with studying its peoples, plants, and antiquities. Beset by quarrels, disease, and the climate, the men died one by one until only the surveyor Carsten Niebuhr remained, finishing the journey alone across India, Persia, and Mesopotamia. The route circles the known world of the eighteenth century.

1. 1
   Copenhagen

   In January 1761 the six members of the expedition sail from Copenhagen aboard a warship, bound for Arabia by way of the Mediterranean.

2. 2
   Constantinople

   After months at sea they reach Constantinople and secure the Ottoman permissions needed to travel on into Egypt and Arabia.

3. 3
   Alexandria

   Landing at Alexandria, they prepare to ascend the Nile into the heart of Egypt.

4. 4
   Cairo

   They reach Cairo and spend the better part of a year there, Niebuhr surveying and mapping and visiting Sinai while the scholars gather specimens and quarrel.

5. 5
   Suez

   From Cairo they cross the desert to Suez and take ship down the Red Sea toward Yemen, the true goal of the journey.

6. 6
   Mocha

   In the heat of Yemen, the fabled Arabia Felix, the expedition begins to fall apart, and within months von Haven and then Forsskal are dead of fever even as the survivors reach the court at Sanaa.

7. 7
   Bombay

   The four who remain sail for Bombay, but two die at sea and a third soon after landing, leaving Niebuhr the expedition's sole survivor, who lingers in India for over a year.

8. 8
   Bushehr

   Resolved to finish the work alone, Niebuhr crosses to Persia by way of Muscat and lands at Bushehr on the Gulf.

9. 9
   Persepolis

   At the ruins of Persepolis he painstakingly copies the cuneiform inscriptions, transcriptions that will later help unlock a lost language.

10. 10
    Baghdad

    He travels on through Mesopotamia, sketching the ruins of Babylon and passing through Baghdad and Mosul on the long road home.

11. 11
    Copenhagen

    By way of Aleppo, Cyprus, Palestine, and Constantinople, Niebuhr makes his way back across Europe to Copenhagen in 1767, the lone returning witness to all the expedition had found.