Each year I encounter several new (to me) original artworks by Eric Pape and discover new history related to others. This month ́s example, found in an antiques shop in London(!) is a beautiful, highly detailed pen and ink drawing of the small Ptolemaic Temple of Hathor Aphrodite on Philae Island in Egypt. In 1890, after two years of art studies in Paris at the prestigious Academie Julien and École des Beaux-Arts, the 20- year-old Pape traveled to Egypt to immerse himself in the “Oriental” culture and create art. For nine months he lived beside the Great Pyramids and Sphinx studying and drawing the ancient monuments. He traveled down the Nile River from Alexandria to Port Said, Cairo, Suez, the Nile Cataracts and later further to both Damascus and Constantinople, drawing, painting and recording the monuments, temples, landscapes and people. His works from this period were exhibited in the Paris Salons and in Egypt at the Exposition du Caire; and later widely in the United States, which helped establish Pape as a recognized fine artist. This drawing is signed Frederic Pape, placing it as one of his earliest works before he adopted his nickname Eric in his signatures. The drawing is dated September 31, 1891(?). There is also an indistinct word before the date which might be London. We know Pape traveled to London in 1892 since he noted every location in his early travels on the interior lid of his paint box. It is possible this very finely detailed pen and ink drawing was created during this trip utilizing materials in a London museum. This would also explain the provenance of the drawing. Pape is known to have made many wonderfully detailed pen and ink drawings as illustrations for “The Fair God” by Lew Wallace in 1898 using examples in Mexican and Southwestern American museums as models. This might correct the indistinct date to 1892. The Philae Temple Complex (now re-located on Agilkia Island), was originally built near the expansive First Cataract of the Nile in Upper Egypt on the Philae Island. This island became regularly flooded after construction of the Aswan Dam and the sites were re-located to a nearby island in 1980. The main temple on the island of Philae was the Temple of Isis, but there are also a number of smaller temples and shrines dedicated to other deities and Pharaohs. On the east side of the Temple of Isis stands the temple of Hathor which was decorated under Ptolemy VI, VIII, XII and Augustus and once had its own mud-brick enclosure wall. The cult of the temple focused on Hathor as embodiment of the Sun’s Eye that was brought back from Nubia. The drawing by Pape does not reflect the current temple site bordering the Nile, as the original enclosure can been seen.