Babylon of Egypt. A strange muddle of a name used by medieval pilgrims visiting the lands of the Bible. The notion that there was a ‘Babylon’ in Egypt where Nebuchadnezzar cast Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego into the fiery furnace (Daniel 3.20) was often repeated in accounts by early travellers from Europe. There have been various reasons put forward for this quaint belief. It seemed that since the days of the exile from Babylon (597–538 BC) Jews had lived by the Nile on the site of what is now Old Cairo. Furthermore, Strabo (Geography 17.1.36) spoke of ‘Babylon’ as being a military fortress, established before the Romans by refugees from ancient Babylon. So the association persisted. In any case, in the medieval mind, Egypt was always a place of wonders, so fanciful tales were swallowed by the credulous together with all the rest of the magic and conjecture.

Although stories of crusaders who fought in Palestine and Syria are well documented, those of Europeans in Egypt and the Near East after AD 1300 up to the beginning of the seventeenth century are little known. And yet from available chronicles of that period, an overall picture of the manners and customs of the Egyptians, descriptions of the countryside and accounts of the fabulous city of Cairo, there emerge scenes of astonishing variety. An image of the antique land of Egypt in late medieval and early Renaissance times gradually unfolds in these accounts, and with the emergence of concrete facts, Nebuchadnezzar's ‘Babylon’ in Egypt gradually disappears into the realm of folklore.

However, the art of telling stories, whether they be fact or fiction, is not an easy one. Homer, writing in the eighth century BC, painted on a large canvas. His works, known to humanists in Italy from early in the fourteenth century, were subsequently disseminated throughout Europe. He told of the ten-year Trojan War by focusing it entirely through a few characters; and by letting his characters speak, and by describing what they did, he presented a memorable story. Unlike some modern historians, he resisted the temptation to lace his account with subjective opinion, and allowed his characters to speak for themselves in order to gain the maximum effect.