View of the aqueduct, Cairo, Egypt

Lear visited Egypt four times and the present view dates to his first trip when after nine months of travelling through the eastern Mediterranean, he arrived in Cairo on 6 January 1849. On 6 February he and his friend John Cross set off on camels from Cairo to Sinai and Palestine. They spent three nights at the monastery at Sinai, but Lear took a fever and was forced to give up the trip and convalesce at Suez.