No one will blame Hillary Clinton if she ignored the fact that a few hundred meters from where she stood in Old Cairo last March, lies in desolate anonymity, the first (and probably the last) American Pasha. The New York-born son of California's Lieutenant-Governor rests under a deteriorating obelisk with inscriptions that read "Erastus Sparrow Purdy Pacha, La Société Khédivale de Géographie." 

On the obelisk's flip side are inscribed the words "Né dans l'état de NewYork en 1838; Expédition de Colorado 1857-60; Darfur - el Hofra el Nahass 1874-76; Décédé au Caire, le 21 Juin 1881." Excuse the French but those were the days were diplomats across the globe preferred to converse in the language of Voltaire rather than in Shakespeare's.

"Al-basha el-Amrikani" is how the caretaker of Old Cairo's Protestant Cemetery refers to his Yankee ward. They have been neighbors for some time. The tomb is close to the graveyard's main gate and the caretaker's shed. The affable cemetery caretaker is illiterate. He has never read the tomb's inscriptions and, likewise, knows nothing about Purdy's exploits some of which could fill an issue of National Geographic.

At the age of 19 Purdy explored the Colorado River, a prequel to greater things to come. These would include forays into the inky depths of Africa in search of the sources of the Nile and the Great (African) Lakes. 

For his exploits, Purdy would subsequently be decorated by Egypt's munificent Khedive. However, in Hesseltine & Wolf's "The Blue and the Gray on the Nile" (U. Chicago Press, 1961) and in "Americans in the Egyptian Army" by Pierre Crabites (Routledge & Sons, Ltd.), there is no mention of Purdy ever receiving the lofty honorific of "Pasha." Instead we learn of a "Purdy Bey." Yet William Dye's "Moslem Egypt and Christian Abyssinia" published a year before Purdy's death, states that Purdy was promoted to the grade of Colonel and Brigadier-General in the Egyptian service and that he received two decorations. 

One can therefore assume Purdy must have died a pasha.

Or could the title have insinuated itself posthumously on the tombstone courtesy of a magnanimous Khedivial Geographical Society?

It was the Society which had co-sponsored Purdy's African expeditions. And later, when it learned Purdy had died a harassed and bankrupt man leaving unpaid debts of over $ 1,000, the same Society proposed the erection of a befitting memorial for America's proud son. The money for the memorial was raised through a limited public subscription from among the friends and patrons of the Society some of them American.

But what brought Purdy to these parts in the first place?

The American Civil War over, Purdy, like other decommissioned Confederates and Yankee officers, joined Khedive Ismail's army in the 1870s with the objective of establishing a new general staff. It was mostly thanks to General Charles Pomeroy Stone of New York, under whom Purdy had served and with whom he had surveyed the Sonora and Baja California regions, that he received his Egyptian commission. Understandably, one of Purdy's Egyptian service first tasks was the survey of Ismail's vast uncharted territories up the Nile.

Divided into different groups, the frontiersmen from the Far West were explored the khedive's uncharted African realm. Upon completion of topographical surveys in the Red Sea's Bernice region, Purdy, together with Major Alexander McComb Mason and five Egyptian officers set off in 1874 towards Dongola, the then-capital of Darfour province. It was on that trip that Purdy's discovered Dar Fertit. 

Together with Mason, Major Henry G. Prout and nine Egyptians, Purdy later explored the iron mines of Kordofan and completed a minute reconnaissance as far as the Shakka district and Hofrat al-Nahass (south of the Sudan).

It was during another testy expeditions that Purdy unwittingly found himself a pawn in the game of imperial colonialism. According to the Royal Egyptian Archives, he received orders in 1870 to disembark at Monkas and from there trek towards Lake Victoria by way of the Kenya and Kilimanjaro ranges. His mandate was clear: Anyone --meaning the British or French--- contesting Purdy's unannounced expedition into the bush should be informed that he was on a rescue mission. As it turned out, Sir Samuel Baker had indeed gone missing and the Khedive was trying to locate his whereabouts.

Baker was eventually located only to be replaced by General Charles Gordon as Khedive Ismail's governor of the loosely demarcated Equatorial Provinces. The Egyptian Empire then encircled most of East Africa including the Great Equatorial Lakes, a fact that was looked upon with askance by Europe's colonialist powers. Which is why Khedive Ismail's 1873 attempts in establishing military outpost in the Kilima ranges were eventually foiled once the British got wind of Ismail Pasha's American-led expansionist expeditions.

When Purdy died in 1881 he was no longer in Khedivial uniform. In 1878 his American colleagues had either died, left Egypt, or been discharged. Only Mason and Prout remained behind finding civilian employment in the Egyptian government.

Whether Purdy was a pasha, a bey or a colonel doesn't really matter now. What matters is that one of the oldest American landmarks in Egypt is in a very sorry state today. Perhaps, had she known of his existence, America's First Lady would have dropped by. By so doing, one of America's proud sons would have not been so entirely forgotten.

Read earlier story on Purdy Pasha which appeared in The Egyptian Mail in March 1997

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