Divided back, Real Photo Postcard, unused. Publisher:  Grevaert. Circa late 1930s – early 1940s.

Price:  $8.00

This one is in okay shape, good except that the card is curling, rather than laying flat. And it’s not necessarily rare; there seem to be plenty of surviving similar-view vintage cards, since the subject matter is so…..we normally take it for granted – incredible). I bought this postcard thinking about my great-great-grandfather, Giovanni Oliva, who, I had been recently surprised to learn (from a reputable family source,) traveled from his home in England, to work on the Suez Canal, stopping on the way to or from the work site to see the Sphinx and the Pyramids at Giza. (A Genovese Italian living in or near Liverpool who had traveled to Egypt – the stories he must have brought home!) Did he know of that other Giovanni from Genoa? explorer and Egyptologist, Giovanni Battista Caviglia (1770 – 1845). (I picture my great-great-grand sending a salute and a grin across the years.)

To try to pin down a date for the card, we turned to an old newspaper article, from November 24, 1936:  This was the first, in modern times, that the complete structure had been uncovered.

Sources:  Great Sphinx of Giza. n.d. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sphinx_of_Giza (accessed July 9, 2022).

Giovanni Battista Caviglia. n.d. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Battista_Caviglia (accessed July 9, 2022).

“Ancient Grandeur of Sphinx Revealed.” The Ithaca Journal. (Ithaca, NY). November 24, 1936. Tuesday, p. 1. (Newspapers.com).