Antique & Vintage Postcards

Sunbaked stone corridors of the Valley Temple of Khafre stretch toward the viewer in the foreground, their massive granite-lined pits glowing amber in the desert light, while the Great Sphinx crouches mid-ground and the towering Great Pyramid of Giza commands the horizon — a view that has mesmerized travelers since the first tourist steamers arrived on the Nile. This unused card, number 2078 in the celebrated Lehnert & Landrock catalogue, was published from the famous Cairo bookshop-studio founded by German photographer Rudolf Lehnert and Swiss entrepreneur Ernst Landrock, whose hand-colored photographic postcards became the gold standard of Egyptian travel ephemera throughout the 1910s–1940s. The composition captures the Sphinx Temple (also called the Valley Temple) from a slightly elevated south-western angle rarely seen in competing publisher series, making it a standout archaeological record as well as a collector's piece.