Sir John Mandeville’s description of Egypt, the longest description he has given to anywhere, is quite interesting. He still maintains his steady flow of biblical references, of places to which pilgrims might be interested in visiting, but here he also seems interested in adding more ethnographic and historical detail, either sourced from previous accounts or simply invented whole cloth. The subject of the Sultan of Egypt takes up much of his description. He tells that this Sultan rules over five kingdoms (Egypt, called Canopat, Jerusalem, Syria, Aleppo, and Arabia) and provides references to previous rulers or places to help ground this information for his audience. Mandeville then goes on to list the Sultanate’s line of succession, though most of the names he gives are garbled, such as Melechinasser. He also adds references his European audience would be familiar with, such as which European king fought which Sultan, Richard the Lionheart and Saladin for example. Mandeville wants his audience to follow his story, so giving them context for a list of foreign rulers in a land they are completely unfamiliar with aids in one’s understanding of the exotic locations discussed.

Mandeville also writes about the Sultan’s power and court. For example, he claims that the Sultan has three wives (one of which must be a Christian) and can have as many lovers as he pleases, and that he can “lead more than twenty thousand soldiers out of Egypt, and more than fifty thousand soldiers out of Syria, Turkey, and other realms subject to him. These passages must be his invention. How could a person who has never even seen Egypt know how many soldiers he can raise or how his court operates? Mandeville keeps up his persona, though, even claiming that he was a mercenary for the Sultan for a long time. He ads that the Sultan wanted him to marry a local princess and thus abjure his faith, but he refused. This, along with the Sultan’s Christian wife, displays Mandeville’s attitude that the Islamic world poses a sexual challenge to Christians that must be resisted.

A lot of his information about Egypt comes from the Bible and related Christian writings and lore. He identifies the pyramids as “Joseph’s Barns,” a reference to the book of Genesis where Joseph has grain stored for the coming seven years of famine. The association of the pyramids and Joseph’s Barns was long established in Christian writing, and Mandeville repeats what he has read about to his own audience. Interestingly, he notes that some people say the pyramids are tombs, though Mandeville rejects this as baseless. He throws out the correct explanation to reaffirm the commonly held Christian belief about Egypt. Mandeville also borrows information from more secular sources. He regurgitates a story about the phoenix which is said to come to a temple in the city of Heliopolis to regenerate, which he took from a popular description of the mythical animal in a Bestiary. He also provides an ‘Egyptian’ alphabet which shows at least some awareness of Coptic. Mandeville’s description of foreign places is predicated on what information he had access to in Europe, demonstrating his genuine scholarship and curiosity, though to a point. He may be interested in distant places, but not enough to actually ensure what he is writing down is correct. He is willing to trust the established authorities (such as the Bible and previous Christian authors) and in so doing repeats their misinformation to a whole new audience.