The Swiss explorer John Lewis Burckhardt (1784-1817), known for his extensive travels in the Middle East in the early nineteenth century, left an impressive collection of notes, letters and manuscripts to Cambridge University. Burckhardt carried out a series of expeditions to Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Arabia between 1809 and 1816 on behalf of the African Association. He collected detailed observations both of aspects of the natural world and the culture of the local inhabitants, past and present. He also became famous as the first European to rediscover the remains of the ancient Nabatean city of Petra in 1812, for his visit to Mecca in 1815, and with the collection of Egyptian antiquities, while resident in Egypt at various times between 1812 and 1817.