This scene was described in the Illustrated London News in December 1869, and Simpson, who had an eye for the absurd, wrote in his Autobiography, `I went out one day and saw the Emperor of Austria lugged to the top of the Great Pyramid by two Arabs as if he had been only an overland passenger'. Then, as until recently, many visitors were unceremoniously hauled to the top of the monument by the energetic local inhabitants, helping unfit and often overweight tourists to clamber up the huge blocks. Emperor Franz Joseph was one of many European dignitaries in Egypt in November 1869 for the opening of the Suez Canal. The Canal replaced the tedious and sometimes difficult `Overland Route’ via Cairo and across the desert on the way to India.

Simpson was a lithographer and prolific watercolour painter, who eventually became what would now be called a war-correspondent. He was sent by Colnaghi's, the print publishers, to cover the Crimean War, 1854-5, providing drawings for lithographs published in The Seat of War in the East, 1855-6. From 1866 he was employed by the Illustrated London News as their `Special Artist' to report on and illustrate many of the wars and grand ceremonial occasions of the British Empire and elsewhere. Simpson’s vigourous sketches were swiftly transformed into wood-engravings, giving the ever expanding pool of news-hungry readers the illustrations they craved. He lived long enough to see photography start to replace his form of reportage in magazines.