in English as Tour of a German Prince (1831–32). Being a daring character, he subsequently traveled in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Sudan and explored ancient Nubia. He is documented as having visiting the site of Naqa in modern-day Sudan in 1837. He also visited the nearby site of Musawwarat es-Sufra, and in both places he carved his name in the stone of the temples. In the same year, at the slave market of Cairo he purchased an Ethiopian Oromo girl in her early teens whom he named Mahbuba ("the beloved"). He took her to Asia Minor, Greece, and Vienna, where he introduced her to European high society, but Mahbuba developed tuberculosis and died in Muskau in 1840. Later he would write that she was "the being I loved most of all the world." He then lived at Berlin and Muskau, where he spent much time in cultivating and improving the still existing Muskau Park. In 1845 he sold this estate, and, although he afterwards lived from time to time at various places in Germany and Italy, his principal residence became Schloss Branitz near Cottbus, where he laid out another splendid park. Politically he was a liberal, supporting the Prussian reforms of Freiherr vom Stein. This, together with his pantheism and his colourful lifestyle, made him slightly suspect in the society of the Biedermeier period. In 1863 he was made a hereditary member of the Prussian House of Lords, and in 1866 he attended — by then an octogenarian — the Prussian general staff in the Austro-Prussian War. He was decorated for his 'actions' at the Battle of Königgratz, even though the then 80-year old Prince had slept throughout the day. In 1871 he died at Branitz. Since human cremation was illegal at that time for religious reasons, he resorted to an ingenious evasion of traditional burial; he left instructions that his heart be dissolved in sulphuric acid, and that his body should be embedded in caustic soda, caustic potash, and caustic lime. Thus on February 9, 1871, his denatured remains were buried in the Tumulus - an earth pyramid surrounded by a parkland lake at Branitzer Castle. Dying childless, the castle and estate passed to the heir to the Princely title, his nephew Heinrich von Pueckler, with money and the inventory to his niece Marie von Pachelbl-Gehag, née von Seydewitz. The literary estate of the Prince was inherited by writer