The man who brought Egypt to the British

The man who brought Egypt to the British

Giovanni Belzoni fed the 19th-century craze for ancient artifacts
Alan Rauch
Correspondent

Resting in apparent tranquility at uptown's Discovery Place are more than 40 mummies from around the world. Charlotte is one of only a few American destinations for this major exhibit, and the opportunity to see so diverse an array of mummies - human and animal, Egyptian and South American - is remarkable.

The fascination that we feel for mummies, relics of the past that seem eerily in the moment, is not hard to understand, and it's certainly not a new phenomenon. Now a timely coincidence brings a new book tracing our compulsion for Egyptian relics. Ivor Noël Hume's "Belzoni: The Giant Archaeologists Love to Hate" examines the emergence of the Egyptian craze in the early 19th century by looking at one of the main figures in that movement.

Hume, an archeologist himself, introduces us to Giovanni Belzoni, an Italian-born English citizen whose name became synonymous with Egyptian treasures. Born in Padua in 1778, Belzoni matured into an intellectual young man with a sharp mind and a very powerful and very restless 6-foot 7-inch body. He was trained as an engineer, but fate eventually took him to England where, for lack of employment, he took to the stage and quickly became Britain's most famous strongman. His routine included strutting the boards with 11 men strapped to his frame. But, as Hume writes, "the dream of Giovanni's life was to be a hydraulic engineer in a civilized land."

When Belzoni learned that Egypt's Ottoman ruler, Pasha Mohammed Ali, needed engineers to control the flow of the Nile, he set out with Sarah, his fearless British-born wife, to help modernize the country. While Belzoni's devices failed to impress the Pasha, they proved useful in the excavation and transportation of massive monuments, including the head of young Memnon, sarcophagi and obelisks. Belzoni, always indefatigable, became the first Westerner to explore the "second pyramid of Giza," although servants had to help extricate his enormous frame from tight spots.

Like so many archaeologists of the time, Belzoni looted the treasures he found. Hume notes apologetically that hatred for Belzoni is misguided, as his methods were relatively gentle and he preserved artifacts that might otherwise have been destroyed. Still, there are current claims for repatriation, and they cannot be ignored.

The English were eager to see ruins from mysterious Egypt, and they flocked to museums and parties to thrill at the unwrapping of mummies. In a sense, these unwrappings - gruesome though they might have been - celebrated Britain rise as a new empire.

The demise of the Egyptian empire prompted the poet Shelley to write the great poem "Ozymandias" in 1817, when newspapers reported Belzoni's discovery of the head of Memnon (Rameses II). Belzoni, Hume makes clear, felt little of Shelley's disdain and truly loved the lost culture of ancient Egypt. Both he and Sarah were skilled artists whose drawings of Giza and the Temple of Thebes, reproduced in the book, reveal genuine admiration and awe.

Belzoni's efforts, however, were filled with complex political intrigue. Hume records in detail how English and French interests fought intensely for Egyptian treasures, while also having to placate the self-serving Mohammed Ali.

Oddly enough, Belzoni showed little interest in mummies, often crushing dozens at a time in the process of exploration. That is all the more reason to see these mummies on exhibit and to consider them in light of Hume's fascinating treatment of an era when Egypt took center stage.



Alan Rauch, an associate professor of English at UNC-Charlotte, is editor of "Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, & Technology."

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/02/12/3001236/the-man-who-brought-egypt-to-the.html#storylink=cpy