Egypt Lost & Found: Explorers and Travelers on the Nile - Hardcover

Siliotti

9781556708763: Egypt Lost & Found: Explorers and Travelers on the Nile

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1556708769 ISBN 13: 9781556708763

Publisher: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1999

A fascinating foray into the ancient artifacts and culture of Egyptian civilization, from gargantuan pyramids and tomb writings to monuments and hieroglyphs, details the many discoveries recorded over the last three centuries and includes vibrant illustrations, maps, portraits, and more.

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Review:

"The East", according to the 19th-century statesman Benjamin Disraeli, "is a career". In Alberto Siliotti's magnificent Egypt Lost and Found, it becomes clear just how many careers have been founded on the West's enduring fascination with the history, monuments, and people of this most evocative part of the East. As its title suggests, the book traces Europe's rediscovery of Egypt, beginning with the shadowy and exotic accounts in Herodotus and Ptolemy, and ending with the 19th-century Orientalist paintings of Hector Horeau and David Roberts.

Along the way, Egypt Lost and Found is full of marvelous stories of travelers, diplomats, and scholars who became ensnared in the mysteries of Egypt from the 16th century onward--including the German Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, who lost himself in the esoteric mysteries of Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the unscrupulous �mile Prisse d'Avennes, who disguised himself as a native in the 1840s to steal wall reliefs from the Temple of Karnak. Standing at the center of Siliotti's book is Napoleon's 1798 conquest of Egypt, and the race for Egyptian antiquities that it sparked between French, German, and English Orientalists. The color and the opulence of Siliotti's story is matched only by the book itself. Learned but concise, the book emphasizes the extraordinary illustrations--over 1,000, most in color--of the visual record of an enduring obsession with Egypt--an obsession to which Egypt Lost and Found is an eager addition. --Jerry Brotton

From Publishers Weekly:

EuropeanAparticularly French, Italian and BritishAexploration of Egypt, from the Middle Ages to the mid-19th century, receives royal treatment in this spectacularly illustrated book from journalist and photographer Siliotti (Egypt: Splendors of an Ancient Civilization). The author follows successive waves of merchants, tourists and soldiers to the land that many once believed was "the source of all human knowledge and science." He shows how Napoleon's exploration in Egypt, to which he brought 162 scholars along with his armies, was a major triumph in Egyptology despite its failure as a military campaign. Siliotti also recounts the biographies and stealth of the major players of the "war of the consuls," which marked the beginning of the "systematic plunder of Egypt's archaeological heritage by the diplomats of various European nations" who sought treasures for the greater glory of their national museums. Along the way, the author provides detailed histories of map-making and excavations. Though Siliotti's writing can be dry, but what's astonishing here are the magnificent, brilliantly reproduced illustrations. Every page of this large-sized book is graced by European drawings, etchings, manuscripts, paintings and maps of EgyptA1050 color plates in allAmaking this a volume eminently suitable for both the coffee table and the library.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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