Tableau in the Tomb of Psammuthis

Category

Library Item

Item no

31063

Title

Taken from a great tableau of figures, large as life in the Tomb of Psammuthis, supposed to represent when Hero is presented to the God Osiris

Artist / maker

Belzoni, Giovanni Battista

Date

1820

Size

54.0 x 47.5 cm

Type

Lithograph

Location

Reference Library

Giovanni Battista Belzoni was an Italian explorer and archaeologist, born in Padua (Padova). In 1803 he was working in England as a circus strong man, and exhibiting models of hydraulic engines. In 1815 he went to Cairo to try and sell his hydraulic engines to Muhammad 'Ali Pasha, and within two years had begun a new career, excavating Egyptian tombs and temples.

Osiris is an Egyptian god, usually identified as the god of the afterlife, the underworld and the dead. He was classically depicted as a green-skinned man with a pharaoh's beard, partially mummy-wrapped at the legs, wearing a distinctive crown with two large ostrich feathers at either side, and holding a symbolic crook and flail.

Psammuthis was an Egyptian Pharaoh of the Twenty-ninth Dynasty during 393 BC.

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