'The Great Belzoni' was a jack-of-all-trades, a circus strongman, an actor and above all a die-hard adventurer. The images in this exhibition are from the time of his incarnation as Egyptian explorer and trace the findings of his expedition team in Egypt and Nubia.
Giovanni Battista Belzoni was born on 15th November in Padua, in North Western Italy. In 1803, aged 26 his quest for adventure brought him to England, and by means of his gigantic physique, he earned a living in circuses in England, Spain and Portugal where he was billed as 'The Great Belzoni'.
After a spell in Amsterdam learning to be a hydraulic engineer, Belzoni heard that the Pasha of Egypt, Mohammed Ali, was keen to build a water lifting device. He arrived in Egypt but his career in water mechanics failed. He was left penniless and stranded in Cairo without work.
There was great enthusiasm at the time from Europeans for all things Egyptian, and there was an intense rivalry between explorers and collectors, particularly between the British and the French. He met Henry Salt, the British Counsel General who offered Belzoni a job. He employed him to travel down the Nile to Thebes and collect a giant seven ton granite sculpture of the head of Ramesses II for the British Museum. He also discovered the tomb of Sety I in the nearby Valley of Kings. Around February 1818 he asked Alessandro [?] Ricci a young physician and draughtsman from Siena, Italy to go to Cairo and from February until September, Ricci worked in the tomb alone in order to copy as many reliefs as possible.
Belzoni returned to England in 1819 and published an account, of his adventures and although his English was sometimes eccentric, he insisted on writing the text himself. Narrative Operations and Recent Discoveries within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs and Excavations, in Egypt and Nubia was publishes as an ordinary sized quarto, but a large folio format was required for the accompanying volume of hand coloured lithographs.
Encouraged by his success in Egypt, Belzoni planned a further adventure through West Africa, but he died of dysentery in December 1823.
View the full volume of lithographs illustrating their findings in this exhibition.
The image library for the collections of Edinburgh Libraries and Museums and Galleries