EDINBURGH AND ZOOM.
Giovanni Battista Belzoni was a poor boy whose adolescence was shaped by the upheavals and uncertainties of the Napoleonic wars. Having worked as a circus strong man, he came late and by accident to Egyptology where, using engineering skills honed in the theatre, he masterminded the transport of some of Egypt’s heaviest monuments to European museum. Today Belzoni is generally relegated to the rank of treasure-seeker and tomb robber. This lecture will re-examine his achievements and re-consider his contribution to Egyptology.
Joyce Tyldesley is Professor of Egyptology at the University of Manchester, where she has developed and teaches a suite of online Egyptology programmes. She is also an Honorary Research Associate of the Manchester Museum. Joyce is the author of many books on ancient Egypt, including Cleopatra, Last Queen of Egypt, which was a Radio 4 Book of the Week and Tutankhamen's Curse: The Developing History of an Egyptian King, which won the 2014 Felicia A. Holton Book Award given by the Archaeological Institute of America. Her most recent book, Tutankhamun: Pharaoh, Icon, Enigma was published in 2022.
Entry: £5 members, £7 non-members