Egypt Lost and Found: Explorers and Travellers on the Nile Book

"The East", according to the 19th-century statesman Benjamin Disraeli, "is a career", and in Alberto Siliotti's magnificent Egypt Lost and Found it becomes clear just how many careers have been founded on Europe's enduring fascination with the history, monuments and people of the most evocative part of the East--Egypt. 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 marvellous stories of European travellers, diplomats and scholars who became ensnared in the mysteries of Egypt from the 16th century onward. These included the German Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, who lost himself in the esoteric Mysteries of Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the unscrupulous Émile Prisse d'Avennes, who went native in the 1840s to steal wall reliefs from the Temple of Karnak. Standing at the centre of Siliotti's book is Napoleon's conquest of Egypt in 1798, and the race for Egyptian antiquities which it sparked off between French, German and English Orientalists. The colour and the opulence of Siliotti's story is only matched by the book itself; learned but concise, the emphasis is on the extraordinary illustrations, over 1,000, mostly colour, of the visual record of Europe's enduring obsession with Egypt--an obsession to which Egypt Lost and Found is an eager addition. --Jerry BrottonRead More