Giovanni Belzoni's exploration of Egypt - An Italian Adventurer,Engineer,and Amateur Egyptologist.

I believe the exploits of Belzoni and Napoleon inspired the world once more and woke  Ancient Egypt from its slumbers, it is alive  again, and the name of Ramses 11 will live for eternity his star has risen in the heavens once more and travelers  flock to this antique land again.

Removal of the 'Young Memnon' from The Ramesseum - The Mortuary Temple of Ramses the Great

In 1816 an Italian adventurer engineer and an amateur egyptologist called Giovanni Belzoni, arrived in Luxor, he had originally started his career as a strong man in the circus, when things became hard to earn a living by this means Belzoni grasped the chance to work in Egypt using his knowledge of hydraulics, when this also failed he then accepted work from Thomas Salt the British Consul to Egypt to track down and collect antiquities that Salt then sold onto The British Museum. When Belzoni arrived at the Ramesseum he enlisted the help of one of the local village chief's, who provided him with men to help him pull the head of a statue known as the ‘young Memnon’ to the banks of the Nile, the young Memnon was one of two smaller seated statues of Ramses that sat in the second courtyard each side of the steps that lead into the hypostyle hall. When Belzoni arrived in Egypt there was no protection for the antiquities and the local village people were not interested in the ancient temples, so with payment for their labors they happily helped him to remove the head of the young Memnon.

Belzoni moved the head in the same way that the ancient Egyptians had completed all their heavy stone moving tasks. He laid the head on a sledge of rolling logs with the aid of pulleys. For three weeks the troop of eighty men pulled the largest known colossal head weighing seven and a half tons, and still they only covered two and a half miles. Belzoni became ill with sun blindness and the head was abandoned. When he recovered the locals considered him crazy as he wanted to continue with his plan to get the head to the Nile, for Belzoni the task had now become more urgent as he realized that his illness had set him back, and he knew that it would soon be time for the annual Nile flood. He convinced the chief to help him again, and triumphantly they finally reached the Nile a few weeks later where the head was put on a Felucca and sailed to Cairo to add to Salt's collection.

Belzoni in the Valley of the Kings - His discovery of the Tomb of Seti 1

Across the river Nile on the western shore of Thebes, there lays a desolate winding valley that hibernates within a barren and silent city for the dead, the sides of the valley twist and turn and contort into a mountain that forms a natural pyramid known as 'The Quorn', like the pyramids this is a ladder to the stars and eternal life. It encloses the subterranean tombs and final resting places of the once living Gods of Ancient Weset, the pharaohs of The New Kingdom

At the beginning of October 1817 Giovanni Belzoni arrived in the Valley of the Kings, while in the Valley of the Kings, though in many instances, because hieroglyphs had not yet been deciphered, he had no idea who or what he had found, he knew nothing of ancient Egyptian beliefs and so the tombs that he found amazed him, he found their radiance of colour astounding after he had walked through the barren wasteland of the deserts ridges, and worked in the scorching heat of the sun, searching for an entrance or portal that could possibly lead him to hidden treasure. He had left the Rammessium having safely transported the head of Ozymandias - Ramses 11 from the Rammessium to the Nile, and it was now sailing steadily to Cairo, so he gave his full attention to observing the rock formations in this valley, noticing how the limestone and shale had been shaped by ancient waterfalls. Within two weeks he had located six royal tombs.the tomb belonging to King Ay, but only noted a wall painting of 12 baboons, leading him to christen the chamber 'Tomb of the 12 monkeys.'

On the 16th October his workmen reached an entrance in an area that he had instructed them to dig, they cut a small channel through the sealed entrance for Belzoni to crawl through.  To his delight he had   discovered the largest tomb in the Valley of the Kings, the tomb of Seti 1 nothing that he had yet found had given him as much delight as the splendor of colour within the tomb of Seti whose walls of the tomb were covered with scenes of the king in the company of the gods on his journey through the underworld, and finally being united with them in paradise. Rituals hymns and texts from the Book of the Dead are carved in its walls, whose chapters were a powerful magical guide to help the spirit from wandering among the living and to help it to find its way home to enjoy an eternal life on this hazardous journey after the death of its mortal body. Belzoni and his workers took wax impressions of the reliefs, and when he returned to London in 1821 Belzoni had the opportunity to re-create the burial chamber of Seti I, in an amazing exhibition called 'Egyptian Hall, near Piccadilly Circus.The room reflected Belzoni's expeditions and contained the plaster casts he had taken in the Tomb of Seti, whose elaborately carved white alabaster sarcophagus was removed by Belzoni and eventually purchased by John Sloane in 1924, who displayed it in the 'Sepulchral Chamber' at the heart of his museum The sarcophagus is carved from pearly translucent stone that was highly valued by the ancient Egyptians. Across the surface of the sarcophagus both inside and out, are carved in hieroglyphics an Egyptian text that is known as the Book of the Gates, this is a series of spells and rituals that the dead pharaoh would need to safely pass through the underworld and reach the afterlife. Inside across the bottom of the Sarcophagus is the elegantly drawn figure of the Goddess Nut, the Goddess of the sky, whose role was to guide and protect the dead. The Image above shows how the burial chamber of Seti would look using a 3D printer


Belzoni at Philae Temple - Obelisk of Ptolemy V111

One of Belzoni's most eagerly anticipated destinations was the island of Philae, where he arrived in November 1818, it was verdant and palm fringed, and at the time of Belzoni's arrival it was located in the middle of the Nile at Aswan. The temple is the earthly home of the Goddess Isis and Belzoni went to the temple to collect a toppled obelisk that had originally stood in front of the first pylon, stood in front of the first pylon of the temple. An Englishman named Banks wanted to put the Obelisk on his Kingston Lacey Estate in Dorset. The Obelisk had been erected by Ptolemy V111 around 118-116 B.C. and had a triple Greek inscription with the text of a correspondence between Ptolemy and the priests' and also a hieroglyphic script. Once the obelisk had been carried to the Bank of the Nile and was ready for embarkation, it slid into the river because the pier built by Belzoni caved in, undeterred Belzoni managed to retrieve the Obelisk when everyone thought it was lost for good. Belzoni had a rival working in Egypt named Drovetti, who did not approve of Belzoni because as an explorer Belzoni was motivated by finding artifacts so that he could sell them to collectors. His methods were often destructive and quite unorthodox but his discoveries did lay the foundation for the scientific study of Egyptology.  Drovetti was working on a dig in Luxor when he saw the Obelisk  arrive at Luxor a heated argument occurred between the two men and Drovetti's agents beat Belzoni's servant and armed with rifles even threatened Belzoni himself, so after collecting the fragile alabaster sarcophagus of Seti 1, and a set of Lion-headed statues from south of the main Temple of Karnack in the precinct of Mut  Belzoni finally left Egypt for good



Belzoni at the Temple of Ramses 11 at Abu Simbel.

When Belzoni arrived at the Temple of Ramses the Great at Abu Simbel, he was dismayed to find 30 feet of sand covering the temple entrance. He remained there several weeks, and paid locals to dig the sand away from the temple entrance, and so he was the first explorer to enter inside the Chamber of Ramses






Belzoni discovers the Inner chambers in the Pyramid of Khafre at Giza

On March 2nd 1818 Belzoni was the first person in modern times to enter the innermost chambers of the pyramid of Khafre at Giza. The entrance area had been deliberately confused by its designers with false passages and chambers. Belzoni used his engineering genius to locate the entrance to the inner chambers.He wrote on the wall 'Scoperta Da (Discovered by) G. Belzoni 2 Mar. 1818. At the west end of the burial chamber Belzoni discovered an empty sarcophagus and Arabic writing which said that the pyramid had been opened in the time of King Ali Mohammed approximately 1200 A.D.



After returning to England in 1819 Belzoni published a book entitled 'Narrative of the Operations, and Recent Discoveries within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs, and Excavations in Egypt and Nubia' Belzoni used his own drawings in the publication. The book received great publicity and made Belzoni famous. His work is regarded as being the first English research into Egyptology. Belzoni never returned to Egypt, he died of dysentery in a small village in Benin, near Timbuktu in southern Africa.