EARLY EGYPTOLOGIST
PHARAOH’S FOOL, by M. Willson Disher; Heinemann, English price 30/-. YDRAULIC engineer, music hall strong man, Egyptian archaeologist, Giovanni Belzoni, a Paduan who more or less adopted British nationality, had a picturesque career in Napoleonic times (he went to Spain as a vaudeville artist to help amuse Wellington’s troops). His greatest claim to fame is the astuteness with which he smelt out
the resting places of ancient pharaohs, to rifle the tombs of their treasures with a ruthlessness a shade less wanton than that of most of his contemporaries. Indeed, in scientific method Belzoni was ahead of his age. His journeys in the desert were adventurous; the appetite for travel grew on him, and he died of fever in West Africa on his way, literally, to Timbuctoo. Mr Disher is primarily a theatrical historian, and it was presumably the vaudeville phase which first interested him in Belzoni. He is one to mar a curious tale in the telling, and in spite of the obvious trouble that he has devoted to research into Belzoni’s life, this biography does not quite come to life. I suspect it was a little thin for a book, both in source materials and in subject. But there are all sorts of titbits let drop to delight the historically
minded.
David
Hall
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 951, 1 November 1957, Page 14
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217EARLY EGYPTOLOGIST New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 951, 1 November 1957, Page 14
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