November 5, 1778

Giovanni Belzoni (November 5, 1778 to December 3, 1823) was not just an Italian explorer. He was an archaeologist before there was such a label. In a biography reviewed by the New York Times, we glimpse a figure of mythic proportions who plunged into adventure.

[I]n the summer of 1815, awaiting an audience with Mohammed Ali Pasha, Turkish viceroy of Egypt, the Italian monk-turned-peddler-turned-hydrologist-turned-circus impresario Giovanni Belzoni paid a visit to the Great Pyramid and became so tightly wedged in one of its internal passages that his guides had to forcibly extract him. It was merely the first of many indignities endured by this 6-foot-6 “giant,” whose adventures in the Nile Valley would yield some of the most imposing treasures in the British Museum....


While granting that Belzoni may be what a colleague has called “the most notorious tomb robber Egypt has ever known,” Ivor Noël Hume, the former director of Colonial Williamsburg’s archaeological research program, also admits to a fondness for this indefatigable entrepreneur. And while it’s entirely possible to cringe at Belzoni’s methods (blasting through walls with battering rams, crunching bones underfoot and squashing mummies when he sat on them, incising his name into ancient statues) it’s nearly impossible to resist the story.... [Hume tells in] Belzoni: The Giant Archaeologists Love to Hate (2011) .

[After many adventures]....he set off in 1823 to search for the source of the Nile and died of dysentery in Benin....

When Giovanni Belzoni died, he left his wife, an Irish tightrope walker, in Morocco, a seven ton statue of Ramses II at the British Museum in London, and two statues of cat goddesses in Padua, his hometown.


This last we learned from H. V. Morton (A Traveller in Italy, 1964)