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A World Beneath the Sands: The Golden Age of Egyptology

A World Beneath the Sands: The Golden Age of Egyptology

by Toby Wilkinson

W. W. Norton & Company ·2020 ·510 pages ·History
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About This Book

A thrilling history of the West's scramble for the riches of ancient Egypt by the foremost Egyptologist of our time. From the decipherment of hieroglyphics in 1822 to the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon a hundred years later, the uncovering of Egypt's ancient past took place in an atmosphere of grand adventure and international rivalry. In A World Beneath the Sands, acclaimed Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson chronicles the ruthless race between the British, French, Germans, and Americans to lay claim to its mysteries and treasures. He tells riveting stories of the men and women whose obsession with Egypt's ancient civilization helped to enrich and transform our understanding of the Nile Valley and its people, and left a lasting impression on Egypt, too. Travelers and treasure-hunters, ethnographers and archaeologists: whatever their motives, whatever their methods, a century of adventure and scholarship revealed a lost world, buried for centuries beneath the sands.


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Reviews

"The result is an essential portrait of how the rediscovery of '[Egypt's] ancient past paved the way for its modern rebirth.'"

Publishers Weekly Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"A World Beneath the Sands tells a gripping story by means of all the wayward eccentrics and heroic archaeologists who devoted their lives to uncovering the world's most ancient and dazzling monuments from beneath unimaginable depths of windblown sand ..."

Sue Galsford· Financial Times Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Wilkinson has a talent for vignette, and by sketching how different scholars and archaeologists negotiated the demands of their infant discipline he succeeds as well in creating a consistently fascinating gallery of characters."

Tom Holland· The Guardian Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"This is a fine book in every respect; it has lots of photos, plenty of notes and excellent recommendations for more reading."

L. K. Hanson· The Minneapolis Star Tribune Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Late on in A World Beneath the Sands I realised what I should probably have studied was not Egyptology but Egyptologists."

A.S.H. Smyth· The Spectator (UK) Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Rarely do facts speak this clearly."

Rosemary Mahoney· The New York Times Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

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