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Author: Belzoni, Giovanni Battista
Title: Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs, and Excavations, in Egypt and Nubia; and of a journey to the coast of the Red Sea, in search of the ancient Berenice, and another to the oasis of Jupiter Ammon
Place Published: London
Publisher:John Murray
Date Published: 1820
Description:

xix, [1], 483, [1] pp. Frontispiece lithograph portrait of Belzoni with 1 illustrated plate. (4to) 26.8x21 (10½x8¼"), re-backed gilt-ruled polished calf with blind-stamped ornamental border, original gilt-tooled spine strip retained, board edges filleted at corners, all edges marbled, marbled endpapers. First Edition.

Association copy with the armorial bookplate of English traveler and Parliamentarian John Bacon Sawrey Morritt. In Morritt's published works he advanced theories on the location of Homeric Troy. There was an atlas volume issued with this edition of the book, quite scarce and not present here.

Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1778-1823) was an Italian showman, engineer and explorer (whose gigantic physique allowed him briefly to earn a living in circuses in England, Spain and Portugal, where he was billed as "The Great Belzoni"). Belzoni went to Cairo in 1815 to offer Mohammed Ali Pasha, the founder of modern Egypt, a hydraulic machine he had invented. While in Egypt he met the British Consul General, Henry Salt, who engaged him to travel to Thebes to remove the colossal stone head of Rameses II (The Young Memnon) to be delivered to the British Museum. In 1823 Belzoni set out for Timbuktu in West Africa, but died at the village of Gwato, near Benin on December 3, 1823.

Rubbing at extremities, some scratches and scuffs; light foxing to plate and endpapers; plate is detached and laid in; very good.