A giant of a man and possessing many talents--from circus performer to hydraulic engineer--Giovanni Battista Belzoni worked at a large number of sites in Egypt between 1816 and 1819. While his archaeological methods fell far below modern standards, he managed to discover and record a number of important monuments, including the tomb of the pharaoh Seti I (ca. 1294-1279 BCE) in the Valley of the Kings. The beautifully colored plate contains the royal names of Seti I, designated him justified before the god of the dead, Osiris. The first and fourth cartouches (royal name rings) contain a detailed representation of a board-game that phonetically writes mn "to endure" in the name Men-maat-re "the cosmic order of Re endures," Seti's throne name. The combination of Champollion's decipherment and increasing numbers of epigraphic and archaeological missions to Egypt during the Nineteenth Century would create the foundation for the modern field of Egyptology.

Date

1820

Artist or Author

Giovanni Battista Belzoni

Provenance

British

Museum

Yale British Art Center

Accession Number

T268 Folio B