Giovanni Belzoni

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Italian engineer, adventurer and circus performer featured in a BBC-TV special program. Belzoni was one of thirteen children. He entered the monastery at age 16 but became embroiled in adverse political doings. He fled to England in 1803. Uncommonly tall at 6'7", he joined a traveling circus troupe with which he performed as "strong man." About 12 years later, in 1815, while in Malta, he met a representative of the Pasha to whom Belzoni showed a hydraulic system he had perfected. The official convinced Belzoni to travel to Egypt with his machine. While there he met the British consul and is credited with exploration of the Temple of Edfu, opening the Pyramid of Khefren at Giza and discovering the ruins of Berenice near Benghazi as well as sending a huge bust of Rameses II to the British Museum in London. An amateur archeologist, his methods have subsequently been frowned upon; nevertheless he is one of the first men to explore and uncover ancient artifacts. One year after his 1819 return to England he published "Narratives of the Operations and Recent Discoveries within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs and Excavations in Egypt and Nubia." He died in 1823 in Benin, Africa of dysentery. Two years later, his widow erected exhibits in London and Paris of his work that included his drawings and models of the royal tombs of Thebes. Link to Wikipedia biography