Belzo'ni, GIOVANNI BATTISTA

Belzo'ni, GIOVANNI BATTISTA, a famous traveller, was born, the son of a poor barber, at Padua in 1778. He was educated at Rome for the priesthood, but soon displayed a preference for mechanical science, and when the French republican troops took possession of the pontifical city, quitted his religious studies altogether. About the year 1800 he visited Holland, and in 1803 came to England. Six feet seven inches tall, for a time he gained a living by exhibiting feats of strength, at first in the streets, and afterwards at Astley's. At the same time, however, he continued his mechanical studies, and exhibited models of hydraulic engines in the large towns of the kingdom. After a sojourn of nine years in England, he went to Spain and Portugal in his capacity of theatrical athlete. From the Peninsula he passed to Malta, and thence to Egypt in 1815, on the invitation of Mehmet Ali, who wished him to construct a hydraulic machine for the irrigation of his gardens near Cairo. Although he succeeded in this undertaking, the design was abandoned by the pasha, and Belzoni was induced by the traveller Burckhardt and Mr Salt, the British consul, to direct his attention to the exploration of Egyptian antiquities. He threw himself with ardour into his new vocation. He removed the colossal bust of the so-called 'Young Memnon' from the neighbourhood of Thebes to Alexandria, and was the first who opened the temple of Abu-Simbel. In the valley of 'the tombs of the kings'—Bibân-el-Moluk—near Thebes, he discovered several important catacombs containing mummies, and among others, opened in 1817 the celebrated grotto-sepulchre of Seti I., from which he removed the splendid sarcophagus, now, along with the 'Young Memnon,' and other results of Belzoni's labours, in the British Museum. But his greatest undertaking was his opening of the second pyramid of Gizeh, supposed since Herodotus' time to contain no interior chamber. An attempt made on his life caused his departure from Egypt, but previously he made a journey along the coast of the Red Sea, and another to Lake Mæris and the Lesser Oasis, which he erroneously supposed to be that of Siwah (q.v.), in search of the ruins of the temple of Jupiter Ammon. In the course of his explorations he discovered the emerald mines of Zubara and the ruins of Berenice, the ancient commercial entrepôt between Europe and India. In 1819 he returned to Europe, and in 1821 published at London his Narrative of Excavations in Egypt and Nubia. In 1821 he opened in London a successful exhibition of his Egyptian antiquities, which he took to Paris in the following year. Becoming restless, he soon afterwards undertook a journey to Timbuktu, in Central Africa. At Benin he was attacked by dysentery, from which he died at Gato, December 3, 1823.