Empress of the Nile
the daredevil archaeologist who saved Egypt's ancient temples from destruction
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- £9.99
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
The fascinating story of the feisty French archaeologist who led the international effort to save ancient Egyptian temples from the floodwaters of the Aswan Dam.
In the 1960s, the world’s attention was focused on a nail-biting race against time: fifty countries contributed nearly a billion dollars to save a dozen ancient Egyptian temples from drowning in the floodwaters of the gigantic new Aswan High Dam. But the massive press coverage of this unprecedented rescue effort completely overlooked the gutsy French archaeologist who made it all happen. Without the intervention of Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, the temples would now be at the bottom of a gigantic reservoir. It was a project of unimaginable size and complexity that required the fragile sandstone temples to be dismantled, stone by stone, and rebuilt on higher ground.
Desroches-Noblecourt refused to be cowed by anyone or anything. As a brave member of the French Resistance in World War II, she had survived imprisonment by the Nazis; in her fight to save the temples, she had to face down two of the most daunting leaders of the postwar world, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and French president Charles de Gaulle.
After a century and a half of Western plunder of Egypt’s ancient monuments, Desroches-Noblecourt helped preserve a crucial part of its cultural heritage, and, just as importantly, made sure it remained in its homeland.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Olson follows up Madame Fourcade's Secret War with another scintillating biography of a woman who worked in the French Resistance against the Nazis. But Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt (1913–2011) had an even more impressive second act, according to Olson: as an Egyptologist, she spearheaded "the greatest single example of international cultural cooperation the world has ever known," a campaign in the 1950s and '60s to save Nubian temples and other antiquities from flooding caused by the construction of the Aswan High Dam in Egypt. Throughout, Olson details the misogyny Desroches-Noblecourt dealt with from her male colleagues at the Louvre and the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo, even as she reached the top of her field. Beginning in 1958, she helped raised money from dozens of nations to dismantle the temples block-by-block, transport them up the Nile, and rebuild them on higher ground. Olson also credits first lady Jackie Kennedy with helping persuade her husband's administration to support the campaign, and documents Desroches-Noblecourt's involvement in a 1967 Paris exhibition of King Tutankhamun's treasures. Enriched by fascinating digressions into Egyptian history, museum rivalries, the plundering of archaeological sites, the 1956 Suez Crisis, and more, this is a captivating portrait of a pathbreaking woman. Readers will be enthralled. Photos.
