Ancient Egypt
The scale of ancient Egyptian history is overwhelming. Americans (North and South) wrestle with the consequences of five hundred years of invasion, conquest, and settlement. Europeans argue over what delineates different phases of their history (modern, the rise of the nation-state, phases of the Renaissance, medieval, post-Roman, and so on). Well, that gets you back only 1500 years. Classicists pride their discipline on another thousand years. Egyptians look on, bemused. They go back 6000 years without breathing hard. Ancient Egypt (a deep and long category, obviously) represents a civilization that still fascinates us. Think pharaohs, pyramids, mummies, hieroglyphs, the Sphinx, the Nile, "King Tut." Children and adults love such stuff. I debated with myself whether to be a purist on Ancient Egypt and end my listings with Alexander the Great's conquest and the great era of the Ptolemaic dynasty, but you would miss so much in those 275 years leading up to the pragmatic and unimaginative Romans building their empire on Egyptian grain. I wanted to include the Pharos lighthouse, Alexandria and its library, Cleopatra. So I did, and I will. This page, these offerings, like the rest of Whistlestop, will be carefully curated and vetted and supplemented as I find and list interesting items.
Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Archaeologist Who saved Egypt's Ancient Temples from Destruction
Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Archaeologist Who saved Egypt's Ancient Temples from Destruction
The remarkable story of the intrepid French archaeologist who led the international effort to save ancient Egyptian temples from the floodwaters of the Aswan Dam, by the New York Times bestselling author of Madame Fourcade’s Secret War
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, built during the height of the pharaohs’ rule, from drowning in the floodwaters of the massive new Aswan High Dam. But the extensive press coverage at the time 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 vast reservoir. It was an unimaginably large and complex project that required the fragile sandstone temples to be dismantled, stone by stone, and rebuilt on higher ground.
A willful real-life version of Indiana Jones, Desroches-Noblecourt refused to be cowed by anyone or anything. During World War II she joined the French Resistance and was held by the Nazis; in her fight to save the temples she challenged two of the postwar world’s most daunting leaders, Egypt’s President Nasser and France’s President de Gaulle. As she told a reporter, “You don’t get anywhere without a fight, you know.”
Yet Desroches-Noblecourt was not the only woman who played an essential role in the historic endeavor. The other was Jacqueline Kennedy, who persuaded her husband to call on Congress to help fund the rescue effort. After years of Western plunder of Egypt’s ancient monuments, Desroches-Noblecourt did the opposite. She helped preserve a crucial part of Egypt’s cultural heritage, and made sure it remained in its homeland.