Giovanni Battista Belzoni (15 November 1778 – 3 December 1823), sometimes known as
The Great Belzoni, was a prolific
Venetian explorer of
Egyptian antiquities.
Biography
Belzoni was born in
Padua. His father was a barber who sired fourteen children. His family was from
Rome and when Belzoni was 16 he went to work there, claiming that he 'studied hydraulics'. He intended taking monastic vows, but in 1798 the occupation of the city by
French troops drove him from Rome and changed his proposed career. In 1800 he moved to the
Netherlands.
In 1803 he fled to
England to avoid being sent to jail. There he married an
Englishwoman, Sarah Bane or Banne. Belzoni was a tall man at 6 ft 7 in (2m1) tall (one source says that his wife was of equally generous build, but all other accounts of her describe her as being of normal build) and they both joined a travelling circus. They were for some time compelled to find subsistence by performing exhibitions of feats of strength and agility as a
strongman at fairs and on the streets of London. In 1804 he appears engaged at the
circus at
Astley's amphitheatre at a variety of performances.Stanley Mayes:
The Great Belzoni, The Circus Strongman who Discovered Egypt's Trasures, ISBN 1845113330
In 1812 he left
England and after a tour of performances in
Spain,
Portugal and
Sicily, he went to
Malta in 1815 where he met Ismael Gibraltar, an emissary of
Muhammad Ali, who at...
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