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Full Description
William John Bankes (1786-1855) was a brilliant and remarkable man: rich, charming, witty and good-looking, he studied Classics at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became a close and lifelong friend of Byron. In 1812 he went to Spain and Portugal to pursue a Bohemian lifestyle among the gypsies. This was followed by travels in the Near East, where he sought out danger and excitement, from clandestine trips to the forbidden mosque in Jerusalem to the very real perils attending early travellers in Egypt and Nubia. Bankes amassed a vast portfolio of notes, manuscripts and drawings by the artists who accompanied him on his Egyptian travels. Their extremely high degree of accuracy makes them a very valuable record of the ancient monuments, many of which have since been damaged or lost. His intuitive detective work and the many copies of hieroglyphic inscriptions he accumulated were instrumental in the struggle to decipher hieroglyphs. Bankes spent his later years in self-imposed exile in Italy to avoid the repercussions of a charge brought against him for a homosexual offence involving a guardsman in Green Park. His art collection and an obelisk he removed from Philae remained at Ki
Contents
Prologue 1. The Unexpected Heir - Trifling and Study 2. The Pyramids in Sight - Alexandria, Cairo and Sinai 3. Calm, Heat and Crocodiles - The First Nubian Voyage 4. Ruins, Inscriptions and Semiramis - Syria, Greece and Asia Minor 5. The Traveller Who Leaves Nothing Unexplored - Jerusalem, Petra and the Dead Sea 6. The Secret of the Obelisk - Return to Egypt 7. The Nubian Explorer - Dabod to Quban 8. Vestiges of Antiquity - Wadi es Sebua to the Second Cataract 9. Robbery and Obstruction - The End of the Journey 10. Return to Europe - Projects and Plagiarism 11. The Meroe Expedition and the Outlaw 12. A Collection and a Legacy Bibliography Index
