Five centuries of fieldwork
The explorers, artists, scholars and Egyptian workers whose notebooks, sketches and squeezes built the discipline of Egyptology.
This section follows the framework of Chris Naunton's Egyptologists' Notebooks (Thames & Hudson, 2020) — four eras of Nile exploration, from the Jesuit polymaths of the 1600s to the rescue archaeologists racing the rising waters of Lake Nasser. The figures here are the ones whose unpublished sketches, letters and field notes still anchor what we know about pharaonic Egypt.
1600s – early 1700s
Before Egyptology existed, a handful of priests, diplomats and gentleman-travellers tried to make sense of the ruins they stumbled across. Their drawings were often wrong and their theories wilder — but they were the first to ask the right questions.
1602–1680 · German Jesuit polymath
Tried to decipher hieroglyphs from his desk in Rome two centuries before Champollion. He was almost entirely wrong — he read them as mystical symbols — but his lavish Oedipus Aegyptiacus made Egypt fashionable in European libraries.
1578–1644 · English traveller and poet
His 1615 Relation of a Journey is one of the earliest English-language travelogues to describe the Pyramids of Giza, the Sphinx and the ruins of Alexandria — a model for every Grand Tour account that followed.
1708–1742 · Danish naval captain and draughtsman
Sent up the Nile by Christian VI of Denmark in 1737. His Voyage d'Égypte et de Nubie, published posthumously, gave Europe its first accurate plans and elevations of monuments as far south as Derr.
1704–1765 · English clergyman and antiquarian
Travelled in Egypt in 1737–38 at the same time as Norden. His Description of the East included the first European descriptions of tombs in the Valley of the Kings — KV2, KV3, KV4, KV9, KV11 and KV14.
1798 – 1850s
Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798 turned the country into a stage for European rivalry. Expeditions from France, Britain, Prussia and Tuscany raced to copy every inscription before the others — and along the way, hieroglyphs were finally cracked.
1747–1825 · French artist, attached to Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign
Sketched temples under fire while embedded with General Desaix's column in Upper Egypt. His Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Égypte (1802) launched the Egyptomania that swept Europe — and the monumental Description de l'Égypte that followed.
1787–1879 · French architect
Court architect to Muhammad Ali Pasha. His measured drawings of Cairo's medieval mosques are still the best record we have of Islamic Cairo before the 19th-century rebuilding swept much of it away.
1787–1869 · French mineralogist and explorer
Rediscovered the emerald mines of Wadi Sikait in the Eastern Desert and pushed further south into Nubia than any European of his generation, reaching Meroë in 1822.
1786–1855 · English landowner and traveller
Brought the Philae obelisk back to Kingston Lacy in Dorset. The bilingual inscription on it — Greek and hieroglyphic — gave Champollion the second confirmation he needed for his decipherment.
1788–1862 · English Egyptologist
Worked for Muhammad Ali's geological survey, then spent eight years copying inscriptions across Egypt. His unpublished notebooks (now in the British Library) preserve scenes from tombs that have since been damaged or lost.
1801–1876 · English Arabist
Wrote An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836), still the most exhaustive ethnography of 19th-century Cairo, and a monumental Arabic-English Lexicon that scholars use to this day.
1799–1863 · Scottish laird and antiquarian
Bankrolled his own expedition, hiring artists including Bonomi and Catherwood. The Hay portfolios — thousands of drawings, plans and squeezes — are one of the great unpublished archives of pharaonic Egypt.
1790–1832 · French linguist
Cracked the hieroglyphic script in 1822 using the Rosetta Stone and the Bankes obelisk, then finally saw Egypt for himself in 1828–29 on the Franco-Tuscan Expedition. Died of a stroke at 41, the founder of the discipline.
1804–1842 · French artist, pupil of Champollion
Travelled with Champollion on the 1828 expedition and returned twice more. His meticulous coloured copies of tomb and temple scenes survive in the Bibliothèque nationale.
1797–1875 · English Egyptologist
Spent twelve years living in a tomb on the Theban hill, mapping the necropolis. His Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (1837) was the first comprehensive picture of pharaonic daily life — and he invented the KV numbering system still used today.
1801–1872 · French architect
Published Panorama d'Égypte et de Nubie (1841), the most beautiful coloured lithographs of the monuments produced in the romantic era — Karnak, Philae and Abu Simbel as artists imagined them.
1810–1884 · Prussian Egyptologist
Led the Prussian Expedition of 1842–45 on behalf of Friedrich Wilhelm IV. The resulting Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien — twelve folio volumes — remains the single most important corpus of monuments from the pre-photographic age.
1815 – 1920s
The early 19th-century treasure hunt slowly gave way to method. Petrie introduced systematic excavation; women like Edwards and Brocklehurst funded and ran fieldwork; and Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun made archaeology global news.
1778–1823 · Italian strongman turned antiquities collector
A circus performer hired by British consul Henry Salt to remove monuments for the British Museum. Cleared the entrance to Abu Simbel, found KV17 (Seti I) and KV21, and emptied the second pyramid of Giza. The villain of every modern museum-restitution argument, but his journals are vivid and honest.
1786–1852 · French sculptor and agent for consul Drovetti
Belzoni's main rival on the West Bank of Luxor. The Drovetti collection he helped assemble became the founding holding of the Museo Egizio in Turin.
1807–1875 · Armenian-Egyptian engineer
Trained in London, employed by Muhammad Ali. His geological boreholes around Memphis in the 1850s — looking for the level of the original Nile — are one of the earliest applications of stratigraphic science in Egypt.
1812–1887 · Italian artist and curator at the Bulaq Museum
Mariette's right hand in Cairo. Restored the Meidum geese and supervised excavations across the Delta; his watercolours of tomb scenes are masterpieces in their own right.
1831–1892 · English novelist, journalist and founder of the EES
Her A Thousand Miles up the Nile (1877) is the great Victorian travel book about Egypt. Appalled by the destruction she saw, she co-founded the Egypt Exploration Fund (now the Egypt Exploration Society) in 1882 and endowed the first chair of Egyptology in Britain — at UCL, for Petrie.
1853–1942 · English archaeologist
The father of scientific archaeology in Egypt. Invented seriation dating from pottery, excavated more sites than anyone before or since, and trained two generations of fieldworkers. His wife Hilda Petrie ran the dig houses, the finances and much of the publication.
1832–1898 · English traveller and collector
A wealthy unmarried Cheshire woman who sailed the Nile repeatedly in the 1870s and 80s, smuggled a mummy home in her luggage, and founded the West Park Museum in Macclesfield — still a small jewel of an Egyptology collection.
1859–1946 · French Egyptologist, Director of Antiquities 1897–99
Discovered KV35 (Amenhotep II) in 1898 — and inside it the second great royal cache: nine kings, including Thutmose IV, Amenhotep III, Merenptah and Seti II.
1869–1949 · English Egyptologist and botanist
Cleared and copied the great Middle Kingdom tombs at Beni Hasan and El-Bersha. Hired the young Howard Carter as a copyist in 1891 — the start of Carter's career.
1874–1939 · English archaeologist
Trained as an artist under Newberry and Petrie, eventually working for Lord Carnarvon. On 4 November 1922 his workmen uncovered the step leading down to KV62 — Tutankhamun. The clearance took ten years; the catalogue is still being published.
1865–1941 / 1881–1965 · British copyists for the EES and the Metropolitan Museum
The greatest tomb-painting copyists of the 20th century. Their facsimiles of Theban tombs — Nina at the easel, Norman in charge of epigraphy — preserve colours and details that have since faded or been destroyed.
1900 – 1960s
By the 20th century the focus shifted from royal tombs to entire settlements — workers' villages, palace cities, fortified towns. The discipline also began (slowly) to credit the Egyptian foremen and workers who had always made the discoveries possible.
1867–1942 · American archaeologist (Harvard / Boston MFA)
Set a new standard for stratigraphic excavation at Giza, Naga ed-Deir and across Nubia. Discovered the burial of Queen Hetepheres I, mother of Khufu, in 1925 — the richest Old Kingdom royal find ever made.
1856–1928 · Italian Egyptologist, director of the Museo Egizio in Turin
Led the Italian Archaeological Mission from 1903. Excavated the intact tomb of the architect Kha and his wife Merit at Deir el-Medina (TT8) in 1906 — its contents are the heart of Turin's collection — and the magnificent tomb of Nefertari (QV66).
Egyptian reis (foreman) for Reisner at Giza
One of the senior Egyptian foremen who actually ran the day-to-day excavation of the Giza pyramid field. The Quftis under his charge made most of the finds attributed to the foreign directors — a contribution Egyptology has only recently begun to record properly.
1904–1941 · British archaeologist
Dug at Amarna in the 1930s for the EES, mapping Akhenaten's short-lived capital. Returned to Crete during the war as a liaison officer with the resistance and was shot by German paratroopers near Heraklion in 1941.
1903–1971 · British Egyptologist
Excavated the great Early Dynastic mastabas at Saqqara, then led the UNESCO rescue work in Lower Nubia ahead of the Aswan High Dam — saving what could be saved before Lake Nasser drowned the rest.