Giovanni Belzoni

The Embarrassing Father of Egyptology

In the British Museum there is a 3400-year-old statue of Amenhotep III, the great pharaoh who built the city of Thebes and was the first to either be declared a god or to declare himself a god. [History is a little unsettled about the Egyptian process for divinity.]

It is a large and spectacular piece; one of the main features of the museum's Egyptolo…