A World Beneath the Sands

A thrilling history of the West’s scramble for the riches of ancient Egypt by the foremost Egyptologist of our time.

From the decipherment of hieroglyphics in 1822 to the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon a hundred years later, the uncovering of Egypt’s ancient past took place in an atmosphere of grand adventure and international rivalry.

In A World Beneath the Sands, acclaimed Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson chronicles the ruthless race between the British, French, Germans, and Americans to lay claim to its mysteries and treasures. He tells riveting stories of the men and women whose obsession with Egypt’s ancient civilization helped to enrich and transform our understanding of the Nile Valley and its people, and left a lasting impression on Egypt, too. Travelers and treasure-hunters, ethnographers and archaeologists: whatever their motives, whatever their methods, a century of adventure and scholarship revealed a lost world, buried for centuries beneath the sands.

About the Author: Toby Wilkinson is the author of A World Beneath the Sands and the New York Times best-selling The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt, which won the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History. He is the deputy vice chancellor of the University of Lincoln in England.