Dear Reader,
Today’s issue features a forgotten 19th-century woman traveller who explored the unknown with and without her husband. I hope you enjoy reading it. Have a wonderful weekend!
When in 1880 The Cornhill Magazine published an informative biography of her famous husband’s life and career, so little was known about Sarah Belzoni (1783–1870) that she was mentioned only once and not even by name.
Sarah Parker Brown was born in January 1783. It’s not certain where. Possibly in Bristol, England or possibly in Ireland. She married Italian-born Giovanni Belzoni (1778-1823) in 1803. He was an engineer, an actor, a strongman, and an explorer. In the early years of their marriage, Sarah performed with him in plays. Charles Dickens described her as “pretty”. The Belzonis travelled widely and were each other's confidants. They did not have children.
On a quest for Giovanni to excavate for artefacts, they departed for Egypt in 1815. Before arriving in Egypt they visited Portugal, Spain and Malta. From Malta, they set sail for Alexandria on 19 May 1815 arriving on the 9th of June. They stayed in Egypt from 1815 to 1819.
Giovanni is known today for discovering the tomb of Seti I. As was typical of the era, Giovanni looted Egyptian tombs for personal gain. One such loot was the statue of Younger Memnon, which he sold to the British Museum.
What little is known of Sarah can be gleaned from her insightful travel essay, “Mrs Belzoni’s Trifling Account of the Women of Egypt, Nubia, and Syria”, which was included as a chapter in her husband’s book, Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries in Egypt and Nubia.1
Life in Egypt could not have been easy for Sarah. They slept in tombs in unsanitary conditions. They ate food that was cooked with pieces of bones and rags of mummies. Yet she stayed by Giovanni’s side, not only as his wife but also as his partner. She was a support to him, and even saved the tomb of Seti I from major flooding. She mostly stayed at base camp while her husband was excavating elsewhere. This allowed her to become acquainted with the local women. She was fascinated by them and they by her, which she detailed in her travel essay.
In her essay, she wrote of the minute details of the everyday life of the locals. She wrote about how badly the local men treated their wives. Her uncensored descriptions were a rare glimpse of life in the Middle East for contemporary readers. She wrote about the local women, their worries and their jealousies. She wrote about Turks beheading men, something that must have seemed like fiction to early 19th-century readers.
Sarah’s travelling life was difficult. When not sleeping in caves, they slept under trees filled with ants. In her essay, she wrote of her loneliness and isolation, especially during times when she experienced ill health. During an eye infection and suffering from temporary blindness, local women rushed to help her with questionable remedies. One well-meaning woman boiled garlic in water and steamed it over Sarah’s face. While it didn’t cure Sarah, it probably didn’t hurt anything. Eventually, her condition improved and her eyesight was restored.
During another bout of ill health, her husband detailed in his book the bizarre medical advice Sarah was given.
“Sometime after this, Mrs Belzoni had a pain in her side. One evening, I went to his divan; and as he always inquired after the health of his physician, I informed him of the circumstance: upon which he assured me, that it was nothing but what he would find a remedy for immediately; and he rose and went into an inner room, from which with all imaginable pomp and devotion he brought out a book. The Sheik of the mosque was present; and, after turning over and over again the leaves of this book, they concluded on what was to be done. Three pieces of paper were cut in a triangular form, the size of a playing card, and the Sheik wrote on them several words in Arabic. Of these pieces of paper, he told me, that Mrs Belzoni must fasten one to her forehead by a string, and one to each ear. He then fetched a piece of the skin of a lamb, that had been sacrificed during the feast of Bairam. The Sheik wrote on this also, and it was to be applied to the part affected. I thanked him very much for his kindness and brought away the amulets, which we keep to this day, as a memorial of the Turkish method of curing pains.”
Sarah left Cairo in January 1818 for a solo excursion to the Holy Land. She stayed for two months in Damietta, a port city in Egypt, and continued her travels arriving in Jaffa in March of that year. She travelled to Jerusalem, Jordan and Nazareth before she reunited with her husband in November 1818. Because she travelled alone, she disguised herself as a Turkish youth.
Today the sarcophagus of Seti I (from the tomb she saved from flooding) is at Sir John Soane’s Museum in London. Mr. Soanes purchased it from the Belzonis after the British Museum turned it down. If you visit the museum, the guidebook lists the sarcophagus’s location in room 11.
While Sarah was a fearless traveller and a partner to her husband, she was a woman of her era. She attempted to spread Christianity to the “heathens” by distributing free bibles.
The Belzonis left Egypt in 1819 for Europe where they stayed for a few months—and finally arrived in England in 1820. Giovanni spent time editing his book on his excavations and planning for another trip to Egypt. In 1821, he presented a public exhibition of his discoveries in Piccadilly, though he was unable to secure further funding for his trip.2 Instead, Giovanni sold his looted antiquities and set sail by himself for Benin to explore the Niger River. Unfortunately, in 1823, while en route, he died unexpectedly and was buried in Togo.3
Sadly, after her husband’s death, Sarah was left destitute. To make ends meet, she sold a 1000-year-old mummy. She also sold the coffin of the 11th-century BCE scribe, Butehamun. But the funds didn’t last long and she lived most of her life on meagre means. By 1850, it was reported she was living in poverty. In 1851, after years of lobbying by her friends, she was granted a civil list pension of £100 a year for “…consideration of the services rendered to science by the researches of her late husband, the celebrated African traveller, and of her own distressed circumstances.”
Towards the end of her life, she lived in Belgium and eventually made her way to Jersey, where she died in 1870 aged 87. She was buried in Jersey at Mont a l’Abbé cemetery. But even before her death, her insightful travel essay and her contributions to her husband’s career were forgotten. When publications wrote about her husband’s accomplishments she was never mentioned.
Her few possessions, such as her husband’s notebook, sketchbooks and watercolours, were passed on to her goddaughter, Selina Belzoni Tucker (1821-1893). These items were eventually donated to the Bristol City Museum.
In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in her life by archaeology historians. While many details of her early life may be lost to history, her burial spot in Jersey was rediscovered. Funding was raised to restore her neglected grave marker.
She may have thought of herself as “trifling” but she was an equal partner to her husband and a valiant solo traveller who had extraordinary experiences for women of her era.
Sources Consulted
Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries in Egypt and Nubia by Giovanni Belzoni
Civil List Pensions 1851
"Giovanni Battista Belzoni" by Richard Burton for The Cornhill Magazine, vol. 42, no. 247, 1880, pp. 36-50
Article on Sarah Belzoni in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography by Deborah Manley
Article on Sarah Belzoni by William H. Peck for Brown University
Published by John Murray in London in 1820. A second edition was printed in 1821; a third edition was printed in 1822.
Piccadilly is a neighbourhood in London.
Today Togo is officially known as the Togolese Republic, a country in West Africa.
This was fascinating!! Reading it reminded me of Isabelle Eberhardt - another female travel writer active in the 19th c. whose memoir I read a few years ago.
These stories if the often forgotten wives and women in great men’s life are fascinating. I recently read Wifedom by Anna Funder who delves into the wife, Eileen, of George Orwell. She was almost completely left out of the 6 major biography’s of him. A number didn’t even call her by her name and yet she had a profound influence on his writing and edited it heavily. Not to mention she went out to work so he could write at home…