Bibliograph

Empress of the Nile, the daredevil archaeologist who saved Egypt's ancient temples from destruction, Lynne Olson

Type

Label

Empress of the Nile, the daredevil archaeologist who saved Egypt's ancient temples from destruction, Lynne Olson

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references (pages 403-406) and index

resource.biographical

individual biography

Illustrations

mapsillustrations

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Empress of the Nile

Nature of contents

bibliography

Responsibility statement

Lynne Olson

Sub title

the daredevil archaeologist who saved Egypt's ancient temples from destruction

Summary

In the 1960s, the world's attention was focused on a nail-biting race against time—an international campaign to save over a dozen ancient Egyptian temples, built during the height of the pharaohs' rule, from drowning in the floodwaters of the gigantic new Aswan High Dam. But the massive press coverage of this unprecedented rescue effort completely overlooked the feisty French archaeologist who made it all happen. Without the intervention of Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, the temples, including the Met Museum's Temple of Dendur, would now be at the bottom of a gigantic reservoir. A willful, real-life version of Indiana Jones, Desroches-Noblecourt refused to be cowed by anyone or anything. As a brave member of the French Resistance in WWII she had survived imprisonment by the Nazis; in her fight to save the temples she had to face down two of the most daunting leaders of the postwar world, Egyptian President Abdel Nasser and French President Charles de Gaulle. Yet Desroches-Noblecourt was not the only woman who played a crucial role in the endeavor. The other one was Jacqueline Kennedy, America's new First Lady, who persuaded her husband to call on Congress to help fund the rescue effort.

Classification