Egypt Itself: The Career of Robert Hay of Linplum and Nunraw, 1799-1863

This expanded biography of Robert Hay (1799–1863), one of the pioneers of Egyptology, explores his travels, expeditions, and remarkable record of ancient Egyptian monuments. Drawing on unpublished letters, diaries, and archives, it reassesses Hay’s life, collaborators, and lasting contribution to the study of Egypt.

The landed Scot, Robert Hay, is one of the best-known names among the pioneers of Egyptology. His forty-nine volumes of drawings, plans and water-colours, assembled in the 1820s and 1830s and now in the British Library, still form an invaluable record of the monuments of ancient Egypt. His contemporaries acknowledged Hay’s collection as more complete and accurate than that of any other traveller – Sir Gardner Wilkinson even describing it as ‘Egypt itself’. Yet little of this material has ever been published, while virtually no personal details of Hay’s life were available prior to the first edition of this biography in 1984 (SD Books, London). This new, greatly enlarged, expanded and corrected edition presents a detailed account of Hay together with much new information on the lives and careers of his employees, including Joseph Bonomi, Francis Arundale and Frederick Catherwood. It draws on many private manuscript collections never before used in Egyptological studies and allows Hay’s story to be told as far as possible entirely in the words of his own letters and diaries and those of his friends, family, and colleagues. Accompanied by 120 illustrations, both of Egypt from Hay’s own papers and photographs of himself and his family, most of them never before published, the book brings to life one of the lost characters of Egyptology and examines his true place in its history.

List of Figures 

Family Trees  

Maps  

Note on Transcriptions and Spelling  

Abbreviations Used in the Notes  

Preface  

Introduction  

1: Childhood, Naval Service and Linplum 1799-1822  

2: Grand Tour and the Beginning in Egypt 1822-24  

3: The First Expedition 1824-28  

4: Rescue and Marriage - an Investigation  

5: The Second Expedition 1829–34  

6: A Celebrated Traveller’s Projects 1835-40  

7: A Country Gentleman and his Friends 1840-44  

8: Failure, Florence and Family 1845-63  

9: Dispersal: 1863 to the Present  

Bibliography  

Index

• By (author) Selwyn Tillett