Egypt Itself: The Career of Robert Hay of Linplum and Nunraw, 1799-1863
By (author) Selwyn Tillett
Paperback (Published)
(June 2026)
ISBN: 9781805833161
7.99 x 10.91 inches
Price: $64.00
In stock
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 Drawing on unpublished letters, diaries, and archives, it reassesses Hay’s life, collaborators, and lasting contribution to the study of Egypt.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
Selwyn Tillett is a retired Anglican priest living near Norwich. His interest in Robert Hay began while reading for a degree in Egyptology at Cambridge in the early 1970s, a decade before ordination. Egypt Itself is his only publication in this fi eld, though following other interests he has also published extensively for the Sir Arthur Sullivan Society on the pre-production and early performance history of the operas of Gilbert and Sullivan and their contemporaries. In 1990 he was one of the two co-discoverers of the ballet music from Gilbert and Sullivan’s first opera, Thespis, all the music from which was thought to have vanished. He is a frequent actor and director, and secretary to the management committee, for the Sewell Barn Theatre in Norwich.
- By (author) Selwyn Tillett
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