Egyptologist and author Dr. Bob Brier will give a talk about his most recent book The Luxor Obelisk and Its Voyage to Paris (AUC Press, 2021) on October 13, in the Main Lecture Hall of Cairo’s National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation (NMEC), Fustat.
The event, organised by NMEC and AUC Press, is open to the public, according to a statement issued by the AUC.
The Luxor Obelisk and Its Voyage to Paris by Apollinaire Lebas, introduced and translated from French by Bob Brier and Colette Fossez Sumner, recounts the epic voyage of one of Egypt’s treasures to the French capital.
Transporting the two-hundred-and-fifty-ton Luxor obelisk from Egypt to Paris was one of the great engineering triumphs of the early nineteenth century.
No obelisk this size had left Egypt in nearly two thousand years, and the task of bringing it fell to a young engineer, Apollinaire Lebas, a man of extraordinary resolve and ability.
On October 25, 1836 before two hundred thousand cheering Parisians, Lebas raised his obelisk.
In the nineteenth century three massive obelisks left Egypt for Paris, London, and New York. The story of the Paris obelisk, despite being the first of the three to be moved, is not well known to the English-speaking world.
The event will begin at 6:30pm and will include a Q&A session. Due to limited seating, attendees must book through an online form https://forms.gle/xsjJyz2NEo1wRAiE8.
Brier is a world-famous Egyptologist who has conducted research on pyramids, obelisks, and mummies in fifteen countries.
A senior research fellow at the C.W. Post campus of Long Island University, he is the author of seven books, including The Murder of Tutankhamen, and hosted the Great Egyptian series, which aired on TLC.
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