Listen free for 30 days
-
Empress of the Nile
- The Daredevil Archaeologist Who Saved Egypt's Ancient Temples from Destruction
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wish list failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Empress of the Nile
Buy Now for $29.14
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's Summary
New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • The remarkable story of the intrepid French archaeologist who led the international effort to save ancient Egyptian temples from the floodwaters of the Aswan Dam, by the New York Times bestselling author of Madame Fourcade’s Secret War
“A female version of the Indiana Jones story . . . [Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt] was a daredevil whose real-life antics put Hollywood fiction to shame.”—The Guardian
In the 1960s, the world’s attention was focused on a nail-biting race against time: the international campaign to save a dozen ancient Egyptian temples from drowning in the floodwaters of the gigantic new Aswan High Dam. But the coverage of this unprecedented rescue effort completely overlooked the daring French archaeologist who made it all happen. Without the intervention of Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, the temples—including the Temple of Dendur, now at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art—would currently be at the bottom of a vast reservoir. It was an unimaginably complex project that required the fragile sandstone temples to be dismantled and rebuilt on higher ground.
Willful and determined, Desroches-Noblecourt refused to be cowed by anyone or anything. As a member of the French Resistance in World War II she survived imprisonment by the Nazis; in her fight to save the temples she defied two of the most daunting leaders of the postwar world, Egypt’s President Abdel Nasser and France’s President Charles de Gaulle. As she told one reporter, “You don’t get anywhere without a fight, you know.”
Desroches-Noblecourt also received help from a surprising source. Jacqueline Kennedy, America’s new First Lady, persuaded her husband to help fund the rescue effort. After a century and a half of Western plunder of Egypt’s ancient monuments, Desroches-Noblecourt helped instead to preserve a crucial part of that cultural heritage.
What the critics say
“Lynne Olson’s many fans know her gift for storytelling and for bringing to life heroes who may not be well known but who demand—indeed, rivet—our attention. Who else but Olson could have found Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, a beautiful and brave French resistance fighter brazen enough to tell her Gestapo interrogators to stand up when a woman enters the room, and who happens to be a kind of female Indiana Jones working behind the scenes—alongside Jackie Kennedy!—to save the ancient temples of Egypt? Readers will devour this wonderful book.” (Evan Thomas, New York Times bestselling author of First: Sandra Day O’Connor)
“Empress of the Nile is an exhilarating, in-depth look at a woman whose courage never faltered, whether she was facing Nazi interrogators, backstabbing archaeologist colleagues, or the imminent destruction of the Egyptian monuments and artifacts she held most dear. Olson’s richly detailed, heart-stopping biography takes the reader for a magnificent ride.” (Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Magnolia Palace)
“Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt was one of the leading Egyptologists of the twentieth century, yet her remarkable achievements have received little attention. Lynne Olson has done her justice with this comprehensive biography.” (Toby Wilkinson, New York Times bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt and Tutankhamun’s Trumpet)