Historical
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Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Archaeologist Who Saved Egypt's Ancient Temples from Destruction
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
In the 1960s, the world's attention was focused on a nail-biting race against time: Fifty countries contributed nearly a billion dollars to save a dozen ancient Egyptian temples, built during the height of the pharaohs' rule, from drowning in the floodwaters of the massive new Aswan High Dam. But the extensive press coverage at the time overlooked the gutsy French archaeologist who made it all happen. Without the intervention of Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, the temples would now be at the bottom of a vast reservoir. It was an unimaginably large and complex project that required the fragile sandstone temples to be dismantled, stone by stone, and rebuilt on higher ground.
A willful real-life version of Indiana Jones, Desroches-Noblecourt refused to be cowed by anyone or anything. During World War II she joined the French Resistance and was held by the Nazis; in her fight to save the temples she challenged two of the postwar world's most daunting leaders, Egypt's President Nasser and France's President de Gaulle. As she told a reporter, "You don't get anywhere without a fight, you know."
Yet Desroches-Noblecourt was not the only woman who played an essential role in the historic endeavor. The other was Jacqueline Kennedy, who persuaded her husband to call on Congress to help fund the rescue effort. After years of Western plunder of Egypt's ancient monuments, Desroches-Noblecourt did the opposite. She helped preserve a crucial part of Egypt's cultural heritage, and made sure it remained in its homeland.
In the 1960s, the world's attention was focused on a nail-biting race against time: Fifty countries contributed nearly a billion dollars to save a dozen ancient Egyptian temples, built during the height of the pharaohs' rule, from drowning in the floodwaters of the massive new Aswan High Dam. But the extensive press coverage at the time overlooked the gutsy French archaeologist who made it all happen. Without the intervention of Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, the temples would now be at the bottom of a vast reservoir. It was an unimaginably large and complex project that required the fragile sandstone temples to be dismantled, stone by stone, and rebuilt on higher ground.
A willful real-life version of Indiana Jones, Desroches-Noblecourt refused to be cowed by anyone or anything. During World War II she joined the French Resistance and was held by the Nazis; in her fight to save the temples she challenged two of the postwar world's most daunting leaders, Egypt's President Nasser and France's President de Gaulle. As she told a reporter, "You don't get anywhere without a fight, you know."
Yet Desroches-Noblecourt was not the only woman who played an essential role in the historic endeavor. The other was Jacqueline Kennedy, who persuaded her husband to call on Congress to help fund the rescue effort. After years of Western plunder of Egypt's ancient monuments, Desroches-Noblecourt did the opposite. She helped preserve a crucial part of Egypt's cultural heritage, and made sure it remained in its homeland.
Editorial Reviews
"The subject of Lynne Olson's excellent biography Empress of the Nile isn't, as you might think, Cleopatra, but rather the ‘daredevil archaeologist' Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, best known for helping save massive ancient temples from destruction. . . . Olson, whose many previous books spotlight unsung heroes and heroines of [World War II], is here at her best. . . . Empress of the Nile tells [Desroches-Noblecourt's] story well, embedding it in the history of modern Egyptian archaeology. . . . Empress of the Nile is a welcome and needed work of both rescue and reclamation."-The Washington Post
"Lynne Olson now spotlights a pioneering French female Egyptologist [who] fell in love with Egypt's rich history and wealth of archaeological treasures at a young age. . . . A gripping account of an extraordinary life."-Booklist (starredreview)
"A well-documented and sensitive portrait of a remarkable woman who shared her passion for Egypt and inspired so many others, myself included, to find their calling, while at the same time helping to reinvigorate the Louvre."-Henri Loyrette, former president and director of the Louvre Museum
"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 French resistance fighter . . . who also happens to be a kind of female Indiana Jones working . . . to save the ancient temples of Egypt? Readers will devour this wonderful book."-Evan Thomas, author of First: Sandra Day O'Connor
"Once again, Lynne Olson introduces us to a modern heroine who defied the odds and achieved historic results. Empress of the Nile is a tonic for our times and a reminder that one unstoppable woman can bend history to her will."-Kati Marton, author of The Chancellor
"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, au...
"Lynne Olson now spotlights a pioneering French female Egyptologist [who] fell in love with Egypt's rich history and wealth of archaeological treasures at a young age. . . . A gripping account of an extraordinary life."-Booklist (starredreview)
"A well-documented and sensitive portrait of a remarkable woman who shared her passion for Egypt and inspired so many others, myself included, to find their calling, while at the same time helping to reinvigorate the Louvre."-Henri Loyrette, former president and director of the Louvre Museum
"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 French resistance fighter . . . who also happens to be a kind of female Indiana Jones working . . . to save the ancient temples of Egypt? Readers will devour this wonderful book."-Evan Thomas, author of First: Sandra Day O'Connor
"Once again, Lynne Olson introduces us to a modern heroine who defied the odds and achieved historic results. Empress of the Nile is a tonic for our times and a reminder that one unstoppable woman can bend history to her will."-Kati Marton, author of The Chancellor
"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, au...
Readers Top Reviews
Beth H
This is the story of Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, a woman who played a huge role in the preservation & restoration of many Egyptian artifacts and temples. It was really interesting to learn more about this French woman and the important role that she played in recent history. I was also intrigued to learn more about the role that the Kennedys, Congress, and many other countries played in the efforts to save the Abu Simbel temples. It's a little frightening to think of the parts of Egypt that would not be preserved today if not for the efforts of Desroches-Noblecourt.
diducky
Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt. As a lover of all things Ancient Egypt I would have thought to hear about this woman given all that I’ve learned in this in-depth look at the French archaeologist. She was a woman before her time, in a field she was not welcome in. What she managed to accomplish was astounding given the time and breadth of her convictions. She wanted to save a corner of history and she did it. With a little help of course… A Frenchwoman, she fought on the world stage with her deep knowledge of the subject, her integrity and an overwhelming need to do what was right to preserve Egyptian history. This was a history book and a biography, though I finished reading with a strong need to learn more about the woman behind the heroic actions. She was acclaimed and criticized, leaving me wanting more of who really was. I also want to read more of her work on Ancient Egypt. I just have to learn French and hope her out of print books will be reissued. I thoroughly enjoyed it and highly recommend if you interested in history – of women, Ancient and Modern Egypt and world politics. *I happily reviewed this book **Thank you to NetGalley
Nancy Adair
Lynne Olson has excavated and restored the story of a forgotten French Egyptologist whose contributions should have been memorialized in stone and legend. I was enthralled by this biography of Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt. Inspired as a teenager by Howard Carter’s discovery of King Tutankhamen’s tomb, she forged a career in a male-dominated field, gaining the respect of the laborers on the archeological sites and scholars and political leaders alike. She challenged accepted truths. And her relentless work to save ancient temples from destruction culminated in one of the most ingenious and difficult feats of engineering: moving the temple of Ramses II before the Aswan High Dam flooded it. Incredibly, she also participated in the Resistance during WWII! Single-minded and a relentless worker, Christine’s career started when she took classes in archeology, art history, and hieroglyphics at the Ecole du Louvre, home of the most prized collection of Egyptian art, a legacy of France’s imperialist domination of Egypt. Her first job was to catalogue unopened crates brought back from Egypt. The volunteer project took three years, but she gained a deep understanding that would surpass her peers when she worked in the field. Which happened in 1937 when she was selected to work in the Valley of the Kings on a village that had housed the artisans and laborers who worked on the pharaohs’ tombs. It was thought that a female couldn’t stand the primitive living conditions and heat of the field, but she thrived. As Christine’s career progressed, the political world around her changed. When the Nazis reached Paris, she helped move the Louvre’s art to secure locations. She stayed under the radar while working with a resistance group as a courier. With the rejection of colonialist powers over Egypt, one of the few Europeans they allowed in the country was Christine; she had forged relationships with Egyptians, learning Arabic. When Nassar determined to build a dam that would bring electricity to his developing country, Christine was appalled at the resulting loss of twenty temples. She pushed UNESCO to fund the rescue operation of moving the temples, which included Abu Simbel, a remarkable temple built by Ramses II. I was a girl in the early sixties when Abul Simbel was being sawn apart and moved to a high elevation. I vividly recall the National Geographic magazine’s photographs of the project. It was exciting to read this behind the scenes narrative. Olson includes a wealth of information about Ancient Egypt and the history of archeology in Egypt. The first photographs of King Tut’s treasures was printed in a book written by Christine. Traveling exhibits of Egyptian art raised awareness across the world, inspiring even school children to raid their piggy banks to send money to save Abul Simbel, and fomenting a passion for all things Egyp...
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter 1
A Childhood Passion
Christiane's early fascination with ancient Egypt was an unusual preoccupation for a little girl from the French upper middle class, which tended to have fairly rigid, conservative ideas about girls' proper interests and behavior. But her parents had no desire to limit her horizons or encourage her to conform to the prevalent view in French society that women's roles should be restricted to those of wife and mother.
That opinion was particularly strong in the aftermath of World War I, when Christiane was growing up. With more than 1.3 million of France's young men killed in the war, the country's birthrate had dropped dramatically. As a result, young women faced considerable pressure to marry and have children as soon as possible; contraception was illegal, and refusing motherhood was considered an unpatriotic act.
Christiane's father, Louis, paid no attention to such ideas. He was unusual in other ways as well. A literature major in college, he was a lawyer by profession, but his true passions lay outside his work. He was a talented violinist, and Christiane recalled frequent impromptu evening duets in which he played the violin and her mother, Madeleine, who had an operatic voice, sang arias. On Sunday mornings in winter, her father would often lock himself in his office at home and study sheet music. When Christiane asked him what he was doing, he replied, "I am listening to an opera." Indeed, she added, he could read the notes on paper and hear the music in his head, an ability that left her awestruck.
Somewhat surprisingly for someone of his social class, he was also a staunch man of the left, a lifelong advocate of individual freedom, tolerance, social equality, and economic justice. Madeleine Desroches, meanwhile, was one of the rare Frenchwomen of that time to have graduated from college, collecting a classics degree. Although she never worked outside the home, she was a powerful role model for her daughter-"living proof," as Christiane said, "that a woman, no less than a man, could have access to the world of knowledge." Her father, "already a feminist," supported that principle as much for his daughter as he had for his wife.
"My parents were humanists," Desroches later told an interviewer. "They taught me humanist values such as respect for one another, for your neighbors, for people in general, respect for civilization. My brother and I grew up in an environment very open to culture, music, and foreign languages." For both Desroches children, curiosity about the world outside France was highly encouraged.
Unlike many of their more insular compatriots, Louis and Madeleine Desroches had an eclectic group of friends, some of them intellectuals, who came from a wide variety of countries and cultures. Once, Desroches remembered, her father told her that "we were considered to be strange people because we received strangers." She added, "Believe me, there were very few Parisians at that time who felt the same way." Among the Desroches family's closest friends were Sir Norman Angell, the Nobel Prize–winning British economist, and his family. The two families often spent several weeks together in the summer.
From her earliest days, the petite, dark-haired Christiane was talkative, opinionated, curious, and self-confident-all qualities that her parents encouraged. From the time they were small, she and her older brother were included in mealtime conversations about a wide variety of subjects, from current events in France and the rest of the world to literature and music. "It was a sacred ritual," she remembered. "My parents were constantly bringing up subjects that would open our minds, and they wanted us to talk about them." Baptized as Catholics, the Desroches siblings went to catechism classes, but their father encouraged them to maintain a certain skepticism about what they were taught, instructing them not to take literally everything they were told.
Christiane's questioning attitude and budding determination to think for herself was reinforced at the Lycée Molière, the public high school for girls she attended not far from her home in Paris's affluent 16th arrondissement. In France, girls were not allowed to study at public high schools until 1880; even then the sexes were segregated. The Lycée Molière, which was established in 1888, was only the third girls' high school to open in Paris.
The idea of public secondary schools for girls touched off a fierce controversy in France when it was first introduced. For some, the thought of girls focusing on their studies rather than on their domestic future was shocking. In the case of the Lycée Molière, the decision to name the school after the famed seventeenth-cen...
A Childhood Passion
Christiane's early fascination with ancient Egypt was an unusual preoccupation for a little girl from the French upper middle class, which tended to have fairly rigid, conservative ideas about girls' proper interests and behavior. But her parents had no desire to limit her horizons or encourage her to conform to the prevalent view in French society that women's roles should be restricted to those of wife and mother.
That opinion was particularly strong in the aftermath of World War I, when Christiane was growing up. With more than 1.3 million of France's young men killed in the war, the country's birthrate had dropped dramatically. As a result, young women faced considerable pressure to marry and have children as soon as possible; contraception was illegal, and refusing motherhood was considered an unpatriotic act.
Christiane's father, Louis, paid no attention to such ideas. He was unusual in other ways as well. A literature major in college, he was a lawyer by profession, but his true passions lay outside his work. He was a talented violinist, and Christiane recalled frequent impromptu evening duets in which he played the violin and her mother, Madeleine, who had an operatic voice, sang arias. On Sunday mornings in winter, her father would often lock himself in his office at home and study sheet music. When Christiane asked him what he was doing, he replied, "I am listening to an opera." Indeed, she added, he could read the notes on paper and hear the music in his head, an ability that left her awestruck.
Somewhat surprisingly for someone of his social class, he was also a staunch man of the left, a lifelong advocate of individual freedom, tolerance, social equality, and economic justice. Madeleine Desroches, meanwhile, was one of the rare Frenchwomen of that time to have graduated from college, collecting a classics degree. Although she never worked outside the home, she was a powerful role model for her daughter-"living proof," as Christiane said, "that a woman, no less than a man, could have access to the world of knowledge." Her father, "already a feminist," supported that principle as much for his daughter as he had for his wife.
"My parents were humanists," Desroches later told an interviewer. "They taught me humanist values such as respect for one another, for your neighbors, for people in general, respect for civilization. My brother and I grew up in an environment very open to culture, music, and foreign languages." For both Desroches children, curiosity about the world outside France was highly encouraged.
Unlike many of their more insular compatriots, Louis and Madeleine Desroches had an eclectic group of friends, some of them intellectuals, who came from a wide variety of countries and cultures. Once, Desroches remembered, her father told her that "we were considered to be strange people because we received strangers." She added, "Believe me, there were very few Parisians at that time who felt the same way." Among the Desroches family's closest friends were Sir Norman Angell, the Nobel Prize–winning British economist, and his family. The two families often spent several weeks together in the summer.
From her earliest days, the petite, dark-haired Christiane was talkative, opinionated, curious, and self-confident-all qualities that her parents encouraged. From the time they were small, she and her older brother were included in mealtime conversations about a wide variety of subjects, from current events in France and the rest of the world to literature and music. "It was a sacred ritual," she remembered. "My parents were constantly bringing up subjects that would open our minds, and they wanted us to talk about them." Baptized as Catholics, the Desroches siblings went to catechism classes, but their father encouraged them to maintain a certain skepticism about what they were taught, instructing them not to take literally everything they were told.
Christiane's questioning attitude and budding determination to think for herself was reinforced at the Lycée Molière, the public high school for girls she attended not far from her home in Paris's affluent 16th arrondissement. In France, girls were not allowed to study at public high schools until 1880; even then the sexes were segregated. The Lycée Molière, which was established in 1888, was only the third girls' high school to open in Paris.
The idea of public secondary schools for girls touched off a fierce controversy in France when it was first introduced. For some, the thought of girls focusing on their studies rather than on their domestic future was shocking. In the case of the Lycée Molière, the decision to name the school after the famed seventeenth-cen...
