Thebes, its Tombs and their Tenants Ancient and Present

Book excerpt: His independent means as the son of a wealthy banker enabled Alexander Henry Rhind (1833-63) to devote his short life to antiquarianism. While reading for the Scottish bar, he studied and investigated Pictish remains, and pressed for the inclusion of archaeological sites in Ordnance Survey maps. On developing tubercular symptoms, he gave up his legal studies and passed the winters from 1855 to 1857 in Egypt, where he made the important studies and excavations recorded in this 1862 book. He focuses on the necropolis of Thebes, and in particular on the unplundered tomb of an eighteenth-dynasty official. Putting his work into the wider context of the history of ancient Egypt and the importance of the city of Thebes, he also describes the reuse of the necropolis ruins as homes for modern Egyptian peasants and as the centre of a thriving trade in antiquities, both genuine and forged.