About this item
Egypt, The Valley of the Kings, 1905: An American robber baron peers through the hole he has cut in an ancient tomb wall and discovers the richest trove of golden treasure ever seen in Egypt. At the start of the twentieth century, Theodore Davis was the most famous archaeologist in the world; his career turned tomb-robbing and treasure-hunting into a science. Using six of Davis’s most important discoveries—from the female Pharaoh Hatshepsut’s sarcophagus to the exquisite shabti statuettes looted from the Egyptian Museum not too long ago—as a lens around which to focus his quintessentially American rags-to-riches tale, Adams chronicles the dizzying rise of a poor country preacher’s son who, through corruption and fraud, amassed tremendous wealth in Gilded Age New York and then atoned for his ruthless career by inventing new standards for systematic excavation in the field of archaeology.
About the Author
John M. Adams was raised in the Chicago area and received degrees in English Literature and Library Science from the University of Illinois. He served as director of the libraries in Moline, IL, Tampa, FL and Orange County, CA, before retiring to Winchester IL. He is a past member of the Board of the American Research Center in Egypt, past president of the Orange County Chapter of ARCE, and a regular contributor to Kmt: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt. THE MILLIONAIRE AND THE MUMMIES is his first book. Please visit http://www.johnmerlinadams.com
