A vivid account of the men and women who revealed the treasures of Ancient Egypt to the world, from the first decipherment of hieroglyphics to the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamun.

'It is a story full of drama, with the Nile, the pyramids and the Valley of the Kings as backdrop. That A World Beneath the Sands is also a subtle and stimulating study of the paradoxes of 19th-century colonialism is a bonus indeed.' – Tom Holland, Guardian

What could be more exciting, more exotic or more intrepid than digging in the sands of Egypt in the hope of discovering golden treasures from the age of the pharaohs?

Our fascination with ancient Egypt goes back to the ancient Greeks. But the heyday of Egyptology was undoubtedly the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This golden age of scholarship and adventure is neatly book-ended by two epoch-making events: Champollion's decipherment of hieroglyphics in 1822 and the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon a hundred years later.

In A World Beneath the Sands, the acclaimed Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson tells the riveting stories of the men and women whose obsession with Egypt's ancient civilisation drove them to uncover its secrets. Champollion, Carter and Carnarvon are here, but so too are their lesser-known contemporaries, such as the Prussian scholar Karl Richard Lepsius, the Frenchman Auguste Mariette and the British aristocrat Lucie Duff-Gordon. Their work – and those of others like them – helped to enrich and transform our understanding of the Nile Valley and its people, and left a lasting impression on Egypt, too. Travellers and treasure-hunters, ethnographers and epigraphers, antiquarians and archaeologists: whatever their motives, whatever their methods, all understood that in pursuing Egyptology they were part of a greater endeavour – to reveal a lost world, buried for centuries beneath the sands.

"It would be hard to overstate the excellence of Wilkinson's storytelling – and I was surprisingly distraught to think that there can never be a sequel." - Spectator

"The definitive account of the golden age of Egyptology" - Waterstone’s Best Books of the Year

"It is a story full of drama, with the Nile, the pyramids and the Valley of the Kings as backdrop. That A World Beneath the Sands is also a subtle and stimulating study of the paradoxes of 19th-century colonialism is a bonus indeed." - Guardian

"Fascinating . . . A World Beneath the Sands is more than a saga of foreigners in the desert – it also follows Egypt on its rocky path to the 20th century." - Economist

"The story that strings these wonderful characters together is the steady professionalisation of Egyptology — the shift, as Wilkinson puts it, from 'scoundrels to scholars'." - Sunday Times

"A gripping tale . . . excellent" - Financial Times

"The debate over the decolonization of Egyptology and the repatriation of artefacts has only just started. Wilkinson's elegantly written book provides a sound background and a useful biography that will allow readers to understand and participate in that debate." - BBC History Magazine

"A fascinating story." - TLS

"Riveting . . . Wilkinson is a consummate historian . . . He has mastered the facts with painstaking research and allowed them to speak for themselves. Rarely do the facts speak this clearly." - New York Times

"Dramatic, detailed and eccentric-packed . . . as Toby Wilkinson shows, the discovery of lost monuments, grave goods and mummified corpses also stimulated the emergence of their true inheritors, the modern Egyptian nation." - Wall Street Journal

"Vividly detailed" - New Yorker

"A superbly readable, magnificently entertaining, profoundly thoughtful and scholarly history of the bizarre and determined characters who burrowed into Egypt in comparatively recent history - and who all too often made away with their finds. You will want to read chunks of it aloud to anyone who happens to be around." - Tablet 'Books of the Year'

"Wilkinson marshals a wealth of detail into a cohesive and entertaining narrative . . . an essential portrait" - Publishers Weekly