Priceless views of Egyptian and biblical antiquities as they looked in the mid-19th century, before war, neglect, and exploitation took their toll. 77 spectacular photographs of the Pyramids, Sphinx, Karnak, Luxor, Thebes, Mt. Horeb, Old Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, Damascus, and more. Introduction. Captions.

They are among the most famous and compelling photographs ever made in archaeology: Howard Carter kneeling before the burial shrines of Tutankhamun; life-size statues of the boy king on guard beside a doorway, tantalizingly sealed, in his tomb; or a solid gold coffin still draped with flowers cut more than 3,300 years ago. Yet until now, no study has explored the ways in which photography helped mythologize the tomb of Tutankhamun, nor the role photography played in shaping archaeological methods and interpretations, both in and beyond the field. This book undertakes the first critical analysis of the photographic archive formed during the ten-year clearance of the tomb, and in doing so explores the interface between photography and archaeology at a pivotal time for both. Photographing Tutankhamun foregrounds photography as a material, technical, and social process in early 20th-century archaeology, in order to question how the photograph made and remade ‘ancient Egypt’ in the waning age of colonial order.

Presents a chronological tour of major themes in Western art as reflected by more than two dozen seminal images that use such mediums as paint, sculpture, architecture, performance art, and digital art.