The Victorians and the Holy Land

Adventurers, Tourists, and Archaeologists in the Lands of the Bible

Allan Chapman

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9780802884091
• eBook ISBN: 9781467468206
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History

Why were people in the Victorian age fascinated with the archaeological mysteries of the Holy Land?
 
In this engaging study, Allan Chapman shows how the Holy Land took on new meaning for Europeans during the Victorian era. Previously, most Europeans had viewed the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the eastern bank of the Jordan River as a literary backdrop for biblical narratives. During the nineteenth century, however, they began to take interest in this region as a literal, physical place. Technological inventions such as steam-powered travel, telegraphy, and photography made the Holy Land more accessible. In public museums, ordinary people could view artifacts ranging from Egyptian mummies to statues from Nimrud and Nineveh. In linguistics, translations of Egyptian hieroglyphs and Assyrian cuneiform broadened Europeans' awareness of myths, legends, and history. These discoveries in archaeology and linguistics brought new energy to nineteenth-century debates about whether the Scriptures were based on factual history.
 
In addition to explaining how Holy Land studies changed during the Victorian era, Allan Chapman identifies key people who facilitated those changes. He introduces readers to a diverse demographic that includes adventurers, astronomers, missionaries, ministers, learned women of independent means, and Queen Victoria's eldest son. Driven by a wide range of professional and personal motives, these individuals had a powerful impact on the Victorian public's understanding of the Holy Land.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• 1. From Pharaoh’s Granaries to Measured Wonders—Changing Views on the Pyramids from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century
• 2. The Ottoman Empire, Adventurers, and a Circus Strongman—Opening Up Egypt and the Holy Land after 1700
• 3. Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign and the Fortunes of War—More Artifacts and Treasures Discovered
• 4. A New Preclassical Literature—Thomas Young, Jean-François Champollion, and the Reading of Ancient Egyptian Texts
• 5. The French Diplomat, the London Law Clerk, and the Mounds of Mesopotamia—Botta, Layard, Nineveh, and Noah’s Flood
• 6. Nimrud Rises from the Sand—The Victorian Discovery of Assyria, Babylonia, and Sumer
• 7. Daring Clergymen and a Royal Prince—Exploring the Holy Land and Surveying Palestine
• 8. Professor Charles Piazzi Smyth, Pyramidology, and King Solomon’s Mines—Archaeological Delusions
• 9. Thomas Cook—The Carpenter, Baptist Minister, and Entrepreneur Who Began Package Tours to the Holy Land
• 10. Mummies and Museums—The Artifacts Tell Their Stories
• 11. Biblical Art, Literature, and Music—The Holy Land in the Popular Imagination
• 12. Is the Bible No More Than Folktales, or Is It Real History?—The Impact of Archaeology and Walking in the Footsteps of Saint Paul
• 13. Back in Egypt—Karl Lepsius, François Mariette, Sir Flinders Petrie, and the Founding of Scientific Archaeology
• 14. After the Victorians—The Middle East in Modern Times, from King Tut to William Albright to Cecil B. DeMille
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography