Antonio Lebolo
Antonio Lebolo | |
|---|---|
 Lebolo (the first standing from the left) with Drovetti (standing, center) in Egypt in 1819 | |
| Born | ? Castellamonte, Italy |
| Died | unknown, or February 19, 1830 Castellamonte, or Trieste, Italy |
| Nationality (legal) | Italian |
| Occupation(s) | Excavator, adventurer |
| Known for | Joseph Smith Papyri |
Antonio Lebolo (? – February 19, 1830?) was an Italian antiquities excavator and adventurer, best remembered for having acquired the Joseph Smith Papyri.
Biography
Born in Castellamonte in the kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, Lebolo became a gendarme during the Napoleonic occupation of Italy; after the Restauration he fled in Egypt where he became an agent of Bernardino Drovetti, who was the French Consul-General of Egypt as well as an ardent antiquities collector.[1]
Lebolo overseen many excavations mainly in the zone of Luxor, usually on behalf of Drovetti and sometimes for himself. He apparently was as ruthless as his boss Drovetti, as Giovanni Battista Belzoni reported during one of his excavations at Karnak in 1818 and later: along with another piemontese agent named Rosignani, Lebolo harassed and maybe even tried to murder Belzoni, and later managed to steal some of his findings excavated at Philae.[2]
Between 1817 and 1821[1] Lebolo found a mummy cache in a shaft tomb at Kurna. The finest mummies were given to Drovetti and are now in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin (no. 504, 505), others were sold to Heinrich Menu von Minutoli, Giovanni Anastasi, Frédéric Cailliaud and Henry Salt; Salt placed the mummies he bought in the British Museum (no. 6705, 6706, 6708 and likely 6950). Lebolo kept the remaining mummmies for himself.[2]
Lebolo died some years after these events, possibly in February 19, 1830 in Castellamonte[1] or in an unknown date in Trieste.[2]
Joseph Smith Papyri
Few years later a man named Michael H. Chandler claimed to be Lebolo's nephew and demanded Lebolo's goods in inheritance. In 1833 he obtained what he wanted and brought the mummies belonged to his purported uncle and some accompanying papyri in the United States, selling them during his travelling. In 1835 Chandler met Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, and some of his affiliates.[1] Since Smith claimed to be able to read Egyptian hieroglyphs, Chandler shown the papyri to him. Smith, who in fact had not the – at the time extremely rare – knowledge to read hieroglyphs, purchased the mummies and the papyri, and interpreted the writings and scenes as some life events of the two partiarchs Abraham and Joseph whom, according to the Bible, both stayed in Egypt. The papyri were soon called the Joseph Smith Papyri and formed the core of Smith's work Book of Abraham.[1]
References
- ^ a b c d e Peterson, H. Donl (1992). "Origin of the Book of Abraham". In Ludlow, Daniel H. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Mormonism. Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University. pp. 132–33. ISBN 0-87579-924-8.
- ^ a b c Dawson, Warren R.; Uphill, Eric P. (1972). Who Was Who in Egyptology. London: Harrison & sons.
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