BELZONI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA Ital ian explorer of Egyptian antiquities, was born at Padua. He and his wife in 1803 moved to London, where they lived in extreme poverty until they found a livelihood by exhibiting feats of strength at Astley's circus, to which he was introduced by Henry Salt. Belzoni had invented a hydraulic machine and went to Egypt to induce Mohammed Ali to adopt it for the regulation of the Nile waters. In Egypt he was again befriended by Henry Salt, then consul-general, who sent him to Thebes, whence he removed with great skill the colossal bust of Rameses II., corn monly called Young Memnon, which he shipped for England, where it is in the British Museum. He investigated the great temple of Edfu, visited Elephantine and Philae, cleared the great temple at Abu Simbel of sand (1817) , made excavations at Kar nak, and opened up the sepulchre of Seti I. ("Belzoni's Tomb"). He was the first to penetrate into the second pyramid of Giza, and the first European in modern times to visit the oasis of Baharia, which he supposed to be that of Siwa. He also identi fied the ruins of Berenice on the Red Sea. In 1819 he returned to England, and published, in 1820, his Narrative of the Oper ations and Recent Discoveries within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs, and Excavations in Egypt and Nubia, etc. In 1823 he set out for West Africa, intending to penetrate to Timbuktu. He reached Benin, but died of dysentery at a village called Gwato on Dec. 3, 1823. In 1829 his widow published his drawings of the royal tombs at Thebes.