![]() ![]() He was also mercurial, subtle, and an iconoclastic atheist. He spoke twenty-nine languages, was a decorated soldier, and literally wrote the book on sword-fighting techniques for the British Army. ![]() Burton was already famous for being the first non-Muslim to travel to Mecca, disguised as an Arab chieftain. Two British men - Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke - were sent by the Royal Geographical Society to claim the prize for England. At the same time, European powers sent off waves of explorations intended to map the unknown corners of the globe - and extend their colonial empires. In the 19th century, the discovery and translation of the Rosetta Stone set off a frenzy of interest in ancient Egypt. Pharaonic and Roman attempts to find it were stymied by a giant labyrinthine swamp, and subsequent expeditions got no further. Its fertile floodplain allowed for rise to the great civilization of ancient Egypt, but for millennia the location of its headwaters was shrouded in mystery. The Nile River is the longest in the world. ![]() ![]() From the New York Times bestselling author of RIVER OF DOUBT and DESTINY OF THE REPUBLIC, the stirring story of one of the great feats of exploration of all time, and its complicated legacy ![]()
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