Biography

Christiane Desroches Noblecourt was born on November 17, 1913 in Paris, France. She is known for Niin on ollut ja niin on aina oleva (1995), Sonderauftrag Führermuseum (2006) and Panorama (1953). She died on June 23, 2011 in Épernay, Marne, France.

She became interested in Egypt after reading about the discovery of King Tut's tomb. She later studied at the Louvre and the Sorbonne.

After Egyptian officials began planning the Aswan High Dam project on the Nile in 1954, she met with General Nasser to voice concerns that 32 ancient temples and chapels in southern Nubia were facing submersion. UNESCO helped mobilize a huge project to dismantle, move, and reconstruct the antiquities, including massive statues of Pharaoh Ramses II at Abu Simbel, which were broken down into 1,000 pieces and rebuilt over four years.

After her first trip to Egypt in the late 1930s, she became the first woman to be put on a stipend with the Cairo-based French Institute of Oriental Archaeology, cracking the male-dominated world of Egyptology.