Sarah Banne (1783 - 1870)

RA Collection: People and Organisations

Sarah Belzoni (née Sarah Banne) was an English traveller and writer. She travelled notably to Egypt and wrote about women there. In 1813 she married the explorer Giovanni Battista Belzoni and they travelled around England where her husband, who was exceptionally tall, was working as a circus strongman. In 1815 the couple travelled to Egypt. She spent time documenting the lives of the local women, eventually publishing Mrs. Belzoni’s trifling account of the women of Egypt, Nubia, and Syria as part of her husband’s 1820 work Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries … in Egypt and Nubia. Her work was the first of its kind on the topic.