Giuseppe Ferlini (23 April 1797 – 30 December 1870[1]) was an Italian soldier turned treasure hunter, who robbed and desecrated the pyramids of Meroë.

Born in Bologna, in 1815 he travelled across Greece, and later he reached Egypt where he joined the Egyptian Army during the conquest of Sudan.

[2] Having asked and obtained from the Governor-General of the Sudan, Ali Kurshid Pasha, the permission to perform excavations at Meroë,[4] and spurred by legends from local workers who talked about 40 ardeb of gold, he started to raid and demolish – even using explosives – several pyramids, which were found "in good conditions" by Frédéric Cailliaud just a few years earlier.

[3] At Wad ban Naqa, he leveled the pyramid N6 of the kandake Amanishakheto starting from the top, finding treasure composed of dozens of gold and silver jewelry pieces.

The treasures were finally sold in Germany: part were purchased by king Ludwig I of Bavaria and are now in the State Museum of Egyptian Art of Munich, while the remaining – under suggestions of Karl Richard Lepsius and of Christian Charles Josias von Bunsen – was bought by the Egyptian Museum of Berlin where it still is.