A World Beneath the Sands, page 36
While Wilkinson was exploring the deserts and hills of Upper Egypt, his friend Lord Prudhoe (later the fourth Duke of Northumberland) was venturing even further afield, to Upper Nubia. At the ancient religious capital of Gebel Barkal, near the Fourth Nile Cataract, Prudhoe collected two magnificent statues of recumbent lions, each carved from a single block of red granite. Reused and reinscribed by a Nubian ruler, Amanislo, in the third century BC, the beasts had originally been carved by the pharaoh Amenhotep III a thousand years earlier. One of them bore a dedicatory inscription of Tutankhamun, recounting how he had renewed the monument in honour of its original patron, his grandfather Amenhotep III. In 1835, Prudhoe presented both lions to the British Museum, where they had the distinction of becoming the first two objects to be registered in its nascent collection of Egyptian antiquities. (They bear the registration numbers EA1 and EA2.) Thus far, Tutankhamun was no more than a minor footnote in the unfolding history of ancient Egypt.
Further evidence for the existence and achievements of this king had to wait until Mariette’s excavations of the Serapeum in the 1850s. The third of the great bull burials uncovered in the underground vaults had, it transpired, been carried out during the reign of Tutankhamun; a few objects from the burial found their way to the Louvre, part of the steady stream of artefacts dug from the sands of Saqqara with which Mariette repaid his Parisian employer. Another four decades later, one of the more notable discoveries made by the hapless Emile Amélineau during his disastrous excavations at Abydos was a box of gilded wood, bearing Tutankhamun’s royal cartouche. But it was Petrie’s dig in the winter of 1891–2 at the site of Amarna that made the real breakthrough, shining new light on the history of Akhenaten’s reign and its immediate aftermath, at the end of the eighteenth dynasty. Numerous inscribed objects from the ruined city, including the Amarna Letters that Erman had purchased for the Berlin Museum, mentioned Nebkheperura Tutankhamun by name, and made it clear that he was Akhenaten’s son and successor. Moreover, the evidence suggested that the royal court had remained at Amarna under Tutankhamun, at least during the early years of his reign. Suddenly his absence from the king-lists made sense: Akhenaten’s royal revolution had been so radical, such a break with centuries of pharaonic tradition, that, after his death and the restoration of orthodoxy, he and all his associates had been expunged from history as if they had never existed. What the ancient Egyptians had tried so hard to suppress was, only now, being rediscovered, thanks to the meticulous efforts of Egyptologists.
With the dawn of the twentieth century, the name of Tutankhamun started to crop up, if not everywhere, then certainly more frequently. Suddenly, this little-known pharaoh began to emerge from a hundred generations of obscurity to take his place among the kings of Egypt’s golden age. In 1905, investigations in the temple of Karnak, north of Luxor, uncovered a great stone slab, covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions. At some point in its long history, the stela had been earmarked for reuse; it still bore a series of deep incisions down its front, where workmen had tried to cut it into pieces. But enough survived of the text to enable scholars to translate it. It turned out to be a dedicatory inscription celebrating the restoration of Karnak, and the other temples of Egypt, following their abandonment under Akhenaten. The king responsible for this glorious renaissance was none other than Tutankhamun. For those who knew how to interpret it, the ‘Restoration Stela’ gave a clear indication that Tutankhamun had broken with the teachings of his father, and the city of Amarna, and had restored Thebes as both the religious capital of Egypt and a centre of royal activity.
A further, chance discovery, that same archaeological season, confirmed the fact: while digging in the Valley of the Kings for the Davis mission, Ayrton found, concealed under a rock, a small faience cup bearing the name Nebkheperura. Two years later, Davis and Ayrton discovered a hole in the ground above the entrance to the tomb of Seti I. ‘Pit 54’, as they termed it, contained a cache of materials left over from the embalming of a royal mummy – not just any royal mummy but, according to the hieroglyphic inscriptions on some of the objects, the mummy of Tutankhamun. This seemed unequivocal evidence that, not only had Tutankhamun been active in Thebes, he had also been buried in its royal necropolis, the Valley of the Kings. Now the hunt was on for his tomb. In January 1909, Davis discovered what he had been looking for: a small, undecorated chamber (numbered KV58), abandoned in antiquity and filled with mud, but crucially containing a stone shabti, fittings from a horse’s harness, and several fragments of gold foil bearing the names of Tutankhamun and his wife Ankhesenamun. Davis proudly announced his discovery in the resulting publication:
The finding of the blue cup with the cartouche of Touatânkhamanou, and not far from it the quite undecorated tomb containing the gold leaf inscribed with the names of Touatânkhamanou and Ankhousnamanou . . . and the pit containing the jars with the name of Touatânkhamanou, lead me to conclude that Touatânkhamanou was originally buried in the tomb described above, and that it was afterwards robbed, leaving the few things that I have mentioned.2
For Davis, this was not merely a triumph but the culmination of his nine years of work in the Valley of the Kings. ‘I began my work of exploration in 1903,’ he recounted, ‘and between that date and 1909, I found seven important inscribed tombs . . . also nine uninscribed tombs, one of them containing the beautiful gold jewellery of Setuî and Taouasrît, one with pieces of gold leaf with the names of Touatânkhamanou and Aîya, and a small alabaster figure.’3
In the published account of what was to be Davis’s last major discovery, a chapter on the life and reign of Tutankhamun was contributed by no less a scholar than Maspero, the grand old man of Egyptology. He began it by confessing: ‘Very little is known about the origin of this king . . . The length of his reign is unknown.’4 In the few succeeding pages, the much-admired director of the Antiquities Service and Egyptian Museum listed the major monuments attributable to Tutankhamun’s reign – the lions from Gebel Barkal, the tomb of Huy, the Restoration Stela, and the objects found by Ayrton and Davis – before summarizing: ‘Such are the few facts we know about Touatânkhamanou’s life and reign.’5 As for Davis, he famously concluded ‘the Valley of the Tombs is now exhausted’. In February 1914, at the end of Davis’s final season in Egypt, his workmen stopped digging into the floor of the valley, fearing that further work would undermine the adjacent path.6 In any case, Davis could not imagine for a moment that the ancient Egyptians would have cut a royal tomb into the valley floor where it would be vulnerable to flooding. With the discovery of KV58, he was sure that the Valley of the Kings really had given up the last of its secrets.
The man who would prove Davis spectacularly wrong – and, in the process, cause him to be all but forgotten – was his former employee, a man who happened to be working nearby in the hills of western Thebes. Howard Carter had worked for Davis a decade earlier, and had taken part in the excavation of the tomb of Hatshepsut. By 1914, Carter was one of the most experienced archaeologists of his age. But his journey to prominence had been anything but smooth. Born in Brompton, London,7 into a comfortable middle-class family, he spent much of his childhood in Norfolk. Like Champollion and Petrie before him, Carter suffered from ill-health as a child, and was consequently educated at home. As with his great Egyptological predecessors, the freedom to follow his own interests and explore his passions was, in retrospect, a key factor in his later success. Carter’s father was an accomplished painter, specializing in animals, and passed on his skill to his son. Howard soon became a talented watercolourist, also preferring natural history subjects, and he found plenty of inspiration for his work in the countryside around the Carter family home in Swaffham. Rural Norfolk also had another advantage: the county boasted a number of aristocratic families who might, directly or through their connections, offer preferment to a budding young artist. The patrons who took an interest in the young Howard Carter were Lord and Lady Amherst of nearby Didlington Hall. By chance, Lord Amherst was not only a man of considerable means, he was also a keen amateur antiquarian who used his wealth to sponsor excavations and collect antiquities. Through a series of judicious purchases, and his own trips to Egypt, he amassed one of the finest private collections of ancient Egyptian artefacts in England, which he proudly displayed at Didlington. Carter must have seen some of the objects on his visits: his first encounter with the civilization of the pharaohs, the study of which was to consume the rest of his life.
In 1891, at the age of seventeen, Carter was given his first break. At Lady Amherst’s recommendation, he was taken on by Newberry (who, alongside his archaeological duties, acted as an agent for Lord Amherst, buying choice Egyptian antiquities when they came on the market) as an assistant member of staff of the Archaeological Survey of Egypt. Newberry was a botanist by training; his knowledge of plant remains had proved useful to Petrie on his digs in the late 1880s. With this experience, and through connections at the EEF, Newberry was subsequently given his own expedition, the Archaeological Survey mission to Beni Hasan. At this site in Middle Egypt, there was a series of fine, decorated tombs cut into the cliffs overlooking the Nile. The job of recording their beautifully preserved, complex and detailed reliefs required not just epigraphic skill but also the eye of a trained artist. In Howard Carter, the Amhersts believed they had found the ideal candidate. In late 1891, therefore, Carter travelled for the first time to Egypt, and worked for several weeks at Beni Hasan under Newberry’s supervision. Carter’s talents as a copyist and painter quickly confirmed his patrons’ judgement, and he was soon switched to another of Lord Amherst’s funded excavations, Petrie’s dig at the nearby site of Amarna. In the space of a few weeks, Carter began to build his knowledge of the late eighteenth dynasty, to familiarize himself with the names of its shadowy rulers: Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and Tutankhamun.
Petrie, for his part, was distinctly underwhelmed by the new addition to his team: ‘Mr Carter is a good-natured lad whose interest is entirely in painting and natural history: he only takes on this digging as being on the spot . . . and it is of no use to me to work him up as an excavator.’8
But Carter had been bitten by the Egyptian bug, and was only too delighted to be retained by the Archaeological Survey to work on their other missions. He resumed his work at Beni Hasan and nearby el-Bersha the following season (1892–3) before moving to Deir el-Bahri – the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut in western Thebes – as official expedition draughtsman, working under Naville. During the next six years, while copying all the scenes and inscriptions in the temple, Carter gained a deep – perhaps unparalleled – knowledge of the surrounding area. Wandering the hills, valleys and embayments, he developed an unerring eye for potential archaeological sites, and came to know every inch of the Theban necropolis: Deir el-Bahri, Sheikh Abd el-Qurna, the Valley of the Kings.
After half a dozen seasons at Deir el-Bahri, Carter gained his second lucky break in 1899. Maspero’s much-heralded return as director of the Antiquities Service ushered in a major reorganization of senior posts. Carter, with his proven abilities as a copyist, his training under Newberry, Petrie and Naville, and his deep understanding of Thebes, had all the necessary credentials, and he was duly appointed chief inspector of antiquities for Upper Egypt, a newly created post and one of the most important roles in Egyptian archaeology. He did not disappoint. Maspero’s initial impressions were perceptive: ‘very active, a very good young man, a little obstinate’.9 Taking up his position in January 1900, Carter set to work at once with his customary energy and dedication. The administration of the Upper Egyptian inspectorate was reformed, and electric light installed at the major tourist sites. The results of this particular project were transformative. Davis’s companion, Emma Andrews, recorded in her diary a visit to the tomb of Amenhotep II shortly after the power had been switched on:
We entered Amenhotep’s tomb – now lighted with electricity, showing arrangement and decoration delightfully . . . Carter has arranged the whole thing most artistically. A shrouded electric light is at the head of the sarcophagus, throwing the fine face into splendid relief – and when all the other lights were extinguished, the effect was solemn and impressive. Carter has done wonderful work . . . No more stumbling about amongst yawning pits and rough staircases, with flickering candles dripping wax all over one.10
Nor was Carter merely concerned with restoration and display. He plunged himself into a series of hands-on excavations, uncovering and recording royal tombs for the Antiquities Service and for various private sponsors. In 1900, working for two local Egyptians, Chinouda Macarios and Boutros Andraos, Carter revealed a previously unknown tomb (KV42) dating to the early eighteenth dynasty. The next year he discovered another empty tomb and a series of small finds. It was when he started working for Davis, in the winter of 1902, that Carter’s archaeological instincts really proved their worth, culminating in the discovery of the richly appointed tomb of Thutmose IV (KV43) in 1903 and the clearance of the tomb of Hatshepsut (KV20) the following season. In the latter, Carter showed not only his deep commitment to archaeology, but also his willingness to risk life and limb in the furtherance of Egyptological enquiry. Davis was hugely impressed, if a little incredulous, recounting in the subsequent publication:
The long, patient, tiresome, and dangerous work executed by Mr Carter, the difficulties which he overcame, and the physical discomforts which he suffered, are not fairly described in his modest official report . . . the air had become so bad, and the heat so great, that the candles carried by the workmen melted, and would not give enough light to enable them to continue their work . . . Braving all these dangers and discomforts, Mr. Carter made two or three descents every week, and professed to enjoy it.11
Such dedication did not go unnoticed, and in 1904 Carter was promoted to chief inspector of antiquities for Lower Egypt. (The north of the Nile Valley, with the iconic monuments of Giza, Alexandria and the Memphite necropolis, was considered more prestigious than Thebes and the south.) It was a vote of confidence by Maspero, but a calamitous move for Carter. The ever-observant Emma Andrews had summed up Carter as ‘always so pleasant – in spite of his dominant personality’.12 That character trait, which other less generous commentators dubbed an irascible temper, soon got Carter into trouble. In January 1905, only a few months into his new job, Carter was at Saqqara, inspecting the Serapeum. Though a popular tourist destination, it had not yet benefited from the installation of electric light. A group of French tourists, coming to see for themselves the greatest discovery of their compatriot Mariette, objected to paying an entrance fee; then, on finding there were no candles to illuminate the subterranean galleries, demanded their money back. Carter refused, an argument ensued, and punches were thrown. Realizing that he had overstepped the mark, he sent a telegram at once to Lord Cromer, explaining the situation and pinning the blame squarely on the tourists:
My Lord I am exceedingly sorry to inform you that a bad affray has occurred today here Mariette House Saqqara 5 p.m. with 15 French Tourists who were here in a drunken state The cause of the affray was started by their rough handling both my inspector + gaffirs As both sides have been cut and knocked about I feel it my duty to inform you Lordship immediately + will report the matter to you personally tomorrow morning. Carter Service of Antiquities.13
Ever anxious to avoid a diplomatic incident, especially with the French, Cromer summoned Carter and demanded an explanation. To smooth ruffled feathers and prevent any escalation, Cromer asked Carter to apologize. Carter, certain that he had acted within his rights, refused. The only way open to him was to resign, not just as chief inspector, but from the Antiquities Service entirely. He later admitted: ‘I have a hot temper, and that amount of tenacity of purpose which unfriendly observers sometimes call obstinacy, and which nowadays . . . it pleases my enemies to term . . . un mauvaise caractère. Well, that I can’t help.’14
In November 1905, Carter returned to his old stamping ground of Thebes and, for the next two years, eked out an existence as a guide and jobbing watercolourist. His former patron, Davis, gave him work recording the objects from the newly discovered tomb of Yuya and Tjuyu. At other times, Carter supported himself by selling his paintings to well-heeled tourists. For example, in the winter of 1907–8, the ailing eighth Duke of Devonshire was travelling up the Nile with a small party that included his personal physician (and amateur Egyptologist), Ferdinand Platt. On a visit to Thebes, Platt met the impecunious Carter, and described the encounter in a letter home:
Carter has done some very beautiful work. What he does is to copy some of the best Egyptian figures or scenes very accurately as to the matter of outline and general colour. He leaves out all the cracks and damage and restores what is left. But the great charm is that he shades the colours to make it look real; for instance the golden vulture head dress of a queen he has shaded in such a way that without altering the drawing in the least it looks like real gold . . . After lunch I went with Carter to the Tombs of the Queens and saw the tomb of Queen Nefert-Ari, the wife of Rameses II . . . She was a beautiful woman and Carter’s painting brings this out in a wonderful way . . . If I had the money spare I would buy this particular picture without a moment’s hesitation. As you can imagine Carter’s loss of his appointment is a serious thing for him, and he was and is I believe very hard up. I told the Duke about him and he has asked me to go over to Medinet Habu with him to see Carter’s sketches as he wants to help him by buying some. I am very glad to have been the means of doing this.15
