by Jo Marchant
Work inside the tomb was just as tricky. Because the objects were in such a tangled mess, it was hard to remove one thing without disturbing everything else. Carter described it as like “a gigantic game of spillikins,” for which he had to devise an elaborate system of props and supports.11
As he cleared the antechamber, it became clear that much of its messy state was the result of ancient robbers, who it seemed had indeed broken into the tomb. Helping him to interpret the clues they left behind was Lucas, who happened to be an expert in forensics and crime scene investigations. In one trial, Lucas had identified the poison on the tip of an arrow used in a murder. Another time, he calculated the trajectory of a bullet that a British soldier had accidentally fired from a train, killing a passenger in an adjacent compartment. The bullet deflected off ironwork in a station back through the window of the train—Lucas calculated where the bullet must have struck and identified the mark.12
The multiple seals on the tomb doors showed that this crime scene had been broken into twice, both within just a few years of Tutankhamun’s burial. The thieves were clearly in a rush, and only able to take small, portable objects. They upturned boxes and tipped their contents over the floor, looking for small gold items. The antechamber had later been hastily tidied, with objects randomly pushed back into boxes and the lids jammed shut. But the annex was just as the robbers had left it, with stuff all over the floor. There was jewelry missing, arrows with their metal points broken off, and a wooden pedestal from which a gold statuette had been ripped away. A shawl, tied into a knot with a handful of solid gold rings inside, had been dropped and left behind, suggesting the looters were disturbed during their plundering—perhaps even caught red-handed in the tomb.
Tut-ankh-Amen though dead yet liveth and reigneth in Thebes and Luxor today . . . One cannot escape the name of Tut-ankh-Amen anywhere. It is shouted in the streets, whispered in the hotels, while the local shops advertise Tut-ankh-Amen art, Tut-ankh-Amen hats, Tut-ankh-Amen curios, Tut-ankh-Amen photographs, and tomorrow probably genuine Tut-ankh-Amen antiquities . . . Slight acquaintances buttonhole one and tell of dreams they had yesterday of Tut-ankh-Amen. There is a dance tonight at which the first piece is to be a Tut-ankh-Amen rag.
—NEW YORK TIMES, FEBRUARY 18, 1923
TO LEARN ABOUT what happened in the early days after finding Tutankhamun’s tomb, Carter himself is the main source of information, along with accounts of a few other privileged observers. But once news of the discovery got out, that changed dramatically, and suddenly we can watch the events unfold through hundreds of different pairs of eyes. The newspapers took each day’s developments to fascinated audiences around the world, and Tutankhamun’s story was no longer just about what archaeologists were getting up to inside his tomb. He had become an international phenomenon.
Tourists and journalists flocked to Luxor. They came from Europe and the United States in the thousands, crossing the Atlantic on steamers with names like the Homeric, Empress of Scotland, and Mauretania. The telegraph office at Luxor was so deluged by newspaper dispatches that three direct lines had to be laid between Luxor and Cairo, while an emergency hospital was converted into a telegraph office for presswork. Tourist shops sold out of cameras, films, and books on Egypt’s history. Luxor’s two biggest hotels set up tents in their gardens, with their guests sleeping on army cots.
Each day, these visitors crossed the river on wooden sailing boats called feluccas. They headed into the Valley of the Kings by donkey, sand cart, or horse-drawn cab, and made themselves at home for the day, sitting on a wall around the top of Tutankhamun’s tomb as they waited for something to happen. About once a day, Carter’s team brought out the most recently retrieved objects and carried them in convoy to the lab—they looked like casualties of war on their wooden stretchers, wrapped in surgical bandages and fixed with safety pins. Reporters whipped out their notebooks, tourists aimed their cameras, and a lane had to be cleared for the procession to pass through.
Carter himself was bombarded with letters and telegrams—congratulations, offers of assistance from tomb planning to personal valeting, requests for souvenirs, offers of money for everything from moving picture rights to the copyright on Egyptian fashions of dress. He was given advice on how to preserve antiquities and how to appease evil spirits. Shoemakers wanted the design of the royal slippers, and provisions dealers wanted parcels of mummified foods—apparently they expected them to be canned.
Tutankhamun “is as well known now as the Kaiser used to be,” announced the New York Times on January 27, “and while Mr. Ford may still be in the lead, the space between them is small.”13
Beyond the race to cash in on newfound “Tutmania,” there was also increasing excitement about the prospect of entering the king’s burial chamber and finding his mummy—finally, a chance to find out how an Egyptian pharaoh was actually laid to rest. Experts speculated about what state the mummy might be found in: Winlock predicted that “it will be one of the most perfect examples of its kind which has come down to us,”14 while others feared the body was already desecrated, or that ancient priests had hidden it elsewhere.
By February, Carter realized that what he had thought were rolls of papyri were actually folded loincloths. It was a blow for historians, as no other texts were found in the tomb. And it made a scientific examination of the king’s body even more important. With no letters, journals, or archives that could throw light on Tutankhamun’s reign or the times in which he lived, any historical information would now have to come from the mummy itself. For example, it wasn’t known how long Tutankhamun ruled for, or how he died. Children’s clothing and furniture in the tomb suggested he died young,* but some experts maintained that the burial chamber would contain the mummy of an elderly man.
There was also a heartfelt debate over what should be done with the mummy, if it was found. Although most other royal mummies had been taken to the Cairo Museum, the locals, hoping that Tutankhamun would become a powerful tourist attraction, wanted him to stay in his tomb.
Celebrities from scientists to writers had other ideas. Henry Rider Haggard, a popular author of adventure novels, argued that the mummies of all the pharaohs, including Tutankhamun, should be sealed with concrete inside the Great Pyramid at Giza. “Presently [Tutankhamun] too, may be stripped like the great Rameses and many other monarchs very mighty in his day and laid half naked to rot in a glass case in the museum at Cairo,” he wrote in outrage.15 “Is this decent? Is it doing as we would be done by?” After examining the mummies, he said, archaeologists should “hide them away again forever, as we ourselves would be hidden away.”
Eminent archaeologist Flinders Petrie’s response to the suggestion was withering. “Why spoil the great pyramid by blocking up one of the chambers?” he asked, arguing that there was no point getting sentimental about the fate of the pharaohs and their tombs when almost all of them had been plundered by the ancient Egyptians themselves.16 To take the remains to Cairo’s damper climate would be devastating, argued Petrie, but he didn’t think Tutankhamun’s mummy would be safe if left in the tomb. He suggested building a museum for all the royal mummies in the dry mountains of Thebes—with the small matter of a garrison of fifty-plus men to protect it from thieves.
Other distinguished archaeologists argued that the mummy should stay put, while in London the debate reached the highest political circles. Questions in the British House of Commons included whether the government would push for Tutankhamun’s body to remain in his tomb, and whether they had any proof that the body was really there. Ronald McNeill, undersecretary for foreign affairs, answered no on both counts.17
Eventually Carnarvon stepped in. Unless the Egyptian government insisted on taking the mummy to Cairo, “Tutankhamun’s body will be treated with utmost reverence and will be left lying in the sarcophagus unmoved from the spot where he has lain for three thousand years,” he wrote in The Times.18 “I have not yet discussed the point, nor do I view with favor the somewhat unwholesome an
d morbid taste which some people seem to enjoy of looking at mummies exposed in glass cases in museums.”
Ordinary people, however, seemed deeply concerned about the idea of disturbing Tutankhamun at all. A correspondent to the London Times compared the corpse to that of Britain’s not-long deceased queen: “I wonder how many of us would like to think that in the year, say, 5923, the tomb of Queen Victoria would be invaded by a party of foreigners who robbed it of its contents, took the body of the great Queen from the mausoleum . . . and exhibited it to all and sundry.”19
In the United States, a writer for the New York Times was even more upset: “It does not seem to have entered anyone’s thoughts to be shocked at the desecration of the tomb of the great King Tutankhamun. Science having abolished the Supreme and given omniscience to the atom is no doubt suitably employed in the ghoulish task of rifling an ancient tomb. It would be more becoming to Christian nations to take the bodies of the priests and kings now lying in the defilement of their public museums and reverently restore them to their sacred resting places.”20
As the cultural historian Christopher Frayling put it in his 1992 book The Face of Tutankhamun, “The balance of opinion was that the archaeologists were transgressing a deeply felt taboo, and they would surely pay for it. Like Drs Faustus, Frankenstein and Jekyll . . . the scientists who dug in the sand would be destroyed by the results of their researches, because they had gone too far.”21
BUT CARTER HAD NO INTENTION of stopping. By mid-February, the antechamber of the tomb had been cleared and swept, except for the two guardian statues on either side of the sealed door. It was time to see what was beyond it. Carter arranged a grand opening on February 16, with a series of important figures invited to view the inside of an Egyptian king’s burial chamber: the first time such an extraordinary spectacle had ever been witnessed by modern humanity.
Except that it wasn’t. That morning, Carnarvon drove to the Valley for the opening with his half-brother Mervyn and his daughter Evelyn. According to Mervyn’s diary,22 Evelyn leaned over to him and whispered something “under strictest promise of secrecy . . . They had both been into the Second Chamber!”
After discovering the sealed doorway, Carter’s little group had apparently been unable to resist reopening the sealed door where robbers had previously broken through, and had crept inside for a sneak preview. It’s not clear when, but it was probably shortly after the tomb was discovered. Evelyn also alludes to the episode in a letter to Carter, written on December 26—six weeks before the official opening—in which she tells him of her father’s continuing excitement about the “Holy of Holies” (the burial chamber). “I can never thank you sufficiently for allowing me to enter its precincts,” she adds. “It was the Great Moment of my life.”23
Carter never publicly admitted to the break-in, but many years later, Lucas wrote in a couple of scholarly articles that Carter told him he did indeed make a hole in the wall, then resealed it afterward, covering the area with a basket lid and reeds so that no one would suspect.24, 25 After his faux pas with Lord Cromer at Deir el-Bahri twenty years earlier, perhaps Carter can be forgiven for wanting to check what was beyond the door before arranging the grand opening.
Now, what he and his friends had seen was to be revealed to the world. There were about twenty privileged spectators. As well as Carter and the Carnarvons, and the rest of Carter’s team, there were Egyptologists, antiquities officials and politicians, including Pierre Lacau (the latest director of the antiquities service), Sir William Garstin, and a number of high-ranking Egyptian officials. After dining in the luncheon tomb, the party assembled in front of Tutankhamun’s tomb at a quarter past two.
“We are going to have a concert, Carter is going to sing a song,” announced Carnarvon, glancing nervously at the assembled journalists.26 The VIPs removed their coats and filed down the steep passage into the small antechamber, where rows of chairs had been set up for them, and the guardian statues had been covered with wooden planking, with a raised platform between them that looked like a stage. Under the glare of two electric lamps, Carter mounted the platform and attacked the top of the sealed doorway with a chisel, carefully chipping away the plaster and small stones. Within about ten minutes, he had a hole big enough to shine an electric torch through. But all he could see, about two feet from the doorway, was a solid wall of gold.
After that, the going got tougher. The door was made of huge slabs of stone, some precariously balanced, which took about two hours to clear. The air was hot and close, and the atmosphere horribly tense. The clink of the hammer and chisel echoed around the walls. At one point, Carnarvon retreated outside for a cigarette, his face pale and his forehead dripping with sweat. But he couldn’t bear to miss anything, and threw it away after two minutes to go back into the tomb. Not everyone was so excited, though—one elderly Pasha was heard to murmur that he would far rather be in his club in Cairo.
Once the door had been removed, it became clear that the golden wall was the side of a huge gilt shrine that almost filled the chamber, built to protect the king’s mummy in its sarcophagus. The floor of the burial chamber was about four feet lower than that of the antechamber. Carter lowered himself down into the narrow space between the door and the shrine, carrying a lamp, and edged cautiously to the corner of the shrine. Two alabaster vases blocked his way, so he passed them back to the antechamber, at which point Carnarvon and the portly Lacau squeezed down to join him.
The shrine was around seventeen by eleven feet, leaving a gap of about two feet on each side. Its roof almost touched the ceiling. It was made of wood, completely covered with gold, with inlays of blue faience* on its sides and covered with magic symbols to ensure its strength and safety. On the floor on the far side, eleven oars were carefully laid out—the magic oars the king would need to ferry himself across the waters of the underworld.
The main concern was whether the ancient thieves had penetrated the shrine. At its eastern end, round to the right, was a pair of enormous folding doors, closed and bolted but not sealed. The three men drew back the bolts and swung open the doors with an ominous creak. Immediately, they saw a second shrine. Between the two were some alabaster ornaments, and a little painted pot topped by a cat with a pink tongue that Carnarvon couldn’t take his eyes off. But more importantly, these doors were bolted, sealed, and tied up with string. The robbers had not made it beyond this point. Tutankhamun must still be lying there, intact.
Admitting to “a feeling of intrusion,”27 the men reclosed the doors and carried on around the shrine. In the far corner of the chamber, they found yet another low doorway, leading into a fourth small room. There was no door and as they peeped in, they saw some of the greatest treasures yet. Facing the doorway, on the far side, was what Carter described as “the most beautiful monument I have ever seen.”28 It was a large, shrine-shaped chest, covered in gold, topped with a cornice of cobras. At each corner stood four golden statues, facing inward but looking out over their shoulders—slender, graceful goddesses, with their arms protectively outstretched.
In front of the chest was the black figure of a jackal, the god Anubis, resting on a portable wooden sled and swathed in a linen cloth. Staring straight at them, he was elegant and alert, with golden eyes, curved claws, and huge bat-like ears. Otherwise, the room was filled with shrine-shaped boxes, caskets of ivory and wood, miniature coffins, and a profusion of model boats.
Carnarvon and Lacau returned to the antechamber, after which the other guests were admitted in pairs. Carter stood in the far room (which he named the treasury) to guide them, enjoying the succession of dazed, bewildered faces. As each pair peered in through the doorway, he lifted one of the box lids with a flourish, to reveal a sumptuous ivory fan, plumed with perfectly preserved ostrich feathers.
At a quarter past five, the party filed out of the tomb, hot, dusty, and disheveled. “The very Valley seemed to have changed for us and taken on a more personal aspect,” wrote Carter.29 “We had been given the Freedom.”
The following days were given up to a succession of high-profile visits to the tomb, as Luxor hummed with excitement. According to the New York Times, “the west bank of the Nile was black with masses of vehicles and people.”30 Every horse- and ass-drawn carriage in the region had been commandeered to take the officials and guests from the river up to the Valley, with herds of donkeys and crowds of donkey boys and hangers on, not to mention no fewer than seven motorcars, and a motorcycle with a sidecar. The water was congested with feluccas and motor launches, and throngs of spectators lined the river on both sides to watch the various celebrities on their way past. One highlight was the passage of the queen of the Belgians, dressed in white with a gray fox stole, veil, and broad-brimmed hat.
Each eminent guest insisted on squeezing round between the shrine and the wall, with two or three of the least slender getting stuck and needing help. “Fortunately the tabernacle is admirably built of wood,” said the New York Times.31 “Not every similar structure built today would last 3,000 years and stand as much pushing.”
On February 28, the tomb was closed for the season, and Carter’s team focused on their work in the lab, cataloging and conserving the hundreds of objects retrieved from the antechamber so far. With no new discoveries, the excitement and press attention started to ease off. But in mid-March, something happened that changed everything. Lord Carnarvon got bitten by a mosquito.
_____________
* Malek has since retired.
