The Rape of the Nile
Page 28
Carter had been a superb inspector in Upper Egypt. In 1904, he was transferred to Lower Egypt. He had never been good with the public, for his stiff and obstinate personality gave him little tolerance for tourists. This side of his personality came to a head in January 1905, when he was involved in a violent altercation with a group of drunk French tourists at Saqqara. The visitors complained, Carter refused to apologize, and he eventually resigned from the inspectorate in disgust. For the next few years, he eked out a living as an artist in Luxor, serving as a guide, painting watercolors for tourists, and painting on commission from excavators such as Theodore Davis. In 1907, his fortunes changed dramatically, when he became associated with a wealthy English aristocrat, Lord Carnarvon.
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George Edward Stanhope Molyneux, fifth earl of Carnarvon (1866–1923), was an art collector of cultured tastes and fine judgment, a sportsman, and an ardent fan of motoring in its pioneer days. A serious injury in an automobile accident in Germany caused him to winter regularly in Egypt for his health after 1903. He was soon bored and happened to mention the fact to Lord Cromer, who suggested he take up Egyptology. During his first season, after six weeks “enveloped in dust,” he found nothing but a large mummified cat, but caught the excavation bug. Given a permit for a more promising area in the Dra Abu’l Naga area in 1907, he found the tomb of Tetiky, mayor of Thebes during the early Eighteenth Dynasty. Modern houses prevented more than a partial excavation, but he found a few choice objects and uncovered well-preserved wall paintings. Carnarvon also unearthed another tomb containing a writing board bearing a hieratic text recording the pharaoh Kamose’s war against the Hyksos of the Nile Delta.5 By now, he felt a need to enlist the services of a “learned man.” Gaston Maspero recommended Howard Carter. The events that led up to the dramatic Valley of the Kings discovery of 1922 were now set in motion.
Carter and Carnarvon became both colleagues and friends, despite the enormous social chasm between them. Carter came under his aristocratic patron’s spell, aped his dress, and took to smoking cigarettes with a long holder. Together, they embarked on a five-year project in the Qurna hills, uncovering Middle Kingdom tombs and later sepulchers. They also worked on the Valley Temple of Queen Hatshepsut. Between 1910 and 1914, the two men unearthed rock-cut tombs from the Middle Kingdom, one with so many coffins stacked in it that Carnarvon gave some of them away. In 1912, they published Five Years’ Explorations at Thebes, which received wide acclaim from Egyptologists. Carter had run a tight ship in the field, setting new standards for investigating previously looted tombs and salvaging as much archaeological information as possible under very harsh conditions. With Carnarvon’s assistance, he built himself a fine brick house near Qurna, the bricks for the foundations supplied from his patron’s brickworks in England.6
By this time, Carter was a prominent member of the small Egyptological coterie at Thebes. He was prickly, sometimes obstinate, occasionally charming, and always forthright, something that did not endear him to some of his colleagues. Arthur Weigall, his eventual successor as Upper Egypt inspector, could not stand Carter. The feeling was reciprocated.7 He also had an uneasy relationship with the learned and independently wealthy Alan Gardiner. Carter never made close friends, for he was very much a loner, something that was both an asset and a liability when Tutankhamun came along.
In 1915, Theodore Davis relinquished the concession for excavations in the Valley of the Kings, which now passed to Lord Carnarvon, his appetite whetted by his discoveries in the Theban necropolis. World War I and Carter’s war work intervened. When time allowed, he returned to copying, notably reliefs of the Opet ceremony on the walls of Karnak. Not that life was without adventures. In 1916, he heard that some villagers on the west bank had found a tomb in a lonely valley above the Valley of the Kings. Two parties of robbers set out for the site. There was a fight. One band fled, while the others lowered themselves into the narrow defile of the sepulcher. Taking some of his workers with him, Carter climbed more than 550 meters (1,800 feet) over the Qurna hills by moonlight. He arrived at midnight while the looters were hard at work in the tomb. He quickly severed their rope dangling down the cliff and had himself lowered with a rope of his own “into a nest of industrious tomb-robbers . . . a pastime that at least does not lack excitement. There were eight at work, and when I reached the bottom there was an awkward moment or two.”8 He gave the looters the option of leaving via his rope or staying down with no way of escaping. They departed, while Carter remained on watch until dawn. For the next twenty days, he and his workers cleared the grave, which proved to be an unfinished tomb for Queen Hatshepsut. Other burials also came to light in the Theban cliffs during the war, including the sepulcher of three royal women of Tuthmosis III’s court.9 The finds vanished into the Luxor antiquities market before Carter got wind of the discovery. He did all he could to track down the loot, much of which is in the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art in New York, the Louvre, and the British Museum, through local dealers.
By 1915, Carter was convinced that the burial of the obscure New Kingdom pharaoh Tutankhamun lay undiscovered in the Valley of the Kings. No one knew the valley as well as he. No one had searched more diligently for clues as to the young king’s sepulcher. Theodore Davis was convinced there were no more royal tombs, despite finding a cache of sealed pottery jars, some with seals bearing Tutankhamun’s name. Davis thought the find unimportant, but Herbert Winlock, an Egyptologist with the Metropolitan Museum, recognized their importance at once. He realized that the vessels were once used during Tutankhamun’s funerary ceremonies, then buried and forgotten.10 Tutankhamun haunted Carter’s thoughts. The two excavators began work in 1917 in a long-term search for his tomb that involved digging down to bedrock and removing hundreds of tons of chippings created by ancient Egyptian masons and hasty modern excavators.
The search lasted for six years without success. By 1922, Carnarvon was concerned at the expense, but Carter persuaded him to pay for one last season to investigate a small triangular area near the tomb of Rameses VI, which they had left on one side so as not to disturb visitors to the sepulcher. Nearby lay some crude workers’ huts. What followed is one of the immortal stories of archaeology—some rock-cut steps under the workers’ dwellings, then a sealed doorway, a rubble-filled passageway, and another barrier bearing Tutankhamun’s seals. At this point Carter waited for Lord Carnarvon to arrive from England. On November 4, 1922, Carter pulled out a few stones from the doorway and shone a flickering candle through the small aperture. “Well, what is it?” asked Carnarvon somewhat impatiently. “There are some marvellous objects there,” was Carter’s reply, often reported as “wonderful things.” The small party entered the antechamber of the tomb in dazed excitement, in what Carter called “the day of days, the most wonderful thing that I have ever lived through, and certainly one whose like I can never hope to see again.”11 That night, Carter, Carnarvon, and Carnarvon’s daughter, Lady Evelyn Herbert, returned and cut a small hole into the sealed chamber leading off the antechamber to establish that the pharaoh’s sarcophagus did indeed lie there, which it did.
FIGURE 16.2 Howard Carter opens one of Tutankhamun’s shrines. Hulton Deutsch Collection/Corbis.
Carnarvon and Carter faced a daunting task—the conservation and recording of an entire pharaoh’s tomb with its myriad of objects large and small, everything from items of clothing to funerary beds and prefabricated chariots. The discovery caused an international sensation. While planning the excruciatingly difficult clearance work, Carnarvon found himself fighting off hordes of journalists and mobs of tourists, all anxious to peer into the tomb. Royalty and celebrities clamored to be admitted. Carter called in all the assistance that he could obtain, notably from the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art in New York, which provided an expert photographer, Harry Burton, and also surveyors and draftsmen. Conservation was in the hands of a government chemist, Alfred Lucas, an expert on ancient Egyptian materials, and A. C. Mace, who also helped Carter write a popula
r account of the tomb. The conservation laboratory occupied the nearby tomb of Seti II, staffed by what was a unique team of experts for the day.
Carter approached the recording of the tomb in a methodical way, numbering every object, then photographing and cataloging them in place if possible. His artistic expertise produced minute, stunningly accurate drawings of objects large and small. But Carter did not delegate well, and the stress was constant. He erupted in angry tantrums at the slightest provocation, which did not make for smooth relationships either with Carnarvon or with the scientists. When Carnarvon died suddenly from pneumonia and an infected mosquito bite on April 5, 1923, the pressure intensified and continued for the remaining nine years of the clearance. Inevitably, Carnarvon’s demise produced talk of the “Curse of the Pharaohs,” with a capital C and a capital P, but the furor over the evil influence of ancient curses was nothing compared with the political ramifications of the discovery, which changed Egyptology profoundly.
The trouble began over press coverage. Neither of the two discoverers were accustomed to dealing with the press. Carnarvon was an aristocrat who disdained the popular press. In late 1922, he forged an exclusive agreement for tomb coverage with the London Times over Carter’s strenuous objections. Carnarvon had served as a buffer between Carter and journalists, and between his prickly colleague and an increasingly aggressive Antiquities Service, which was concerned that most of the finds would leave Egypt under the generous export laws still on the books. Carter’s abrasive and obstinate personality added fuel to the flames. A complex mix of disgruntled journalists, nationalist politicians, and the increasing sensitivity of Egyptians to what appeared to be a foreign archaeological monopoly led to charges and countercharges, as well as studied insults. The director of the Antiquities Service, Pierre Lacau, was insisting that all the Tutankhamun finds remain in Egypt and that the Carnarvon family renounce all rights to the artifacts.12 Matters came to a head in February 1924 when Carter and his colleagues staged a strike shortly after raising the lid of the king’s sarcophagus and exposing the golden mummy inside. Carter posted a notice blaming the work stoppage on the “impossible restrictions and discourtesies” of the Egyptian authorities. The government promptly canceled the Carnarvon concession and locked Carter and his colleagues out of the tomb.
After prolonged negotiations, Carter was permitted to resume work in January 1925 under a new concession. The Carnarvon family renounced all claims to the tomb and its contents and agreed not to take legal action over the cancellation of the earlier permit. In return, the government was prepared to allocate duplicate representatives of the finds to the Carnarvons, provided they did not detract from the scientific value of the tomb as a whole. Visits by outsiders were carefully regulated, most being confined to Tuesdays.
The controversy had provoked strong feelings among Carter’s colleagues, many of whom disliked his prickly and often tactless manner. His team of experts was much reduced. He was now left more or less alone to complete his task, which suited him. In 1925, he contented himself with working on the objects already taken from the tomb, including a silver trumpet bearing figures of Amun, Re-Herakhty, and Ptah. Carter told Lady Carnarvon that he had managed to get a good blast out of it. Herbert Winlock praised Carter’s delicate touch with the jewelry: “with his fingers of an artist there is no better person to whom this stuff could have been entrusted.” The year 1926 saw the delicate task of lifting out the coffin shells from the sarcophagus and the formal examination of the mummy itself on November 11 in the tomb of Seti II. Unlike earlier formal occasions, there were no grandees, just Egyptian government officials, Carter and his colleagues, and members of the Antiquities Service. The mummy was much corroded by the unguents poured over it by the embalmers, but Carter commented that “Tut-ankh-Amen was of a type exceedingly refined and cultured. The face has beautiful and well formed features.”13
Work on the tomb dragged on for six more years, plagued by visitors and long-drawn-out debates over the question of compensation to the Carnarvon family for the expense of the tomb project. The tortuous politics of Egypt during these years made any form of settlement difficult. The countess of Carnarvon decided, probably with Carter’s agreement, not to renew the concession. The actual clearance work was finished, but there remained some important conservation work, especially on the shrines that encased the sarcophagus. Carter now had no formal status as far as the tomb was concerned. He could not even possess a key to the sepulcher, a reflection of changed political times. In 1930, the Carnarvon family accepted £35,86 13/8 in compensation, of which Carter received about one-quarter.14
Two years later, in February 1932, Howard Carter completed his enormous task, conducted under appallingly difficult conditions. Much of the time he had worked virtually alone, assisted only by photographer Harry Burton of the Metropolitan Museum and Alfred Lucas, chemist to the Antiquities Service. Tutankhamun had consumed ten years of Carter’s life. At the end, he was exhausted. He never wrote the great scientific monograph on the tomb that he had planned, but spent much of his time purchasing fine antiquities for major institutions like the British Museum and the Detroit Institute of Arts. His artifact dealings have been much criticized by today’s Egyptologists, but Carter had no formal employment and had to support himself. In this, he was very much an archaeologist of his times. He died in 1939, without honor from his own government, in part because of his humble birth. His proudest accolade was an honorary doctorate from Yale University.
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Until World War I, British, French, and German scholars dominated Egyptology. The Americans were late on the scene. All three of America’s earliest professional Egyptologists trained in Germany in the 1890s, then began fieldwork along the Nile. Major philanthropists, among them Phoebe Hearst from California, Theodore Davis, and John D. Rockefeller Jr., provided support for major expeditions. Davis we have already met in the Valley of the Kings. Phoebe Hearst supported George Reisner (1867–1942), a rumpled, pipe-smoking scholar who directed the Hearst Egyptian Expedition from 1897 to 1899. With her support, he honed his excavation skills, notably in a Twelfth Dynasty palace at Deir el-Ballas north of Thebes. Appointed to the faculty at Harvard University, Reisner spent the rest of his productive career digging in Egypt and the Sudan. He was a scrupulous excavator whose recording methods and field techniques were far superior to anything seen along the Nile before. He also treated his Egyptian workers exceptionally well, which led to some remarkable finds, including an important medical papyrus. Reisner despised Petrie’s rough-and-tumble methods and had little time for Carter and Carnarvon, whom he considered arrogant and colonial. “I have never accepted Mr. Carter or Carnarvon as a scientific colleague nor admitted that either of them came within the categories of persons worthy of receiving excavation permits from the Egypt Government,” he wrote privately to Mr. Hawes of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1924.15 Almost alone among Egyptologists, he did not support Carter in his quarrels with the Egyptian authorities. Unfortunately, Reisner was so slow moving and thorough that many of his excavations still remain unpublished.
Reisner was unusual in that he worked in the Sudan, where he carried out the first systematic survey of Nubian sites. He also dug in the heart of the Nubian kingdom of Kerma south of the Second Cataract in the Sudan, where he excavated a spectacular royal cemetery with burial mounds containing as many as four hundred of the chief ’s followers who had been buried alive. His careful excavation methods allowed him to describe sacrificial victims with sufficient emotion to allow themselves to be covered with earth: “subsequently little movement was possible and death came quickly. . . . The most unfortunate persons were those, usually young females, who crept under the bed and thus being enclosed in an air-space . . . died much more gradually.”16
For years, he worked in the Old Kingdom cemeteries near Giza, where he found many papyri and a magnificent seated statue of the pharaoh Menkaure (2532–2504 BC) and his queen. His greatest Giza discovery was the tomb of Queen Het
epheres, wife of King Sneferu and mother of Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid. The queen lay in a burial chamber so cramped that only two people could work there at a time. Reisner’s colleague Dows Dunham dealt with finds so delicate that even a slight vibration caused them to decay. On one occasion he said something funny, Reisner laughed, and a fragment of sheet gold once attached to a piece of wooden furniture slid to the floor. Some 1,700 pages of notes and drawings and 1,057 photographs later, Reisner and his colleagues were able to reconstruct the major finds on modern wood. Unfortunately, her sarcophagus was empty. “Reisner rose from his box and said, ‘Gentlemen, I regret Queen Hetepheres is not receiving. . . . Mrs. Reisner will serve refreshments at the camp.’”17 Reisner was delighted when the gold and silver vessels, a bed complete with a canopy, and other finds momentarily diverted public attention from Tutankhamun.
His contemporary James Henry Breasted (1865–1935) was an early example of an American academic entrepreneur. Like Reisner, he studied in Germany, under Adolf Erman with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. Breasted spent his entire career at the infant University of Chicago, where he soon came in contact with the philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr., who funded much of his work. His real expertise was inscriptions, which he published in a magisterial work, Ancient Records of Egypt, in five volumes between 1905 and 1909. He became professor of Egyptology at the University of Chicago in 1905, the first in the country, and devoted the rest of his career to fostering Egyptology in the United States. Aggressive, persistent, and constantly on the lookout for new opportunities, Breasted was above all a teacher and administrator who made things happen. With the assistance of Rockefeller, he founded the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago in 1919, which, with more Rockefeller money, rapidly became the leading institution for Egyptology and Near Eastern studies in the Americas. The ever opportunistic Breasted was on the fringes of the Tutankhamun affair, supported Carter against Lacau, and played a part in the negotiations over the resumption of work in 1925, but he was privately critical. On one occasion he remarked in a letter that “we are familiar with the fact that Carter does not know the meaning of the English language.”18 To Breasted and many other Egyptologists, Carter was a dirt archaeologist and artist, not a scholar or a gentleman.