In the Valley of the Kings

by Daniel Meyerson

  If Newberry and Carter were natural allies, then it was to be expected (on the aforementioned “principle” of archaeological jealousy and ambition) that Fraser and Blackden drew together in shared antipathy for their colleagues. The hot, exhausting journey during which the men discovered only empty, uninscribed, undecorated, and roughly hewn burial chambers did nothing to improve their mood. By the time they reached the town of Sheikh Ibada (where they had to wait for a boat), they were taking tea separately—an ominous sign.

  The ruins of Sheikh Ibada, the ancient Antinopolis, were meager. Some marble pillars remained standing amid its mud brick houses, dusty palms brushed up against a broken Roman wall or two—nothing more. When some years before the French novelist Gustave Flaubert passed through, he marveled that the squalid place had once been a thriving city with grand, romantic associations.

  For in the second century AD, the story goes, when Emperor Hadrian sailed down the Nile, an Egyptian fortune-teller appeared to him here. He predicted death for Hadrian—unless someone freely agreed to take his place.

  Hearing his words, Hadrian’s young lover, the beautiful eunuch Antïnous, drowned himself in the Nile, moving Hadrian to decree that a magnificent city with Antïnous’s name should rise on the spot—which is how Antinopolis (the City of Antïnous) rose here, where the four down-in-the-dumps archaeologists now sat wearily (and separately) taking their improvised tea. “Bread, water and onions!” as Newberry noted with an exclamation point, silently passing over Hadrian and the tragic Antïnous. After all, there was no percentage in dwelling on either of them: Hadrian’s tomb was in Rome, while Antïnous went to a watery grave. The talk of the town centered on the still undiscovered tomb of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten, said to be somewhere in the vicinity.

  Rumor had it that Akhenaten (father of Tut’s wife, Princess Ankhesenamun, and of Tut as well) was buried somewhere in the desert surrounding El Bersheh or nearby Amarna, where just now Petrie was raking over the site with a fine-tooth comb.

  All kinds of stories were in the air. That Bedouins had stumbled upon the tomb and were secretly selling objects from it—somehow in cahoots with the French director of the Antiquities Service. Or that the Amarna villagers had found the pharaoh’s coffin and, not wanting foreigners to seize it, had reburied or burned it in the dead of night (a British officer even claimed to have caught sight of the torchlight reburial procession).

  Such rumors were fire, and the young archaeologists, eager to make their mark, were tinder. Carter’s task, though, was not to search for Akhenaten’s burial place, but to copy the tomb walls before him. And copy them he did, as the weeks stretched into months and the seasons followed one another, bringing changes in the desert that the boy, very alive to natural beauty, recorded on his sketch pad … while he dreamed of a discoverer’s glory.

  Carter’s work at El Bersheh (freehand at last!) was excellent, and the Egyptian Exploration Fund was delighted with him. All very gratifying. The discoverer of Akhenaten’s tomb, though, would win not only the fund’s praise, but that of the world at large.

  Is it any wonder that thoughts of the fascinating figure of Akhenaten sometimes came between Carter and the tomb walls he was copying? Evidence of Akhenaten’s period was just beginning to come to light in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The pharaohs who came after him damned the “great criminal” (as they called him), striking his name from the royal chronicles and destroying his monuments in an effort to erase all memory of him. Even today, his chaotic seventeen-year reign (the seals on his wine bottles stop at year 17)2* is interpreted in a more widely varying and contradictory manner than any other reign in Egyptian history. He is a riddle.

  What is undisputed is that Akhenaten, a son of Amenhotep III, came to the throne at a time when the empire was at its height (New Kingdom, 1350 BC). Egypt’s boundaries stretched from Syria in the north to Nubia (now the Sudan) in the south. Lesser kingdoms trembled at the name of Egypt. Tribute poured in from Asia; the army was powerful, the granaries bursting, the temples rich and resplendent. But all of this did not interest Amenhotep IV (“Amun is pleased”)—or Akhenaten, as he called himself in honor of the Aten, the dazzling Sun Disk at the height of day and the object of his constant meditation.

  He was deformed—possibly. At least it may be said that he broke with the conventional portrayal of the king. In murals and most especially in a series of enormous nude statues (now in the Egyptian Museum), he had himself depicted as having huge hips, almost female breasts, no genitals, long, “spidery” fingers, an elongated skull, and a strange, gaunt, brooding face.

  His haunting features are unlike any seen in the three thousand years of Egyptian royal portraiture. Possibly such statues were “realistic” and the pharaoh was a Marfan’s case or a sufferer from Froelich’s syndrome.3* Just as possibly the portraits were the expression of a new aesthetic linked to the “heretic’s” religious philosophy. It is like asking whether El Greco’s elongated figures should be traced to severe astigmatism of the artist’s eye—or to the Byzantine icon tradition he absorbed in his youth. Or analyzing Gauguin’s use of light and shadow in terms of his cataracts. After all the scholarly opinions are studied, one still has to flip a coin—and the answer may very well be both heads and tails.

  A visionary, Akhenaten turned away from Egypt’s many gods and wrote hymns to the one source of all life, the sun, who warmed all beings from the chick in his egg to the pharaoh on his throne. If Egypt’s principal god, the ram-headed Amun (whose name means “Hidden”), was worshipped in temples with dark, enclosed holy of holies, the Aten was the visible sign of divinity that daily crossed the sky. His worship was conducted in open courtyards, standing out under the sky; art of the period represented him with many life-giving hands reaching out to his creatures below.

  In an attempt to fit Akhenaten into an earlier tradition, scholars have pointed out that solar worship was present from the very first dynasties. However, Egypt had never seen anything like Akhenaten’s fanaticism, his chiseling out of the name of “Amun” in inscriptions and earlier royal cartouches, his closure of the temples of other gods, his turning away from political life and absorption in religious contemplation, which led to the ruination of the empire.

  Deserting his ancient capital, Wast (Thebes, Luxor), Akhenaten traveled upriver to where the present-day village of Amarna is located in Middle Egypt. Here, in a completely barren stretch of land, he dedicated the new city of Akhetaten to his god. The other pharaohs of his dynasty (the Eighteenth) were buried far to the south, in the Valley of the Kings. But Akhenaten’s vow, inscribed on a series of boundary stelae placed in the surrounding mountains, was to remain here—“in this place”—forever.

  These inscriptions, taken together with the fact that his great officials all had tombs in the region, meant that the pharaoh’s tomb was certainly hidden in some wadi, some dry riverbed, or perhaps some cliff.

  On Christmas Day, Fraser and Blackden headed for the nearby city of Minya to celebrate, while Carter and Newberry set off to search for Akhenaten’s tomb, keeping their plan secret from their colleagues. Of course, they were not honor-bound to inform them. However, the detail is important in getting a sense of the mood—an almost feverish rivalry was in the air, Carter’s protestations notwithstanding. (“There was not the slightest idea of winning discovery by selfish competition with our colleagues, nor getting the advantage over others….” He was acting “for the advancement of general knowledge.”)

  But if we can’t trust Carter’s account of his motives, his description of their exploration provides a good picture of the terrain and distances involved. “There were rumours abroad that the Bedu [Bedouin] had discovered the long lost tomb of Amenophis IV [the Greek form of Amenhotep IV], or Akhenaten, which was believed to be hidden somewhere in the desert hills behind the great plain of El-Amarna, south of Deir [Arabic for the Monastery of] el-Bersheh.

  “Encamped on the desert near us between the cultivated fields of Deir el-Nakh
leh and the ravine in which we were working, there was a large Bedu family, of the Ababda tribe who dwell in groups and haunt the solitudes of the eastern desert….

  “From these nomads we sought information. Whether they had any knowledge of a large tomb in the desert east of El-Amarna. The chief man among them, called Sheikh Eid, professed to know of a place situated on the desert plateau east of a village at El-Amarna, called Haggi Qandil, where there was a deep cutting in the rock, which he described as being much like the chapels [tombs] of El-Bersheh.

  “But as the Ababda, who possessed an original language of their own, had exchanged it for bad Arabic, it was very difficult to understand the Sheikh’s description of the cutting excepting that it was ‘written’ (i.e. inscribed). The Sheikh, however, volunteered for a remuneration and the hire of his camels to show us the spot.

  “We crossed the desert tract of El-Bersheh, skirted along the base of the perpendicular cliffs of Sheikh Said that reach down to the river bank, whence we gained, at about noon, the great open desert tract of El-Amarna. Here lie the ruins of the city of Akh.en.Aten, bordered by palm groves that grow along the narrow strip of cultivated land beside the river.”

  Without giving it a second thought at the time, Carter was passing through the place where Tutankhamun (the Living Image of Amun), at that time named Tutankhaten (the Living Image of Aten, the Sun Disk), spent the early years of his life. In the ruins of Akhenaten’s city, Carter would have walked along the same palace paths where the child who would later change his life took his first steps.

  1* The time it took to embalm the deceased. Once the embalmers had finished, the funeral took place and the tomb was sealed whether or not the artist was satisfied with his work.

  2* Wine bottles bore clay seals stamped with vintage dates (sometimes they also had wooden dockets attached to them upon which the vintage date was written along with other information, such as the name of the estates from which they came). Egyptian dates always reverted to year 1 every time a new pharaoh’s reign began. Therefore if no wine bottles from Akhenaten’s reign were found after year 17, it must be assumed that he had died and that what would have been year 18 had now become year 1 of his son’s reign.

  3* Two medical conditions that produce deformities similar to those that appear in Akhenaten’s portraits—the elongated skull, for example, or the androgyny. However, other symptoms of these medical conditions do not match Akhenaten. Froelich’s syndrome produces sterility, for example, and the pharaoh is seen time and again in friezes and statues with one or another of his six daughters.

  CARTER AND NEWBERRY HAD NO TIME TO EXPLORE THE RUINS just now. The journey they had begun was a long one, and the guides were urgent: “From there [Amarna] we trailed across desert tract in a south-easterly direction, our guide obviously following an old beaten track of the Bedu. This path led to an open spacious valley, situated on the south-eastern corner of the plain, and which winds away amid the Arabian desert. At the entrance of this valley, along its bed, we struck the remains of an ancient Egyptian road. This we followed over undulating ground for about an hour, when it took a sharp turn to the left (eastward), and wound up a pass on to the higher desert plateau.

  “On this barren boulder bestrewn plateau the track of the ancient road became very distinct. It was swept clear of boulders, confused masses of broken rocks, and in parts it looked as fresh as if it had been made quite recently. We continued to follow it over hill and dale for at least another two hours, until it reached some extensive mounds of debris, which were obviously refuse dumps from some ancient excavation.

  “Here we dismounted, stiff and tired from the rolling gaits of the camels. In the midst of these dumps were two deep and extensive cuttings in the rock of the plateau; not the tomb of Amenophis IV [Akhenaten] but the famous Hatnub quarries, their existence hitherto unknown save from the records upon the ancient monuments.

  “These quarries were cut deep into a stratum of alabaster (calcite) where immense blocks of that material could be procured.” The stone was travertine (limestone calcium carbonate), used for embalming tables, canopic jars, temple vessels, and so on. The material for Senwosret I’s beautiful chapel in Karnak temple was quarried here; thanks to the stone’s pure white and translucent quality, the chapel seems, by moonlight especially, to be an unearthly dream.

  “Engraved upon their [the quarries’] vertical sides was a multitude of inscriptions” Carter concludes, “from which we learn [italics mine] that they were opened during the Old Kingdom [2590 BC]….” And, Carter might have added, the inscriptions continue as late as Roman times, into the third century AD, making the quarry walls a veritable Who’s Who of ancient Egypt.

  “Inscriptions from which we learn,” Carter wrote. But just who was reading these inscriptions? Certainly not Carter and Newberry! At the time, they were too discouraged and disappointed by the fact that they had not discovered Akhenaten’s tomb to appreciate what they had discovered. They were too hot, tired, and saddle sore to study inscriptions, Old Kingdom or Roman (many written in hieratic to boot, a very difficult script version of the hieroglyphs).

  They stood before Quarry P and Quarry R, open, circular pits (two hundred feet across and fifty feet deep), surrounded by huge spoil heaps of travertine chips—and they were brokenhearted. They had hired the camels at an exorbitant price and had forgone the luxury of a Christmas break at Minya, and all for what?

  When Arthur Weigall (a young colleague who began training in Egypt at the same time as Carter) explored the porphyry quarries in the south (Gebel Dukhan), he was as content and grateful as Carter would be in King Tut’s tomb. He let his imagination wander (as Carter would in Tut’s tomb), envisioning the flawless stone floated upriver and then across the ocean to Rome, where “thoughtless implacable men dip their jeweled fingers into the basins of purple porphyry as they reclined in the halls of imperial Rome.”

  Weigall was filled with awe as he stood in the midst of his desert quarries, describing the “ground strewn with yellow fragments of sandstone, orange coloured ochre, transparent pieces of gypsum, carnelian and alabaster chips and glittering quartz … wiggly lines of lizards, footprints of wagtails, vultures, eagles, desert partridges, short jumps of jerboas, padmarks of jackals and foxes, heavier prints of hyenas, and gazelle…. Then in the warm perfect stillness there came, at first almost unnoticed, a small black moving mass, creeping over an indefinite hill top. Presently, very quietly, the mass resolved itself into a compact flock of goats. There arose a plaintive bleating and the wail of the goatherd’s pipe … behind the flock two figures moved, their white garments fluttering in the wind….”

  It was a magical place for him. But then, Weigall had not traveled to Gebel Dukhan in pursuit of a royal tomb, and thus he was not disappointed or blinded by ambition.

  In a hurry to get back to camp, Carter and Newberry returned to El Bersheh without copying or even noticing most of the Hatnub inscriptions. They left without opening the wonderful “Christmas present” they had been given and returned to punishment.

  Their rivals now seized their chance: “Fraser and Blackden returned to El Bersheh the following evening full of the Christmas amenities at Minia. [A sneer characteristic of Carter in “battle” mode.] When we told them of our exploit they seemed somewhat crest-fallen, and did not take it in the light we expected. After a day or so, they disappeared hastily at the break of dawn from the camp, taking with them their servants and tents. We were puzzled to know why. But later, we learnt, from the Bedu, whose camels they had taken, that they had gone with Sheikh Eid to the selfsame Hatnub quarries. And when after five days’ absence, they returned, in a somewhat lofty manner informed us that they had succeeded in making a complete survey of the quarries, and had made copies of all the more important inscriptions therein.”

  Creating a sensation in the archaeological world, Blackden and Fraser published “their” discovery: “Collection of Hieratic Graffiti from the Alabaster Quarries of Hat-Nub”—a “hot” work in
more than one sense of the word! There was much hand-wringing and indignation on the part of Carter and Newberry The latter resigned his post with the Egyptian Exploration Fund in protest and thought of leaving Egypt forever.

  While one would imagine that the very graffiti chiseled into the quarry walls, the proud boasts of long forgotten deeds, would remind the feverish archaeologists of the vanity of all human accomplishment, such was not the case. The aggrieved Carter wrote: “In all such archaeological research, there is one recognized unwritten law: the right of first publication being that of the discoverer.”

  Blackden and Fraser, for their part, claimed to have discovered the inscriptions, arguing that Carter and Newberry did not actually recognize what it was they’d stumbled on—the ancient Hat-nub quarries. And so the argument went, for over thirty years. In 1923, Newberry and Fraser were still slinging the archaeological mud in articles and reviews.

  Sides were chosen, and Petrie, who had been planning to accept Blackden as an apprentice excavator, backed off, saying that his behavior “leaves a bad taste in the mouth.” Which was the most significant result of the whole brouhaha. For Petrie still needed an assistant to help him in the work he had undertaken: a thorough exploration of Akhenaten’s ancient capital. Up until this time, the important site had been studied only half a dozen times, all of the expeditions brief and the reports cursory (Jomard in 1798; Burton, 1825; Champollion, 1828, on his way south; then Hay and Wilkenson, both in 1834; and finally—though only for a week—the great German Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius visited Amarna in 1842).

  Instead of the credit-stealing Blackden, Carter was now pushed forward as a likely candidate to train under Petrie for the coming season in 1893. His careful work in the tombs of Beni Hasan and his paintings of the El Bersheh murals, in the true spirit of Egyptian art, were mentioned. He was also helped by the intervention of his old patron of Didlington Hall, William Tyssen-Amherst, who was anxious to augment his collection by financing the expedition.