In the Valley of the Kings

by Daniel Meyerson

  In her thought-provoking Tutankhamen, she underscores her skepticism by pointing out, quite correctly, that as inspector, Carter had worked on strengthening the retaining wall leading to the entrance of Ramesses VI’s tomb. That means he would have been working directly over the entrance to Tut’s tomb. How can one believe he didn’t know about it? No, she opines, he knew it, but he was saving it for just such a moment as this: It was his ace in the hole for when Carnarvon should get tired of bankrolling a fruitless series of digs at high price.

  Why should Carter have proceeded in this way? Well, unfortunately, one such doubt leads to another—and another and another—until we see Carter as either the mastermind of a complicated plot unequaled in the annals of archaeology—or a fool!

  Was he looting the tomb through secret entrances running into it from below, behind, or on the side (another theory proposed by less scrupulous theorists than Mahdy)? Did he have a fleet of airplanes hovering overhead to take away the treasure, as was widely believed not only by the villagers, but even by sober members of the Wafd (or Nationalist) Party? Did he—

  But wait! Let us draw back from these crazy theories and return to the well-informed Ms. Mahdy (whose account of Tutankhamun’s tomb is filled with truly striking, original, and thought-provoking insights). It is possible that she is right that Carter knew about Tut’s tomb from the beginning, but Carter’s motive—or rather his motive behind his motive—is not convincing.

  Say he wanted to string Carnarvon along (motive number one, given by Mahdy). But why? Why is he buying time? One has to answer that—and in doing so, one falls into a morass of speculation that just does not jibe with something essential to Carter: For whatever fetishes, dishonesties, rages, and out-and-out craziness he was capable of, he had integrity in the higher sense.

  The (literally) thousands of painstakingly accurate index cards he filled out in his clearance of Tut’s tomb; the fanatically detailed sketches of objects; the care with which he treated the rotting cloth and fragile wooden antiquities of the tomb; the fanaticism with which he polished the jewelry and restored every atom of the royal chariots—down to the gilded horse blinkers—all was a result of his love for his work, his genius, his devotion.

  Did he give in to dark impulses? Certainly! Did he try to steal this or that? Without a doubt. Was he a part of some Mafia-style scam? It seems to the present writer that the answer is an emphatic no.

  It is altogether possible to say that Carter’s digging away from Tut’s tomb when he was just within a few feet of it at the very beginning is altogether in the nature of things. There is an irony about the way the world is put together, as thinkers from the Egyptian Old Kingdom on have observed.

  After the fact, one can exclaim with disbelief: How is it possible? But one would perhaps have to be out in the hot sun surrounded by rubble and singing workers to enter into Carter’s feverish gambler’s frame of mind. One would have to hear the laughter of his colleagues, to feel the insult of his dismissal as inspector, and to have had the experience of years in dark, claustrophobic tombs to know just what motivated Carter to act this way or that. And as the simplest explanation is the one generally accepted in the scientific model, perhaps one should resort to simplicity as well in accounting for human motives.

  Breasted continued his account of the Carnarvon-Carter meeting: “In this area,” Carter explains to Carnarvon, referring to the “triangle,” “he [Carter] had noted the foundation remains of a row of crude stone huts, evidently built by ancient tomb workmen, which he would have to remove in order to probe the terrain beneath them.”

  Just what these ancient crude stone huts were must be explained. During the unstable last days of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Ay seized for himself the large, royal-size tomb that had been excavated in the West Valley—probably the one originally intended for Tut—and buried the boy-king in a tomb that had probably been dug for some high-placed but nonroyal aristocrat.

  Ay did not live long, and his successor, General Horemheb, had no children, passing the throne along to a fellow soldier, Ramesses I, who founded the Nineteenth Dynasty. Which in turn was followed by a long line of Ramesses in the Twentieth Dynasty.

  This was what preserved Tut for three millennia—that the Ramessides built over the relatively small tomb (small by Eighteenth Dynasty royal standards: a flight of sixteen steps, a corridor, an antechamber with a side room, or “annex,” on one side, a sealed door on the other leading to the burial chamber, with another storeroom, the treasury, to one side). Ramesses VI’s tomb was just a little higher up on the slope; and the Ramesside tomb workers also covered up the forgotten boy-king’s sepulcher with their huts.

  Huts that Carter now proposed to demolish as he laid his cards on the table. Breasted concluded, “Now, said Carter, only when this triangle had been cleared would he feel that their work in The Valley had been absolutely completed. He therefore wished to propose that Carnarvon grant him permission to undertake one more season’s work at his—Carter’s—own expense, using Carnarvon’s concession, and the same workmen and equipment he had employed for years; and if at the end of this final season he found nothing, he would of course, and with a good conscience, agree that they should abandon The Valley.

  “But if on the other hand he should make a discovery, it should belong to Carnarvon exactly as under their long-standing arrangement….

  “Carter’s proposal appealed to him [Carnarvon] as eminently fair—in fact, as too generous. He would agree, he said, to another and final season of excavation; but it would be at his own, not Carter’s expense….”

  Poor Carnarvon! Oppressed by “post war stringencies” and heavy expenses! Burdened by a huge estate and a small army of old family servants and pensioners! The sole support of an extravagant wife and her indigent lover! Obliged to underwrite a famous stable and an infamous archaeologist—a fanatical excavator who was either a genius or a fool, who held out to him crumbling earthenware pots and torn linen bandages as a sure sign of treasure!

  Poor Carnarvon, everyone had a hand in his pocket! He was shelling out left and right at a time when my lord of this was renting out his castle and my lady of that was going bankrupt—take the Tyssen-Amhersts, selling off their Sekhmets, a terrible business.

  But he had given his word, and he did not go back on it. He stood the test. At a time when he did not know where his next plate of pâté de foie gras was coming from, he backed Carter on a final throw of the dice.

  EVERYTHING HAPPENED VERY QUICKLY AFTER THIS MEETING at Highclere—with such speed that Carter barely had the chance to catch his breath. It was as if they had to be tested first—each according to his capabilities—before the earth would open up under their feet and yield up what they had been seeking.

  Toward the end of October, Carter returned to Luxor and told his reis to round up the workers—there would be another season after all. Then he strode out to the site to plan and record the ancient workers’ huts, which must first of all be torn down (at least those beneath Ramesses VI’s tomb). If he had been “sleepwalking” around this vital area before, now he was wide awake.

  There was a layer of rubble under the huts, around three feet deep, and by November 3 the men began to clear this away, preparing to trench toward the south of the triangle.

  But before they got very far, a young water boy, hired the day before, saw a step beneath the soil and cried out. Though sometimes Carter mentioned him in his lectures, in his written account the boy did not appear. Except for varying details such as this, Carter’s written account can be trusted (at least until he reaches the inner door). Indeed, it would be very difficult for him to depart from the truth, since every step of his way into the tomb was so closely watched.

  “Hardly had I arrived on the work next morning,” he wrote, “than the unusual silence, due to the stoppage of the work, made me realize that something out of the ordinary had happened … a step cut in the rock had been discovered underneath the very first hut to be attacked. This seemed to
o good to be true, but a short amount of extra clearing revealed the fact that we were actually in the entrance of a steep cut in the rock….”

  It seemed too good to be true not only to Carter, but to skeptics who read his story. But if this sudden discovery was a “setup,” as has been suggested, surely Carter would have been more clever about it. He would have waited a month or at least a few weeks before “allowing” the discovery to take place. In any case, the nervous strain Carter suffered until the tomb was finally opened was evident to everyone who knew him. Far from being assured, he was like a man on trial for his life. He could not sleep, he could not eat, he could not stop speculating about what he had found—a cache or a tomb, an intact burial or an empty, plundered sepulcher.

  The men had to keep digging, since “masses of rubbish overlay the cut.” They cleared step after step until finally they were positive it was a descending staircase they were working on. Carter stood rooted to the spot, watching until finally by the twelfth step the men reached “the upper part of a doorway, blocked, plastered, and sealed.”

  The seal gave no clue as to the owner’s identity. It was the jackal over nine captives seal used by necropolis officials. Clearly whoever was buried here was of importance, but nothing more could be inferred. Carter hollowed out a peephole, but the passageway behind the door was filled in with rubble.

  “Anything, literally anything, might lie beyond that passage,” he wrote, “and it needed all my self control to keep from breaking down the doorway and investigating then and there.”

  But it was late in the day, and the sun was beginning to set. Clearing the passageway behind the door would take time. Its rubble must be sifted for possible clues, and Carter was a professional. He might break the service’s rules, but he would never jeopardize the smallest scrap of knowledge to be gleaned from a find. Petrie had trained him too well for that.

  Again, he was tortured by doubts. If it was Tut’s tomb, why was the entranceway so narrow? The necropolis seals were a good sign—but then, they didn’t necessarily prove anything. There might be nothing at the end of that passageway but a bundle of bones stripped of jewelry and amulets and reburied in antiquity by pious ancient priests.

  If he had cleared away just a few more inches of rubble, if he had exposed just a little more of the lower part of the door, he would have found Tutankhamun’s royal seal as well. But that did not happen. For security, the workmen shoveled back all the debris onto the steps and then rolled huge flint boulders in front of its entrance. Carter’s reis bedded down for the night in front of the tomb, together with his most trusted men. And then Carter rode home through the moonlit desert.

  The next day, he telegraphed Carnarvon, who was in England, “At last have made wonderful discovery in valley: a magnificent tomb with seals intact; recovered same for your arrival; congratulations.” Then he must sit back and wait—he owed it to his patron to do nothing until he arrived.

  He had overstated the matter in his telegram, as critics point out. But what could be more natural? After so many years of pursuing Tut, of course he was carried away by the possibility of success. In any case, he was not the only one to be carried away. When Carnarvon appeared two weeks later with his young daughter, Lady Evelyn, there was electricity in the air. The province’s governor escorted them from the train with a guard of honor while crowds cheered, though of course, nothing was certain yet.

  The boulders were rolled away, the staircase was cleared, and this time with the entire doorway uncovered, Tut’s seals could be clearly seen. But a new element was added. An examination of the seals on the doorway made it clear that the portion of the door bearing the necropolis seal had been opened twice and resealed twice.

  “Plunderers had entered it, and entered it more than once,” Carter realized. “But that they had not rifled it completely was evident from the fact that it had been resealed.” There was no way of knowing, of course, and the tension built as Carter, with Carnarvon looking over his shoulder, proceeded with the work.

  On November 25, they removed the blocking stones from the doorway and found that the corridor behind it was completely filled in with stone and rubble. Again, there was evidence of plundering: A tunnel had been dug through the filling. Clearing this passageway took up the rest of the day, but by the next morning, they had reached a second, inner door. The moment of truth had arrived.

  “With trembling hands I made a tiny breach in the upper left hand corner,” Carter wrote. “Darkness and blank space, as far as an iron testing rod could reach, showed that whatever lay beyond was empty and not filled like the passage we had just cleared … and then, widening the hole a little, I inserted the candle and peered in. Lord Carnarvon, Lady Evelyn and Callender standing anxiously beside me to hear the verdict.

  “At first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle flame to flicker, but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues and gold—everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment—an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by—I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, ‘Can you see anything?’ it was all I could do to get out the words, ‘Yes, wonderful things.’”

  Carter’s whole life was a preparation for this moment—but nothing could prepare him for what he saw—a sudden burst of fantasy sixteen steps beneath the stark desert cliffs. For the splendor of Tut’s tomb partook more of the realm of the imaginary than the real. He stepped through Alice’s looking-glass into a room filled with casket after casket of fantastic jewelry, gilded couches, and brilliantly beaded clothing, chariots, and fans and boats and vases—the list is staggering.

  But what he saw when he stood there peering through the hole was just a fraction of the find. He recorded that his exhilaration gave way to solemnity when he actually entered the tomb and saw that the antechamber led to three more rooms filled with astonishing works of art and fragile antiquities. He fell silent, realizing that the tomb was more than a wonderful find. It was a responsibility and a burden that by the end would consume the rest of his life.

  In the larger sense, Carter’s story ends here. The excavator passed King Tut on that stairway of sixteen finely chiseled steps. Tut was resurrected after thirty-three centuries. He came alive in scene after scene from the tomb. His features, serene and noble, molded in gold, entered modern consciousness as an icon of the past.

  While Carter, the main quest of his life fulfilled, descended into the tomb as surely as if he were wrapped in linen winding bandages. Of course, there would be lectures, banquets, political struggles, the work of restoration. He would be insulted, enraged—and he would dine with presidents and kings. But for all that, the rest of his life was one long postscript to this moment of revelation that left him speechless with wonder.

  The main hall of the Egyptian Museum.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

  THE REAL CURSE OF TUT’S TOMB WAS THAT CARTER DID NOT die at the moment of discovery.

  After decades of working in solitude and silence, suddenly Carter found himself in the midst of a circus. His old enemy Arthur Weigall, now reporting for the Daily Mail, described the scene: “There were soldiers springing to the salute; officers with clanking swords shouting orders; Cinema operators running up the hillsides, while native boys climbed behind them carrying their apparatus; crowds of European and American visitors in every kind of costume from equestrian to regatta; Egyptian notables looking very hot in western clothes and red tarboushes; tall black eunuchs in frock coats; and dragomans [guides] in bright silken robes….”

  The world’s spotlight was suddenly turned on Carter—and at the worst possible moment. For as the ancient air rushed out of the tomb and the modern air entered, the process of decay and destruction began—and would have to be countered as soon as possible. James Breasted recorded that as he sat deciphering seals in the tomb, “stran
ge rustling murmuring whispering sounds rose and fell and died away…. The outside air had altered the temperature and quality of atmosphere, causing the wood to adjust to new strains. Hence the audible snapping and fracturing [of the antiquities].”

  Huge amounts of preservatives and packing material had to be brought from Cairo—along with a solid steel door. A laboratory needed to be set up in a neighboring tomb, a photographic record made, and a darkroom established in an empty tomb nearby; draftsmen were necessary to work on a careful plan to scale—a team had to be put together, a chemist found, an engineer, a photographer, and so on, before Carter could take the first steps in clearing the tomb. (The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, excavating nearby, stepped in right away with generous offers of help.)

  But if Carter was in the middle of an archaeological crisis, he was also engulfed by a political one. From day one of the tomb’s discovery, nationalists raised the cry: Everything must remain in Egypt! The struggle for independence was at its height now, after World War I, with assassinations, demonstrations, strikes, and the like. British gentlemen could be seen checking their guns as they entered the Gezira Sporting Club—it was unsafe even in Cairo for them to go about unarmed. If the foreign crowds gathered above the tomb oohed and aahed the overnight celebrities being brought up the tomb’s sixteen steps—Anubis, Isis, & Co.—the nationalists claimed the gilded images as their own. These treasures became the symbol of Egypt’s reawakening.

  The nationalists’ demands were echoed by the new director of the Antiquities Service, Pierre Lacau, who also wanted the tomb’s contents to remain in Egypt, though for reasons of his own. He called for an end to the old rule of “partage,” or division. A scattering of Egypt’s treasures on the art markets and in private collections impeded scientific study, he claimed with some justice. But his motives were mixed, with jealousy and ambition playing their part in his intrigues against Carter.