A Most Merry and Illustrated History
of
Howard Carter and The Discovery of the Tomb of
King Tutankhamun
Or is it TutankhAMEN? Possibly TutankhAMON?
TutENKamun, maybe? Or even TOUATANKHAMANOU?
Actually the official academic spelling of
Tut's name is something like twt-'nk-'imn. Since the Egyptians
didn't write out the vowels, you can pronounce it pretty much as you
like. But Tutankhamun is probably pretty close.
We also know how he spelled his name. It was
.
Egyptian names make up phrases or sentences and Tut's name has three
words: 
("tut"
or "image"), 
("ankh"
meaning "life" or "living"), and 
"Amun"
(the Egyptian god "Amun"). There are variant interpretations of what
the name means, the most straightforward being "The Living Image of
Amun". But note that if you read the words in the order, it comes out
"Amun-Tut-Ankh". On the other hand, Rameses, 
,
is written as it's spelled: 
,
the circle with a line = "Ra"; 
the three-legged-whatchamacalit, = "mes"; and finally, 
,
the two bolts of folded cloth = "double s".
To make matters even more confusing, Tut had
another name,
,
or "Neb-Kheperu-Ra" as Egyptologists transcribe it. That's what's
called his praenomen or throne name and with which he was
dubbed when he became king. The trouble here is that this name is
written completely backwards: that is Ra-Kheperu-Neb. The
circle with the line, ,
again is Ra; 
,
the bug with three lines = kheperu; and 
,
the bowl is neb.
The rationale, we are told, is Egyptians put
the names of the gods first even if they were pronounced later. So
you have to put both gods, Ra and Kheper, before the ordinary
word, neb, (a word of various meanings including, "all"). And the word kheperu
had meanings other than a god's name, and if you look at the pictures in the fancy glossy
books about Tut, you'll always see his name written totally backwards. So shouldn't his name be
Kheperu-Neb-Ra?
Well, probably not. There are two variations in CooperToons knowledge - one that appeared in the book Monuments by Jean-Fancois Champollion (who deciphered the hieroglyphics) and the other a hieratic inscription - that is the abbreviated form of hieroglyphics - from Tut's tomb. In both these the neb comes before the kheperu. We also have cases where the pharaoh who was likely Tut's grandfather had a throne name where two of the characters occasionally switch back and forth. So Neb-Kheperu-Ra is probably correct.
But there is certainly no need to explain who
King Tut is. Even the most avid watchers of Spike TV and listeners of
Howard Stern know he was that Egyptian boy-king whose tomb was
discovered with all the goodies still in place. So if you want to learn more, read
on!
Tut was Pharaoh during Ancient Egypt's
Eighteenth Dynasty. This was a line of kings started out by the
Pharaoh Ahmose. Ahmose's main claim to fame was he was the guy who
booted out the Hyksos kings. The Hyksos were a group of foreign
rulers that had been in Egypt for about a hundred years. By kicking
them out, Ahmose naturally became a hero to the later generations of
Egyptians.
The Eighteenth Dynasty was the beginning of the
period in Egyptian history known as the New Kingdom. The New Kingdom
spanned the time beginning sometime between 1600 to 1500 BC and
extended to maybe as late as 1000 BC. Typical dates are quoted like
1540 to 1070. Times are naturally approximate, but most historians
say Tut himself began to rule sometime in the middling 1300's BC, and
he was Pharaoh for about nine years.
Tut is often dismissed as a ruler of minor
importance, but that's not really true. Part of his historical
brushoff is that he came to the throne as a kid (he was about nine),
and a grown-up named Ay probably actually pulled the strings. Ay
became Pharaoh (briefly) after Tut, and he in turn was succeeded by a
general named Horemheb. Horemheb was the last king of the Eighteenth
Dynasty and also had the disputable distinction of once being
portrayed by beefcake actor, Victor Mature.
If you read a book about Tut, you'll find it
doesn't have much to say about him. Instead, they talk mostly about
the two kings before Tut. These were the Pharaoh Amenhotep III
and his son, Amenhotep IV. Part of the problem is simply practical.
You can write all we know about Tut in less than a page, and yet a
learnéd scholar can dash off a 400 page book about the two
Amenhoteps without much trouble. But what made Tut important was he
cleaned up the mess left by Amenhotep IV.
Amenhotep IV, it turns out, was either a
visionary or a nut depending on your point of view. 
What
he did was to decree there was only one true god, a god who was all
pervasive and everywhere. His god created the earth, the heavens, all
life, and all the creatures. If this sounds a bit familiar and
precedent sitting, Amenhotep IV did depart from later more familiar
teachings in a couple of ways. First, only he - the Pharoah - could
really "know" the god. And second, his god had a visual
manisfestation (whatever that means) in the aten.
The word aten is written in Egyptian
as
and originally was just a word for the disk of the sun. But in
Amenhotep IV's theology it became to mean the god himself (or
itself). So when he changed his name to Akhenaten. This is usually
translated as something like "One-Who-Is-Beneficient-To-The-Aten"
whatever the heck that means. An earlier and less cumbersome translation is
"The Spirit of Aten" which seems to have fallen out of favor with Egyptologysts.
But in any case Akhenaten kept with the half-backward renditions of Egyptian
names and spelled it 
.
Akhenaten was unique among Pharaohs in that he
didn't mind if his artists and sculptors showed him as he was - with
a long face, skinny arms, and a big toches. He is without
doubt one of the most interesting rulers in the history of the world
and well worth studying. Naturally, most people have never heard of
him.
Most people, though, do know about his
wife, Nefertiti, 
.
Or at least they've seen pictures of the statue of her with the big
hat that's now in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin. Akhenaten and
Nefertiti appear to have been happily married and affectionate, an
arrangement that produced no sons, but seven daughters. Their third,
Ankhesenpaaton,
, would marry Tut.
Some people have suggested it was really
Akhenaten who first came up with the concept of a single all-powerful
god. This idea has led others to theorize that he was the guy who got
the Hebrews (and therefore ultimately the Christians) hooked on
monotheism. Proponents of this idea point out that "Aten" and the
Hebrew "Adonai" ("Lord") have similar consonants and that there are
striking parallels between Akhenaten's "Hymn to Aten" and the 104th
Psalm.
Certainly, there are some parallels
particularly if you translate them with similar wording. But similar
phrasing doesn't prove influence. Nowadays it seems most
Egyptologists seem skeptical of the idea that Moses was a follower of
Akhenaten. Perhaps the greatest argument against the theory is that
Freud liked it.
The truth is Akhenaten's doctrine had a long
and venerable history. It was, in fact, based in the worship of one
of the oldest gods in Egypt, Ra. Nor was the concept of one supreme
god unique. The biggest shock to anyone old enough to remember the
Egyptian swords and sandals movies with all the gods with the funny
animal heads is that the concept of monotheism was nothing new in
Egyptian theology.
In Egyptian texts (written even before
Akhenaten) you can find statements that maintain there is only one
true god, and there are no others. Now to get around the fact there
were others, the extras were merely pooh-poohed as the Big
Guy's manifestations. Scrolls might talk about different gods, but
they might also say that when this-and-that god appears he's just a
form of that-and-this god. The average Egyptians probably didn't
bother splitting hairs about what it all actually meant. They left
that for the priests - and the Pharaoh.
Akhenaten's real contribution (if you want to
call it that) is that he instituted intolerance as part of his
religion. Before then Egypt had been particularly relaxed regarding
variant beliefs. This was only to be expected in a large united
country where each city had it's own favorite god. No one knows who
the first Pharaoh was (most Egyptologists pick a guy named Narmer),
but whoever it was, when he united Egypt, he let everyone keep
worshiping as they pleased. Then those who believed in the
One-God-Many-Manefestations theology could go on thinking their god
was the Big One.
But Akhenaten would have none of it. Although
early in his reign he permitted worship of the other traditional
gods, at one point he suddenly banned all the old religions. There
was to be none of this your-god-is-my-god business either. You had to
worship his god, Aten.
Why the change no one knows. Possibly his
mother, Tiye, died, and with her went a firm restraining hand. But
whatever the reason Akhenaten came down particularly hard on Amun,
the traditional god of the town of Thebes which was at the site of
modern-day Luxor.
Starting out as a minor local deity, by the
middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Amun had grown to become the most
powerful god in Egypt. The Amun priesthood had become filthy rich and
politically powerful - Egypt's television evangelists, you might say.
But for the moment they couldn't do much. Akhenaten was, after all,
the king, and the king can do what he likes.
The real problem with all this, though, was
that the New Kingdom Pharaohs lived in Thebes. Now getting rid
of Amun in Thebes was kind of like banning Catholicism in Vatican
City. Archeological evidence also indicates the people in Thebes said
to heck with the king and continued to worship as they wanted. So
it's a sure bet that Akhetaten's popularity poll hit an all-time low
for Pharaohs.
Well, if Thebes wouldn't play by his rules,
he'd just take his Aten, and go home. But since he already
was home, he had to build a new one. After being king for
about four years, he pulled up stakes and left Thebes. He built a new
capitol city totally from scratch. He called it "The Horizon of
Aten", Akhetaten, 
(spelled
backwards again), and it was about 200 miles to the north of
Thebes.
Tut was born about midway through Akhenaten's
reign, probably in Akhetaten. But he was not born as Tutankhamun. At
that time and place, if a kid said the word "Amun" he would probably
have gotten his mouth washed out with soap, that is, if the Egyptians
had soap. Certainly, the word "Amun" was not to be used in polite
(sc. Akhenaten's) company. So Tut's full birth name was TutankhATEN,
.
Anyway, Akhenaten ruled about 17 years. Toward
the end he picked a young man named Smenkhara to rule as a
co-Pharaoh. Smenkhara is a shadowy figure in Egyptian history, and
there is some reason to believe he was Tut's brother. At this point
Nefertiti may have died or was keeping a low profile. It has raised
not a few eyebrows that Smenkhara adopted Nefertiti's titles and
official name. That, plus some highly companionable representations
thought to be Akhenaten and Smenkhara have some people thinking they
did not (wink, wink) keep steady with traditional Egyptian family
values. Then Akhenaten either died or was overthrown.
Smenkhara evidently did not rule by himself
more than a couple of years, if at all. Tut then became king.
Probably from the prodding of Ay, he changed his name from
Tutankhaten to Tutankhamun. It was Tut who officially restored
the traditional worship of the old gods. Eventually everyone cleared
out of Akhetaten and moved back to Thebes.
No one knows for sure who Tut's parents were.
Opinion leans a bit toward his dad being Akhenaten, and his mom was
possibly one of Akhenaten's secondary wives, a lady named Kiya. But
even that's iffy. Other's think he was a brother of Akhenaten,
and so his parents were really Amenhotep III and Tiye (a lock of
Queen Tiye's hair was buried with him). The truth is, though, that
Tut may not even have been of the royal family. In that case his
marriage to Ankhesenpaaton was needed to give him a legitimate claim
to the throne.
The original examination of the mummy found Tut
was between 18 and 20 when he died, a finding that remains unchanged
by later studies. He was succeeded as Pharaoh by Ay who almost
certainly had been in charge all along.
Ever since he was dug up, people have been
trying to figure out why Tut died so young. An X-ray of his mummy
taken in 1968 showed what looked like bits of loose or chipped bone
in his skull. That itself meant nothing since embalming was a pretty
vigorous procedure back then. Of course, the original archeologists
had to chop the poor fellow up to get him out of the mummy case. So
you wonder whether anyone can tell what killed him from the
condition of the body. Still the X-ray also showed a somewhat thinner
than average bone at the base of his skull plus a smudge of the film
that could have been a blood clot. This has led some historians to
think Tut could have been murdered by a smack on the noggin.
But a more recent appraisal (2003) of the
X-rays opined that there was no evidence of a blow to the head. The
"thinning" was due to just a normally thin part of the skull plus the
angle of the head during the X-ray. Furthermore it looked like the
suspicious bone chips in Tut's head were from the vertebrae.
The best guess here is the bones got pushed into Tut's cranium when
the archeologists cut off his head to get it out of the golden
funeral mask. As you might expect, Tut does not look so hot
today.
Finally in 2005, to get to the bottom of the
matter, Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities gave the go-ahead to
run a CAT scan on Tut's mummy. His head looked fine (relatively
speaking) with no sign of an injury. But there was an apparent
leg fracture although opinion was divided whether this occurred while
the king was alive. For what it's worth, the opinion of this Merry
History is that it was not (see the last footnote in Part
III).
In any case, Tut was buried in the Valley of
the Kings across the river from Thebes. Ay, to legitimize his being
Pharaoh, may have married Tut's widow (renamed Ankhesenamun,
,
after her father died). Ay ruled a scant four years, probably dying
of old age before being followed by the nineteen year reign of
Horemheb.
Tut's tomb was small for a king, probably
because his early death caught everyone off the hop. Early on tomb
robbers had managed to break in and do some pilfering. Tell-tale
signs - like some rings tied in a headscarf and tossed on the floor -
indicated that some, at least, might have been caught.
But they didn't get away with a whole lot. The
tomb was given a perfunctory tidying up, and the thieves' tunnel
refilled. About a hundred years later the rock and dirt from digging
another tomb was tossed over Tut's, and the location was lost. So
when the era of massive tomb robberies began around the Twenty-First
Dynasty, no one got around to bothering Tut.
As far as Tut was concerned (if indeed he was),
nothing happened for the next three thousand years. Then on November
4, 1922 the British archeologist, Howard Carter, hit the first stone
step leading down to the tomb. Howard was then 48 and had been
everything from an artist to an assistant to Sir Flinders Petrie,
arguably the first modern archeologist. Howard finally rose to become
the Chief Inspector of Antiquities for the Egyptian government. Not
bad for a guy who had hardly gone to school.
But a combination of a fractious personality
and trying to do his job right ended up in Howard getting sacked from
his government post. When some rich fat-cat tourists got rowdy at one
of the Department of Antiquities sites, he told them to beat it. They
complained to Howard's boss, Gaston Maspero, and Gaston told Howard
to apologize. He refused and was replaced as Inspector by his fellow
archeologist Arthur Weigall. Oddly enough, it was Arthur who in 1912
found a tomb that people originally thought was Tut's. Of course,
Arthur had not found Tut's tomb, but more on that later.
From then on Howard kept himself afloat at
least in part by dealing in antiquities. He had enough contacts in
the business so he became quite successful, at times dealing with
major museums on a massive scale. But to get a bit more steady income
he also began engaging in free lance archeology funded by people who
had the money and the inclination to so indulge.
In Howard's case his "patron" (as the guys with
the dough were called) was George Herbert, who was also England's 5th
Lord Carnarvon. Like many English lords, George was loaded, but
unlike other English lords, George did not sit in Parliament,
practice law, or run breweries. His hands were pretty full, though,
keeping up and running his estate and raising his Thoroughbred race
horses, the latter being a business at which the Carnarvon family
excels to this day.
As George got older - and particularly after a
severe automobile accident almost killed him - he found the cold
weather brought on all sorts of aches and pains. So he began spending
the English winters in Egypt. Like many people, rich and poor, young
and old, he became fascinated with the land and it's history.
So George decided to fund archeological digs.
But the Egyptian Department of Antiquities wouldn't let him (or
anyone else) just wander in willy-nilly with a pick and spade and
start to flail about the tombs. They required special permission to
excavate a clearly specified area. Everything had to be drawn up in a
written contract, called a concession, and there also had to be a
real archeologist to supervise the digging. So when George spoke to
Gaston about starting a dig, Gaston recommended Howard. The two men
started digging in 1907.
It's said that opposites attract, and that
seems to have been the case here. George was a quite unpretentious
fellow who genuinely liked people. On his travels he'd just as soon
talk with a railroad porter as an ambassador, if indeed he didn't
prefer the former.
Traveling around was what George liked to do while his wife,
Almina, preferred to stay in England (although she did sometimes visit
Egypt). Although later events showed that their marriage was not quite
in keeping with official British family values, on the surface it was not
too different from other unions of British nobility. ON the other hand,
George did like to travel with his daughter, Lady Evelyn Herbert,
who was pretty and energetic and a real daddy's girl.
Howard, though, was a different matter. People
who worked with him found him to be a chronic complainer who seemed
to get his jollies out of irritating people. He was the type of guy
who when riding a train would literally go up front and harangue the
engineer for giving him such a bumpy ride. He was, in short, a pain
in the rear end. So it's no surprise that at one time or another
Howard ended up alienating just about everyone he
knew.
For now Howard and Lord Carnarvon (as we'll
respectfully call him) had pretty good luck. They found a number of
tombs and artifacts and all in all Lord and Lady Carnarvon (who often
went along on the digs) had a fine time. It could be a bit hazardous,
though. At one spot the excavators were literally chased from the
site by a huge number of cobras and vipers. But they kept
digging.
Of course, excavations were not just funded by
rich English lords, and there was a lot of competition. One of the
more important concessionaires was Theodore Davis, a wealthy American
lawyer.
Theodore had been digging in Egypt since at
least the turn of the century, mostly around Thebes. Theodore also
held the exclusive concession that Howard and Lord Carnarvon wanted.
That was in the Valley of the Kings, and it was there that the most
famous Pharaohs had been buried.
By the time serious digging began in Egypt in
the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, what remained of
the tombs were mostly long dark corridors extending into the ground.
Little remained of their funerary finery. The ceilings of some had
collapsed and massive floods which washed into the valley about every
200 years had filled some tombs almost from top to bottom with
rubble. So the archeologists in the Valley of the Kings, far from
being grave robbers and despoilers of the dead, spent most of their
time simply clearing the now dilapidated tombs of rock and dirt. What
objects they found, although not always insignificant, represented
only a fraction of what the original burials contained.
Nature, though, was not the real culprit for the current state of
affiars. Most of the problems had been caused by the Ancient
Egyptians themselves.
Tomb robbery in Egypt was quite an institution
in itself. Deals struck between the thieves and the guards at the
tombs insured that portable stuff could be carried away easily.
Almost as soon as the king was buried his goods began to get carted
off. At one time or another every tomb had been entered and robbed at
least to some degree.
The robbers were also most discourteous to
their king's mortal clay. They routinely broke the mummies apart to
get at the jewels and gold wrapped up in the bandages, often smashing
through the chest cavities to get at the jeweled scarab that replaced
the Pharaoh's heart. They'd break off the arms and legs and toss them
aside. Then for good measure, they might set the whole body on
fire.
So for a long time, only one Pharaoh's mummy -
Amenhotep II, Akhenaten's great-grandfather - had been found in it's
near empty tomb, completely pilfered of its finery and rather the
worse for wear. No Pharaoh had ever been found in it's tomb
undisturbed and as the priests had left him.
As it is, virtually every mummy of a Pharaoh
you see in books or if you visit the Cairo museum were not, that's
not, found in their tombs. What happened was that around the
Twenty-first Dynasty the priests took an inventory, and saw that the
tombs were plundered beyond repair and the Pharaohs had been chucked
aside like chicken bones after a picnic. So they took some of the
mummies and put them in the tomb of Amenhotep II. But even more
mummies were moved out of the Valley altogether to a tomb in nearby
Deir El-Bahri. There most of the famous Pharaohs were hidden until
they were found in 1881. Amenhotep II's tomb was discovered in
1898.
Actually there was one more (probably)
royal mummy that was found in its tomb - or rather in a tomb where it
was probably reburied. In 1907, Theodore Davis and Arthur
Weigall had found a ransacked tomb, now called KV55. Some of the
funerary equipment was there including part of the guilded wooden
partitions (the shrine) that enclosed the sarcophagus. The shrine
showed Akhenaten leading his mother, Queen Tiye, by the hand. From
that and various inscriptions Theodore assumed the tomb was that of
Akhenaten's mom.
Among other odds and ends there was a badly
mutilated coffin containing a mummy. According to some accounts as
soon as the mummy was exposed to air, it crumbled to dust, leaving
behind the skeleton. The bones were
identified on the spot as being a woman, and so Theodore and Arthur
believed they had also found what had been the mummy, and was now the
bones, of Queen Tiye.
It's worth pausing a moment to review the
various scientific studies on the bones as it illustrates what
sometimes happens in Egyptology. After more than a hundred years,
multiple studies with the latest scientific methods, and exhaustive
and impartial evaluation, we still don't know exactly what went
on.
In 1907, Elliott Smith, a chemist by training
but an expert in the examination of mummies, decided to look at the
bones more thoroughly. Expecting to be studying the bones of a middle
age to elderly woman, he found he was looking at the skeleton of a
young man. From the unusual shape of the skull and the circumstances
he believed they had the bones of Akhenaten himself. Although the
estimated age, 20 to 26, seemed too young, Elliott felt the circumstances
of the excavation - that is, the mutilated coffin - pointed to
Akhenaten.
But in 1931, Dr. Douglas Derry, a professor of
anatomy at Cairo, also found the bones to be a young man. There was
no sign of any abnormalities or disorders, and the age was 23 at
most. This was too young to be Akhenaten. The most likely
candidate, then, was Smenkhara and based on the similarities with
Tut's skull, Dr. Derry guessed the two young men were
brothers.
Over thirty years later, in 1963, an anatomist
at Liverpool University, R. G. Harrison, took a look. His study was
much more detailed and wasn't published until 1966. He also ran
serological tests and concluded that whoever had owned the bones was
the full brother of Tut. The age was 18 - 22. So it still looked like
it was Smenkhara.
But then in 1988, Fawzia Hussein and James E.
Harris (the latter being a well-known specialist in X-raying
Pharaohs) looked again. What they had, they said, was a man of about
35. They felt pretty sure about their findings and presented them at a conference but
have not published them in a journal. But for some this pointed to the bones
once more being Akhenaten.
Is there more? Yep. In 2000,
Joyce Filer examined "Akhenaten's" bones once more. The molars
weren't completely erupted, and some of the bones weren't completely
fused. So the age estimate was back to between 20 and 25, probably at
the low end. So it's Smenkhara again!
Then end? As Big Jake would say, "Not hardly!". In 2010,
DNA analysis was run on a number of mummies including the bones found in KV 55 and a female
mummy found in the Tomb of Amenhotep II. The conclusions were that the two individuals were the
father and mother of King Tut. Furthermore, the authors say - while being mum on the lack of bone fusion
and state of the molar eruption - that there is an arthritic condition in
the male mummy that is unlikely to have occurred in a young man in his twenties. So the mummy
is most likely middle aged and in his forties. So it's Akhenaten, again!
Well what can you say? There seems to be only
one possible explanation.
Yes. We've finally found Judge
Crater.
Well, back to the story. Theodore continued
digging and over the years had pretty good luck. But by 1915, he had
decided the Valley of the Kings has been completely dug up and
relinquished his concession. This was what Lord Carnarvon and Howard
had been waiting for. They snapped it up.
But why in the world would Lord Carnarvon and
Howard want to dig in an exhausted and empty valley? Well, for one
thing, they didn't believe the Valley of the Kings had been
exhausted. They were, in fact, certain that one particular tomb was
still there, and that was the tomb of Tutankhamun.
Howard's reasoning was both simple and, as it
turns out, correct. Although Theodore and Arthur had reported they
had found Tut's tomb in 1912, Howard knew they had not. Herbert
Winlock, then curator of the Egyptian Department at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York, had figured that out for him.
Herbert Eustis Winlock was a true rare bird -
an aggressive savant in his field, an intellectual ball of fire, and
a nice guy. He was also quite a character. A graduate of Harvard,
Herbert had worked at the Metropolitan Museum in New York from the
age of twenty-two and eventually would rise to become the museum's
director. He loved hands-on excavation, and from time to time he
would drop by to visit Theodore and other archeologists who were
excavating near where the Met was digging.
Now Herbert saw some clay jars sitting around
from what Theodore thought was Tut's tomb. Inside there was some
rather indefinable junk and Herbert asked what they were. Theodore
just shrugged his shoulders. Herbert then asked if the Met could have
them for "study", and Theodore said, sure, take them.
Herbert didn't look at the jars for quite a
while, but when he did he recognized he had the remains of the
funerary banquet of Tutankhamun. He even figured out how many people
were there (eight) and what they ate (ducks, geese, and mutton). When
everyone was done, they had cleaned up with whiskbrooms and buried
the stuff. So what Theodore had found was not Tut's tomb, but the
"funeral cache". At one point Herbert told Carter about
it.
So now Howard knew that Tut's funeral banquet
had taken place in the Valley of the Kings. And that meant Tut
himself had been buried in the Valley and probably not far
from the cache. More to the point, of all the Pharaohs virtually no
artifacts with Tut's name had ever shown up on the antiquities
market. That meant they were still in the ground. Ergo, Tut's tomb
had never been found.
For seven years, Howard and Lord Carnarvon kept
digging. But still they found nothing. By 1922, Carnarvon himself had
just about given up. For all the money and time spent, he and Howard
had nothing to show for their work but a few odds and ends and holes
in the sand. Howard asked for one more year, even if he had to pay
for it himself. By now Howard and Lord Carnarvon were good friends,
and Carnarvon agreed to fund one more season. Howard returned to
Egypt.
Talk about funny coincidence department. Howard
started digging on November 1, 1922, and within three days he struck
the first step leading down into the ground. When the workmen dug out
the passageway, he found they had stumbled on what was then (and
remains) the only intact tomb of a Pharaoh. However, for technical
reasons (discussed below), Howard tried to make a case that it was
not intact, but been robbed in antiquity. That was true, it
had, but that had nothing to do with whether it was
intact.
Tut's tomb consisted of four small rooms
literally packed with thousands of objects that could completely fall
apart at the touch of a Twentieth Century hand. Howard might have
been a grump, but he was a highly responsible archeologist. In fact,
he was probably the best there was, and he knew he couldn't handle
Tut's tomb all alone.
Fortunately, Howard did have some
friends besides Lord Carnarvon, and he called on them for help. That
included Herbert who was with the Met's team excavating
nearby. You have to say that Herbert
had what probably was the best job in the world. He was the curator
of the Met's Egyptian Department at the time when the Egyptian
government gave any excavators a 50/50 split of whatever they found.
While the Greek and Roman excavator's labored years for a few chunks
of statues with broken noses and relied more often on unscrupulous
dealers to fill the shelves of the museums, Egyptologists could be
more than content on literally what picked up from the
ground.
But now the one-for-you-and-one-for-me
archeology was under attack. Part of the problem was that Gaston, the
old easy going Director of Antiquities, had died six years earlier.
His replacement was Pierre Lacau, a French scholar who thought that
the Egyptians - or at least the Egyptian Department of Antiquities -
should get a bigger cut of the pie.
But for the moment the old agreements stood.
There was, though, a catch - a big catch - you might even say
a humongous catch. If an archeologist found an "intact" tomb,
then the agreement of equal divisions of the artifacts was null and
void. Then the Egyptian Department of Antiquities could claim
everything.
The reasoning was simple (and correct). The
collective value - historical and monetary - of objects from an
intact tomb would be so far above that of the individual objects that
such a find should not be split up. They should remain together and
belonged, not in a rich man's front parlor, but - to quote Indiana
Jones - in a museum. In principle no one disagreed with this
idealistic arrangement, partly at least because no one thought they
would ever find an intact tomb.
However, they had. In 1905, once again Theodore
Davis and his then-archeologist, James Quibell, discovered still
another tomb in the Valley of the Kings. This was of a nobleman,
Yuya, and his wife, Thuya. They also happened to be parents of Tiye,
mother of Akhenaten. So if Tut was Akhenaten's son, then Yuya was
Tut's great-granddaddy.
But although the tomb of Yuya and Thuya had
been robbed of a good chunk of its jewels and gold, the mummies were
still there, remarkably well-preserved and resting comfortably in
their cases, along with over 200 artifacts that were originally
buried with them. By any stretch of the imagination the tomb was
"intact" and Theodore immediately realized that by his contract, he
had no claim to the objects. But Gaston, always wanting to encourage
foreign investment in Egyptian archeology, offered him a share of the
goodies. Amazingly, Theodore declined the offer, saying the objects
should remain together in the Cairo museum.
The finding of the tomb of Yuya and Thuya
solidified more than ever that "intact" did not mean an
entirely unviolated tomb. When drawing up a concession, it
wasn't unheard of for the Department of Antiquities to cite Yuya and
Thuya when asking the archeologists to sign on the dotted line. In
fact, one of those who signed such a document was none other than
Howard Carter.
Howard could not have forgotten this when he
along with Lord Carnarvon, Lady Evelyn, and his collaborator, A. R.
"Pecky" Callendar, peeked into the tomb and saw what he called
"wonderful things". In his own account, Howard said, they made a
little hole, looked in, covered it up, and went home. But some
authors think that, possibly with the petite Lady Evelyn slipping in
first, they all spent the whole night looking through the tomb, even
punching another hole in the sealed doorway of the burial chamber.
True, if Howard had entered the tomb first without a member of the
Antiquities Department present, he was breaking the rules and could
have had his concession revoked. At the same time, could
anyone have resisted the temptation to go in and look around
once they saw the "wonderful things"?
The rooms were packed with major artifacts -
statues, cabinets, vases. Even five - count 'em - five chariots had
been dismantled and lay up against one of the walls. Any one of the
objects would have been considered enough to repay the effort (and
money) of a whole year's dig. It was quite literally the greatest
archeological find the world has seen then or since.
This was way too much for Howard to
handle by himself, so he cabled Herbert Winlock's boss and director
of the Met, Albert M. Lythgoe. At first he simply asked for the loan
of Harry Burton, who was the field photographer for the Met. Albert
replied he was only too happy to assist in any way (the news of Tut's
tomb had already galvanized the world), and Herbert and others on the
Met's crew began to help Howard out.
Problems started right away. First, to simplify
dealing with the press (and to get a nice bit of cash), Lord
Carnarvon signed an exclusive deal with the London Times. What
had happened was the Geoffrey Dawson, the editor of the Times,
just showed up uninvited at Highclere to make the deal. Carnarvon was
irritated - you never call on an English lord without
appointment - particularly since he was just going to have dinner
with his friend, the British Egyptologist, Alan Gardiner. Carnarvon
pointedly kept Geoffrey waiting an hour and then listened to the
proposal. Carnarvon said he'd have to talk with
Howard.
As he sat down to dinner with Alan, Carnarvon
asked his friend what he thought about a deal with the Times.
There was admittedly some logic to it. It would simplify dealing with
the press and give them a prestigious forum for announcing their
finds. Ah, yes, there was also the money. In any case, Alan thought
it was a fine idea. It wasn't, but they didn't find that out until
later.
But not much later. Soon all the other
newspapers were screaming and foaming how Carter and Carnarvon were
profiteering. Who did they think they were? What right did they have
to strike a deal like that? Did think they owned the tomb? Well, they
didn't own the tomb, but they did own the concession. And the terms
of the concession gave them the freedom to handle the press as they
saw fit. They certainly had the right, although that doesn't mean it
was smart.
But it was the Egyptian papers that
really began to gripe. After all, it was their country,
for crying out loud, and their Pharaoh. So they had to wait
for the lousy English paper to come out before they knew what was
going on? All Howard had wanted to do was dig in Egypt and make it
pay, but he suddenly found himself having to face Britain's legacy
from World War I. After all, John Bull had been preaching that the
war to end all wars had been fought that small nations might be free.
Naturally the Arabs thought that meant them as much as anyone
else.
Before 1918, the Ottoman Empire, based in
Turkey, owned the Middle East. It was not the most benign government
- in fact, it could be downright nasty. In particular, Arab states -
which were culturally and linguistically distinct from Turkey - had
seen their citizens shot, hanged, beheaded, and dealt in other
distressing manners. So when the war came they naturally aligned
themselves with Britain. The British, including their liaison to the
Arabs, T. E. Lawrence, let the Arabs think that if they helped
Britain win the war, Britain would live up to its rhetoric and grant
them independence.
But even before Germany (and so the Ottomans)
lost, two gentlemen named Sykes and Picot - one from England, the
other from France - met and decided how to best carve up the Middle
East leaving England and France in charge. Arabia, because of it's
religious importance, had to be given to the Arabs, but France got
Lebanon and Syria, and England controlled Palestine and
Egypt.
In general, Britain's idea was to gradually
ease it's colonies into self-government. This did not mean total
independence, but just enough autonomy so the British could be in
charge, take it easy, and hopefully make a profit out of what in a
few years would be courteously called the British Commonwealth. That
was the idea, anyway.
But Britain had problems with Egypt. They were
just too damn independent. So when the Egyptians elected a prime
minister Britain didn't like, they booted him out of the country.
Well, after a few sundry riots and general mayhem, Britian decided
Egypt could be free. So in early 1922, the year Tut's tomb was found,
Egypt became - officially - an independent country.
But for an independent country, though, there
were a lot of foreigners running things. As always, the French
largely controlled the Antiquities Department. The British still ran
the army (officially protecting the Suez canal and training the
Egyptians) with Sir Oliver Lee Stack, the Governor General of the
Sudan, in charge. Even Americans were there as some Egyptian courts
had American judges. This naturally helped French, British, and
American interests. But then (as now) it was kind of hard for the
Americans, French, and British to grasp the concept that native
inhabitants of a country really do prefer to completely govern
themselves rather than have superpowers stand over their shoulders.
That included the Egyptians and if that wasn't enough to beat the
band, there were some Egyptians that even wanted the British, French,
and Americans completely and totally OUT!
One of the people who saw a serious situation
arising was none other than Arthur Weigall, Howard's old replacement
as Inspector of Antiquities. Since then Arthur had branched into
other lines of work (including show business) and had been hired as a
special correspondent to the Daily Mail. Now like other
reporters he didn't have much to do but sit around and read the
Times. But from where he sat he could hear what the Egyptian
reporters were saying and was afraid Tut's tomb would be used as a
rallying cry by Egyptian nationalists to boot all the foreign powers
out. Never a vindictive man, Arthur went to talk to
Howard.
Arthur managed to buttonhole Howard one day
near the tomb, but Howard wouldn't listen. Finally Arthur wrote
Howard a letter and said that the situation was extremely dangerous
and that it was necessary that Howard to 1) state clearly that he
would not profit from the Times agreement, 2) set aside one
day to let all the press into the tomb, and 3) give the
Egyptian papers all information the same day he gave it to the
London Times. Arthur said he sympathized that Howard was
trying to do his work and was also bombarded by the press,
politicians, and other visitors demanding to be shown the tomb. But
Howard and Lord Carnarvon had to bend a little or there would be real
trouble. Howard did bend a little, but not much, and not enough to
satisfy anyone.
In the meantime, Howard kept getting the
artifacts out of the tomb. With the help of the Met's Egyptian
department and other specialists, things actually moved quite fast.
By February of 1923 the first room of the tomb had been cleared, and
most of the stuff packed up and shipped to Cairo.
Now the big part of the show began. Howard was
going to open the burial chamber. On February 16, 1923 with great
pomp and fanfare and with invited dignitaries present, the door was
carefully chipped down, including the freshly plastered hole which
Howard had made to cover up his earlier surreptitious entry. Inside -
as Howard knew - was the burial shrine, essentially three successive
guilded wood boxes which enclosed the sandstone sarcophagus. Inside
the sarcophagus were three mummy coffins, each nested inside
the other. The two outer coffins were highly decorated wood. The
third was solid gold.
But they couldn't just lift the coffins out.
Not only were they so tightly nested that you couldn't even stick a
finger between the spaces, the third (innermost) had been drenched in
resins as part of the funerary rituals. It was stuck tight into the
second. So at the opening, no one was able to see Tut. Ultimately the
archeologists had to raise the two coffins up by pins secured between
them and then use blow torches to apply heat (with zinc plates
strategically placed to protect the coffins). Finally the resins
began to soften, and the second coffin slid free.
But by that time Lord Carnarvon was no longer
around. He had died on April 5, 1923. The usual story is he nicked a
mosquito bite while shaving. The cut had gotten infected, and it
developed into pneumonia. In the pre-antibiotic days and for a man
Carnarvon's age, that was was often fatal. Despite some alternative
explanations (like contracting a fungal or bacterial infection from
the tomb), this is the most popular diagnosis.
That is, the mosquito bite is the most popular
diagnosis if you forget about the Curse. The Curse of Tutankhamun is
the most famous ancient curse in history and is complete baloney.
There's no curse inscribed on the doorway or anywhere else in the
tomb. It appears to have been something that came out of the
newspapers who didn't have much else to write about. In any case,
maledictions of any kind never hurt anyone unless the cursee
is standing close to the cursor who also happens to have a
particularly bad case of halitosis.
What's funny is you find few people who admit
they believe in the Curse, but like a bad penny it just won't go
away. Henry, Lord Carnarvon's son didn't help much in the 1970's when
he said neither believed in the Curse nor disbelieved in it, but no
amount of money could persuade him to enter the tomb. Even people who
know it's garbage worry about it. T. G. H James, at one time
the Egyptian curator at the British Museum, told how when the Tut
exhibit came to the museum in 1972 the foreman of the crew involved
in setting up the exhibit dropped dead. Not in the gallery, but
somewhere else. No one believed this was due to anything but natural
causes, but still the museum officials were so worried the death
would be played up as the "Curse of Tutankhamun", they swore the crew
to secrecy. Amazingly everyone kept their mouths shut about it for
over 20 years.
The concession passed on to Lord Carnarvon's
wife, Almina. But at about the same time, a change in the Egyptian
government occurred. The pro-British government was voted out of
office to be replaced with a nationalist administration that wanted
the British out of the country. The new minister of Public Works -
officially Pierre Lacau's boss - was Morcos Bey Hanna who at one time
had been imprisoned by the British for his revolutionary activities.
He saw Tut's tomb as a rallying cry against the foreign usurpers. He
summoned Howard to his office for a discussion.
When he got there Howard was hoping the 50/50
division rule would hold, although by well accepted rules and
precedence it clearly did not. But he certainly saw things were going to get rough when James Tottenham, Pierre Lacau's assistant, called him into his office and said before he met the minister they had to discuss what they meant by an
"intact" tomb. James handed Howard a slip of paper that stated
"intact" didn't mean it hadn't been robbed. A tomb like that of Yuya
and Thuya would qualify. It was in fact the same piece of paper that
Howard had signed a number of years before. So Howard realized he was
on shaky ground expecting any objects, either for himself, for Lady
Carnarvon, or for his buddies at the Met. But that didn't mean he
wouldn't try.
One thing that really stung the Egyptians was
that Howard was taking the high road, saying he had to be left alone
to do his work, but he was also giving nearly daily tours of the tomb
to his friends. Howard's friends usually excluded most of the
Egyptian government officials and they felt they were being snubbed.
Howard said his friends were scientists and the others weren't. The
implication was he couldn't be bothered in buttering up the
politicians who, the reasoning went, could not appreciate the
tomb.
At one point another group of archeologists
(ergo, Howard's friends) were coming by, and they had their wives
with them. Naturally, the ladies wanted to see the tomb. Sure, said
Howard, no problem. But Minister Hanna
saw the inconsistency and denied passes for the women, which as head
of the Office of Public Works he had the right to do. No scientists,
no tour. Howard felt this was an insult to his friends and their
wives and also a deliberate smack in the face to him. So in what he
thought was a coup of one-upmanship, he packed everything up, closed
down the tomb, and stopped excavations. Well, he sure showed
them!
Then Howard woke up one morning and found his
concession had been revoked. He had, the government said, abandoned
the project and endangered the artifacts. They sent their own guards
to the tomb, dismissed Howard's, and changed the
locks.
Howard, though, felt the takeover was
instituted on insufficient grounds. The artifacts were not in danger,
and he held the concession which allowed him to dig when he wanted.
So he initiated legal proceedings. The court with the jurisdiction
over the case was headed by Pierre Crabites, who despite his
Continental name, was an American. Toward the end of the hearing
Howard's lawyer, F. M. Maxwell, had pretty much won the case. But at
the last moment the learnéd Mr. Maxwell stood up and
criticized the government for swooping down on the tomb like a bunch
of bandits.
Well, the manure hit the slowly turning ceiling
fan. It turns out that in Arabic culture "bandit" or "thief" is one
of the worst insults you can toss at anyone. The judge tried to get
Howard's lawyer to soften his language, but not understanding the
significance of the insult, the learned attorney simply repeated
it.
Morcos Bey Hanna said he would no longer deal
with Carter even if the court ordered them to do so. The government
would continue the excavations on their own. Unfortunately (or
fortunately depending on your point of view), the government couldn't
find anyone to take Howard's place. The Met was offered the job and
turned it down flat. The Egyptian members of the Antiquities Service
said the task was too much for them to handle. As the weeks and month
dragged on and the tomb sat idle, public opinion began to shift. Even
Egyptian journalists wondered if Howard wasn't the best, maybe the
only, archeologist qualified to do the job. 
At that point, the venerable James Henry
Breasted stepped in. He was America's #1 Egyptologist and went to see
Morcos Bey Hanna who was still fuming about being called a bandit.
Breasted, who had a gracious and gentle way of dealing with people, came out with a half-promise that Minister Hanna would consider giving Howard a new concession - but it would
be with new terms and not be a renewal of the old one. But things
kept dragging on, Howard refused to bend, and the tomb remained
closed down.
By March 1924, Howard Carter was lecturing in
America, and, possibly due to the strain of the events, was
exhibiting the worst side of his personality. He would gripe at
everyone, waiters, porters, hotel clerks, and even little flower
girls. From the account of Howard's manager, when he wasn't
lecturing, Howard spent his free time making a complete ass out of
himself.
What probably made Howard even more irascible
than usual is he had no idea if he'd ever be able to finish the
excavation. The Egyptian government was allocating nearly $20,000 - a
huge sum in that day - for completing the dig by themselves. Making
up for lost time (and to rub Howard's face in the dirt), they opened
the tomb for visitors and allowed hundreds of people a day to troop
through despite the fact that simply the moisture from the visitors' breath could cause major deterioration of the objects.
Shortly thereafter, Herbert got a copy of the
proposed new concession for Howard. The Department of Antiquities
said Howard could come back and work on the tomb. But he had to
relinquish all rights to the objects and (although it was put in
diplomatic language) to quit being such a pain in the rear end.
Herbert figured that now since they had hit rock bottom, things could
only improve. Boy, was he wrong.
On March 29, Pierre Lacau and a group of his
assistants - European and Egyptian - were making an inventory and
inspection of the tomb. All was done very correctly with all objects
dutifully noted. They checked into the boxes in what was called Tomb
Number 4 which was being used for restoration and storage of the
objects. They noted how Howard cataloged the objects with a unique
triple reference: in the master index, on the box, and on the object
itself. The inspection team - including the Egyptians - were clearly
impressed by his work.
Then just before quitting they looked in the
back of the tomb and saw a stack of boxes. Most were empty Fortnum
Mason champagne crates. But one of the boxes was closed and labeled
as "Red Wine". Pierre told the men to open it up.
Inside and wrapped in surgical gauze was a
wooden statue the head of Tutankhamun at about the age he became king
or younger. He was shown as the Egyptian God-King rising from the
lotus flower. The statue was carved in the unique "Amarna" style of
art that Akhenaten had developed with the back of the head being
exaggeratedly long. Artistically and historically it was one of the
major finds of the tomb.
So what was it doing in a box marked "Red
Wine", unlabeled and uncataloged? The Egyptian members of the
expedition jumped to an immediate (and we have to admit probably
correct) conclusion. Howard had ripped it off, and it was probably
intended for his mantelpiece.
Amazingly, Pierre defended Howard. There had to
be some mistake, he said. He would check with Howard and get the
low-down. But the Egyptian inspectors insisted that the statue
immediately be sent to Cairo and that the Prime Minister of Egypt -
that's the Prime Minister - be informed.
The next day Herbert Winlock (who was back in
Egypt) got a visit from Rex Englebach, who was one of Pierre's
assistants (Pierre had a lot of assistants). He told Herbert what
happened and asked him to contact Howard for an explanation. Without
doing so overtly, Rex indicated some possible excuses Howard could
use: 1) he bought it on the antiquities market and stored it in the
tomb temporarily, 2) a workman made a mistake and put it there by
accident and 3) Carter found it in the corridor but forgot to record
it. The only problem with the last theory, Rex said, was that Howard
showed him what he had found in the corridor, and the statue wasn't
there.
Actually Herbert knew everything already. The
foreman of Howard's digging crew (and who was loyal to Howard) had
been allowed to go on the inspection. After the wooden head had been
discovered, he had come to Herbert in a panic and told him the whole
story. Now Herbert sent a coded telegram to Howard, still in America,
and asked what he should say.
Howard wrote back saying the statue had indeed
come from the entrance passageway. At that time he didn't know the
extent of the tomb (probably not correct) and was only labeling
objects as groups. The statue was in very perishable condition and
had taken a lot of restoration to replace the flaked plaster and
wood. He had then put it in Tomb #4 for safekeeping. Amazingly Pierre
and the Antiquities Department accepted the explanation, partly no
doubt, because of it's unique character the statue would go to the
Cairo Museum.
The story of the statue in the champagne box
wasn't generally known until 1978 when the outgoing director of the
Met, Thomas Hoving, told about it in his book "Tutankhamun: The
Untold Story". From what he wrote, Tom clearly suspected Howard was
going to rip the statue off. Some later writers have doubts about
this, but it's really hard to come to any other conclusion. Howard's
first volume of "The Tomb of Tutankhamun" had already been published,
and there was no mention of the statue. Au contraire (as
Pierre might say), the catalog of the stuff found in the entrance
passage shows no hint such a find. As far as the records of the
excavation go, even pieces of the statue didn't exist until Pierre
and the excavation team found it in the wine box.
But for now, Howard took Herbert's cable (which
had been clearly marked "To be kept confidential") and his own reply,
and no doubt humming merrily, he added it as an appendix to a short
pamphlet he was writing. It was a case (some might say a diatribe)
against the Egyptian Government and the Antiquities Department. He
felt that if the right people read the pamphlet, then the Egyptian
government would be on the receiving end of such an outcry of
indignation that they would fold up. Then hats in hands, they would
crawl to Howard, let him back in the Tomb, and beg him and Lady
Carnarvon to pick their share of the contents. He mailed out his
copies.
Howard definitely needed a reality check, and
he was about to get one. By the time Herbert got his copy, he had
returned from Egypt. In fact, he was in his office waiting for Howard
to drop by. When Herbert saw his telegrams had been included, he
almost blew a vein. Although strictly speaking there was nothing in
the note that showed Herbert acted illegally, the tone of the
communications was more of what story to come up with rather than to
get to the complete and impartial facts. Herbert saw this, although
Howard evidently didn't.
Howard showed up at the Met expecting a nice
chat with the most amiable of museum curators. Instead he got his
tail chewed out. Herbert said he was now unwilling to have anything
more to do with Howard, Tut, or anything else Howard might come up
with. Howard's attempts to explain his actions came to naught, and
soon he found himself booted out of Herbert's office.
Finally Howard realized he had made a shambles
of things. He sat down in his hotel room and wrote a letter to Pierre
saying he relinquished any personal claim to objects from the tomb.
Then after finishing his lecture tour, he returned to Egypt. Still,
this was too little too late, and it still wasn't clear if Howard
would ever get back to the Tomb of Tutankhamun.
Then on November 18, 1924, Sir Oliver Stack,
the British commander, was assassinated on the streets of Cairo by
nationalist terrorists. The British immediately took over the country
and the native Egyptian government was kicked out. It was replaced
with one more favorable to the British. In particular, the new Prime
Minister, Ahmed Ziwar, was an old friend of Howard Carter's. So in
1925 and after a personal meeting with Ahmed, Howard began
excavations anew. By 1928, the tomb had been cleared of the objects
although it took another four years for everything to be restored and
cataloged.
But ultimately nothing had changed. By 1930 a
new Nationalist government was back in place and almost the first
thing on their legislative agenda was to pass a law mandating
every object from Tut's tomb would stay in Egypt. That's still
where they are, except for a handful of items that some think Howard
may have slipped into his pocket and have ended up in various
American and British museums. As a coda, though, the Egyptian
government did reimburse Lady Carnarvon the expenses of the
dig.
As far as the participants in Tut's drama go,
if there was a curse, then it was, as T. G. H. James said, a curse
that was singularly slow acting. True, Arthur Weigall died relatively
young, at age 53, but it was more than a decade after the discovery.
He never entered the tomb in any capacity except as a journalist or
tourist. Howard Carter himself died in 1939, aged 64 - not
particularly young at that time - and not of any curse but of
Hodgkin's disease. Herbert Winlock lived until 1950, aged 65, again
for the time not an early death.
James Breasted survived until 1935 at the age
of 70. Alan Gardiner, his younger colleague who also deciphered some
of Tut's inscriptions, was 84 when he died in 1963, the same year as
Howard's sometime nemesis, Pierre Lacau, who was 89.
The Carnarvons, except for George, have been
exceptionally resistant to Egyptian curses. Lady Carnarvon, who took
over the concession after her husband, lived until in 1969, and at
over 90, was hardly the victim of a 3000 year old malediction. Her
daughter, Lady Evelyn and possibly the first person to have set foot
in the tomb, was close to 79 when she died in 1980. Her brother,
Henry, the 6th Lord Carnarvon died in 1987, just shy of his 88th
birthday.
Highclere Castle is still there, currently
owned and managed by the 8th Lord and Lady. You can make arrangements
to get a tour, and you can even rent it for conferences and
weddings.
And Tut? He's still in his tomb in the Valley
of the Kings and not in the best of shape. Everytime they do a study
on him, something ends up missing. Shoot, they even ended up loosing
that appendage that all men hold most dear. The poor fellow's been
talked about, written about, lectured on, dug up, chopped-up,
X-rayed, and CAT-scanned. And we still don't even know how he died or
who his parents were!
He probably thinks enough is
enough.
For more details, comments, expostulations, and
the occasional diatribe, click on the references.
It's hard to believe, but the great
information on Tut is still to be found in books and
articles.
"The
Tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen" Howard Carter, and A. C. Mace. Cassell, (1923
- 1933) 3 Volumes.
"The
Complete Tutankhamun", Nicholas Reeves, Thames and Hudson
(1995).
"Tutankhamun:
The Untold Story", Thomas Hoving, Simon and Schuster,
(1978).
"Howard
Carter: The Path to Tutankhamun, T. G. H. James, Tauris Parke
(2001).
"Tutankhamen:
Life and Death of a Pharaoh", Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt,
Graphis Society, (1963).
"The
Complete Valley of the Kings: Tombs and Treasures of Egypt's Greatest
Pharaohs", Nicholas Reeves and Richard Wilkinson, Thames and Hudson
(1996).
"Pioneer
to the Past: The Story of James Henry Breasted, Charles Breasted,
Charles Scribner's Sons (1943)."
"Akhenaten:
Egypt's False Prophet, Nicholas Reeves, Thames and Hudson
(2001).
"Akhenaten,
Pharaoh of Egypt, A New Study", Cyril Aldred, McGraw-Hill
(1968).
"Ikhnaton:
Legend and History", Frederick J. Giles, Fairleigh Dickinson
University Press, (1972).
"History
and Chronology of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt: Seven Studies",
Donald B. Redford. University of Toronto Press,
1967.
"The
Human Remains From the Tomb of Tutankhamun", F. Filce Leek,
Tutankhamun Tomb Series, Volume V, Griffith Institute (Oxford),
1972.
"The
Amarna Letters", William Moran, Johns Hopkins University Press,
(2001).
"The
Murder of Tutankhamen: A True Story", Bob Brier, G. P. Putnam's Sons,
1998 (New York).
"The
Skull and Cervical Spine Radiographs of Tutankhamen: A Critical
Appraisal ", Richard S. Boyera, Ernst A. Rodina, Todd C. Greya, and
R. C. Connolly, American Journal of Neuroradiology Volume 24, pp.
1142-1147, June-July 2003.
"At
the Tomb of Tutankhamen", Maynard Williams, National Geographic
Magazine, May, 1923.
"The
Last Survivor," John Lawton, Aramaco World, pp 10-21
November/December 1981.
"Temples,
Tombs and Hieroglyphs: The Story of Egyptology", Barbara Mertz, Dodd,
Mead, New York, (1978).
"Ancient
Records of Egypt", James Henry Breasted. Russell and Russell, New
York (1962).
"Moses
And Monotheism" Sigmund Freud. The Hogarth Press, London, 1939, plus
many other editions.
For the serious student a number of books about
the Egyptian language are available (this list is a single link so
you can click anywhere).
"How
to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs: A Step-by-Step Guide to Teach
Yourself", Mark Collier and Bill Manly, University of California
Press, Revised Edition, 2003.
"Middle
Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of
Hieroglyphs", James P. Allen Cambridge University Press, 2000.
"Egyptian
Grammar: Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs", Sir Alan
Gardiner, Oxford University Press, 3rd Edition, (1957).
"Egyptian
Language: Easy Lessons in Egyptian Hieroglyphics", E. A. Wallis
Budge, Dover and other publishers.
"Egyptian
Hieroglyphic Grammar" Samuel Mercer, Ares Publishers,
1980.
"The
Vocalization of the Ancient Egyptian Syllabic Orthography", Willliam
F. Albright, American Oriental Society (1934).
"How
Djadja-Em-Ankh Saved the Day : A Tale From Ancient Egypt", by Lisa
Manniche, Eveleigh Books (1977).
"The Rhind
Mathematical Papyrus: Free Translation Commentary and Selected
Photographs," Arnold Buffum Chace , National Council of Teachers
of Mathematics, (1979).
"Hieratic
Inscriptions From The Tomb of Tut'ankhamun", Jaroslav Cerny, Oxford,
Griffith Institute (1965).
On line resources are de rigeur
these days. They are also seductive, easy to use, and at times not
all that accurate. However, these seem to be among the more reliable.
For comments on the sites, click
here.
"Tutankhamun: Anatomy of an Excavation",
http://www.ashmolean.org/gri/4tut.html
"False Images of Tutankhamun", Ahmed Osman,
http://ahmedosman.com/tut_images.html
"TourEgypt.Net" http://www.touregypt.net/
"The Pronunciation of Ancient Egyptian",
http://www.friesian.com/egypt.htm
"Basic Lessons in Hieratic",
http://home.prcn.org/sfryer/Hieratic/index.html
Egyptology Online, http://www.egyptologyonline.com
"Who was buried in KV55?" Tony High,
EgyptOnline http://www.egyptologyonline.com/kv55_the_discovery.htm
"Tutankhamun's CS Scan", http://www.egyptologyonline.com/ct_scan_report.htm
"King
Tut's Final Secrets", National Geographic Society, 2005, 95
minutes.
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