Tutankhamen Read Free

while Carnarvon is relegated to the role of genial and generous backer with a passing infatuation for ancient Egypt. 2 Their contemporaries, however, understood that the tomb belonged fairly and squarely to Carnarvon. The initial report of the discovery, published in The Times on 30 November 1922, makes this very clear. Headlined ‘Great find at Thebes. Lord Carnarvon’s long quest’, it tells how ‘for nearly sixteen years Lord Carnarvon, with the assistance of Mr Howard Carter, has been carrying out excavations on the west bank of the Nile at Luxor’. The next day’s Times carried a ‘tribute to Lord Carnarvon’, written by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum, which started ‘The news of the very important Egyptian discovery which has been made by Lord Carnarvon and his trusty helper, Mr
Howard Carter, is one which will send a thrill of pleasure throughout the whole of the archaeological world.’ This is Tutankhamen’s story, and not Carter’s. Yet Carter’s personality and behaviour so influence our understanding of the discovery and emptying of the tomb that it is impossible to consider one without the other. Anyone interested in reading more about Carter’s life should start with James’s thought-provoking biography Howard Carter: The Path to Tutankhamen (1992). Unfortunately, there is no equivalent biography of Lord Carnarvon and, as much of the family archive was destroyed during the Second World War, there may never be one.
    For Carter, the discovery of a warehouse-like set of chambers crammed with fragile artefacts proved both a blessing and a curse, as it forced him to assume a diplomatic role for which he was supremely ill-suited. Tutankhamen brought Carter a great deal of fame and some fortune, but little of the academic recognition that he might reasonably have expected. Effectively, his great find brought his career as an excavator to an end. He was to devote the rest of his life to Tutankhamen’s grave goods, dying before the academic publication of his work was anywhere near complete. This means that much of our information about the excavation of the tomb comes from popular sources: private writings, Carter’s own books, and contemporary newspapers, The Times in particular, which carried regular reports of events in the Valley. I have used these writings to convey a flavour of the wonder and excitement with which the excavators, and the general public, welcomed Tutankhamen to the modern world.
    Many Egyptologists would argue that the true curse of Tutankhamen is the fixation that the general public, thoroughly egged on by the media, has developed with the king at the expense of the rest of Egypt’s long history. Our overwhelming interest in Tutankhamen has effectively distorted our perception of the past so that, almost a century after his rediscovery, and more than 3,000 years after his death, ‘Tut’ – we are so familiar with him that we even accord him a
friendly nickname – remains the ultimate ancient-world celebrity. Only Nefertiti and Cleopatra VII can approach his superstar status. Ramesses II ‘The Great’ lags some way behind, while Senwosret III and Pseusennes II and many others – magnificent, heroic god-kings once widely celebrated for their mighty deeds – are remembered only by those who have made a special study of Egyptian history. As the newly revealed Tutankhamen surfed the zeitgeist, two spectacular, near-contemporary discoveries, Leonard Woolley’s 1920s excavation of the royal death pits in the Mesopotamian city of Ur, and Pierre Montet’s 1939 excavation of the near-intact Third Intermediate Period royal tombs at the Egyptian city of Tanis, failed to capture the public imagination.
    While it is understandable that in 1939 the eyes of the world were not focused on ancient Egypt, the lack of interest in Woolley’s work is at first