The Visitors (78 page)

Arthur Mace

Mace, educated at Oxford and a cousin of Flinders Petrie, was the Met’s senior conservationist. He worked for two seasons on Tutankhamun’s tomb, in 1922–23 and 1923–24. During his second season there, he was accompanied by his wife and his elder daughter, Margaret, then aged ten; she was recovering from typhoid. At the end of that season, Mace’s health collapsed and he returned to England: he never worked or wrote again. He died aged fifty-four in 1928 and was for a long period virtually forgotten.

In 1989, a school exhibition relating to the lives of ancient Egyptians was being mounted at a local museum serving the tiny village of Lochwinnoch, near Paisley, Scotland: Mace’s daughter Margaret (Mrs Orr), who lived in the area, suggested she might have papers that would be of interest. They proved to be Mace’s diaries and letters from 1922 to 1924, together with his wife’s letters from the American House. An invaluable source, giving a new insight into the work on the tomb, the personalities involved and the politics of excavation, the papers had been stored in an attic, unexamined, for some sixty years.

Alfred Lucas

Lucas was a distinguished government chemist and forensic scientist, based in Cairo, when Howard Carter recruited him to work on the conservation of artefacts from Tutankhamun’s tomb. It is largely due to his work and Mace’s (under Carter’s direction) that the objects found there were conserved, saved and safely transferred to the Egyptian Museum. It was Lucas who (as Alan Gardiner put it) ‘spilt the beans’, and revealed that Carnarvon and Carter had broken through into Tutankhamun’s Burial Chamber in secret. He saw nothing wrong in this action, nor the subsequent cover-up, describing it as ‘most reasonable’. His revelation came via three unequivocal notes to two articles in the journal of the Egyptian Antiquities Service,
Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Egypte –
the second published in 1947 after his death. It was a specialist journal, with a narrow readership; his revelations were noted by Egyptologists, but otherwise ignored for decades. Lucas died, aged seventy-eight, in 1945.

Arthur ‘Pecky’ Callender

Howard Carter’s diaries record that he visited his friend Callender at his farm at Armant on 28 October 1922, immediately prior to the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb. On 9 November, five days after the discovery of the first step that led down to the tomb, he wired Callender to join him in the Valley. Callender then worked for him and lived at Castle Carter for three seasons; the Oxford-educated Arthur Mace described him as ‘a decent sort, but rough’. In April 1925, Carter and Callender fell out. The quarrel was caused by arguments over pay; it was bitter and it was final: the two men – Carter had claimed they were ‘the closest of friends’ – did not meet again.

Few facts are known about Callender, other than those provided by Carter; even his date of birth is elusive. He had two sons, and was an engineer with experience on the Egyptian railways – and it was this engineering expertise that was to prove invaluable. Callender played a crucial part in removing large objects safely from the tomb, the entrance to which was small; it was he who succeeded in dismantling the four huge shrines and lifting the massive granite lid of the sarcophagus concealed within them, using a system of pulleys. This was achieved without damage, despite the space and height restrictions within the cramped Burial Chamber.

Once he left the Valley, Callender disappears from view: the location, circumstances and even the date of his death are uncertain – it is usually claimed as 1936, but sometimes as 1931. It is probable that he died in Egypt; it is not known where he is buried.

Harry Burton

Burton was born in Lincolnshire and was the fifth of eleven children; his father was a cabinet-maker – a background similar to Carter’s. He was one of the few people who could endure working alongside the difficult Carter for any length of time. He had previously worked as an archaeologist, digging under the auspices of Theodore Davis in the Valley of the Kings, and coming within a few feet of Tutankhamun’s tomb – as he himself later recognised. But he was trained as a photographer, and it is for the brilliance of his photographic work, his artistry and his extraordinary recordation of the work in Tutankhamun’s tomb that he is remembered.

Burton worked in the tomb every season for ten years, taking almost two thousand photographs and also filming the excavators with the aid of an early movie camera. Subsequently, he was one of Howard Carter’s two executors. He died within a year of him, aged sixty-one, in 1940 in Egypt and is buried in the American cemetery at Asyut. His wife Minnie Burton, the daughter of a British army officer, survived him.

Abd-el-Aal Ahmad Sayed and Hosein Ibraheem Sayed

‘I have sarved Dr H. Carter 42 years pass well,’ Abd-el-Aal Sayed wrote in a letter of condolence to Howard Carter’s niece in March 1939. It is a poignant letter, in which he speaks of the ‘ill and uncontent’ felt by him and Hosein Sayed at hearing the news of Carter’s illness and death. The Sayeds had run the household both at Castle Carter, and at Carter’s previous home near the Valley. Abd-el-Aal Sayed received a legacy of £E150 in Carter’s will; what became of him and Hosein Sayed after that is not known.

Ahmed Girigar

Girigar, Carter’s senior foreman or
reis
, was the man in charge when the first step that would prove to lead down to Tutankhamun’s tomb was found on 4 November 1922. He reported the find to Carter when he reached the Valley later that morning. Girigar, born locally, had worked for most of his life in the Valley, and for some of its foremost excavators, including Victor Loret and Theodore Davis. Working with Loret, Girigar was involved in the discovery of eight tombs, including, in 1898, that of Amenhotep II, with its important and macabre cache of royal mummies. He cannot have been young when the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb was made, but his name continues to be listed in Carter’s accounts, so he must have remained working at the tomb for the decade 1922–32. Beyond that, nothing further is known of him.

The ‘American House’

In the wake of the stock market crash of 1929, the Metropolitan Museum’s excavation programme in Egypt was curtailed; it ceased for the duration of the war. From 1948 onwards the American House was the property of the Egyptian Antiquities Service and fell into disuse. Since 1961, it has served as the headquarters for the Polish-Egyptian Archaeological Association, who continue to excavate Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahri, the site formerly dug for the Met by Herbert Winlock.

In poor condition in 1961, this large building has been gradually restored, a process that continues. Original plans of it survive, as do photographs that show both its exteriors and interiors as they were when the Winlocks, the Burtons, Arthur Mace and other members of Winlock’s team lived and worked there in the 1920s. There are many descriptions of the house, and the parties and dinners held there, in letters and diaries written at the time Tutankhamun’s tomb was discovered.

‘Castle Carter’

Howard Carter left this house to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on his death, together with its contents (which included artefacts from the tomb and correspondence; among the latter, the aforementioned letters from Lady Evelyn). Empty during the war, it was later used by the Egyptian Antiquities Service to house its inspectors. It fell into disrepair and was threatened with demolition, but has recently been restored. In 2009, it reopened as a small museum and rest house. Visitors can ‘see’ Howard Carter and hear him speak of Tutankhamun, by means of a holograph.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The ‘Treasures of Three Egyptian Princesses’ whose acquisition is described here remain one of the prizes of the Met’s collection of Egyptian art, and may still be seen at the Museum. They are now known as the ‘Treasures of Three Foreign Wives of Tuthmosis III’ – ‘foreign wives’ meaning, in this context, minor wives or concubines. Earlier studies of the find, including Herbert Winlock’s of 1948, have been superseded by new analysis, using modern technology. The most recent findings were published by Dr Christine Lilyquist of the Met in 2003; some pieces of the jewellery are now known to be forgeries – albeit very good ones. The circumstances of the women who owned them remain as unknown now as they were in 1922.

Lord Carnarvon’s collection of Egyptian art also remains on display at the Museum. In 2011, the controversy over certain objects in that collection and others bequeathed by Howard Carter was resolved when nineteen items were returned by the Met to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. They include a little bronze dog with a gold collar (he is glancing over his shoulder, as if in response to his owner’s call). Less than an inch high and a masterpiece, it is one of the loveliest objects found in Tutankhamun’s tomb.

The Egyptian Museum, Cairo

The Museum owns over 3,500 artefacts from the tomb of Tutankhamun, ranging from the famous gold face mask to walking sticks, funeral wreaths and the silver nails that fastened the king’s coffins: around 1,700 of these are on display, with the remainder in storage. During the January 2011 Revolution, the Museum was broken into: some items from Tutankhamun’s tomb were vandalised and others stolen, including two superb gilded statues of the young king, found by Carter in the Treasury. Both were recovered and the damaged articles are currently in the course of restoration. There are confusing reports as to whether other small tomb artefacts, or parts of them, remain missing.

The Valley of the Kings

Ninety years on from Carter’s discovery, KV62 remains the last king’s tomb – and the only one in a virtually intact state – to be found in the Valley. In recent years, two further minor tombs, KV63 and KV64, have been uncovered. KV63, discovered in 2005 amidst great archaeological excitement, proved to be a simple pit, containing a cache of mummification materials. KV64, found on 25 January 2011, the day the Egyptian Revolution began, and excavated the following year, contained the intrusive burial of a 22nd Dynasty singer from the temple of Karnak. The small burial chamber in which she lay dated from the 18th Dynasty, but no traces of its original occupants – if there ever were any – remain.

Archaeologists differ in their beliefs as to whether the Valley is now ‘dug out’, as Belzoni claimed as early as 1820, and as Theodore Davis reiterated in 1914; they also differ as to whether further royal tombs await discovery. There is dissent as to whether Tutankhamun’s family, including his unknown mother and his heretic father, Akhenaten, are buried in the Valley, and whether his father’s coffin has already been found. There is disagreement as to whether Nefertiti, Tutankhamun’s stepmother and his father’s ‘great royal wife’, may also be buried there. The largest excavation in the Valley at present is under the direction of Dr Kent Weeks, of the American University in Cairo, whose team has been excavating the tomb of Ramesses II’s sons since 1995; that pharaoh sired over one hundred sons, and their burial place resembles a labyrinth. To date, Dr Weeks has uncovered 130 corridors and burial chambers, none containing intact mummies.

In 1979, the Valley of the Kings became a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but this status has failed to protect the Valley from the toxicity of modern tourism. Revenue from tourism in Egypt, vital to its economy, is in the region of $11 billion per annum; sites in and around Luxor contribute a substantial proportion of that figure. In 2004, the last time a full survey was undertaken, 1.8 million people visited the Valley in the course of the year, an average of 5,000 per day. The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism then planned to increase these numbers rapidly, aiming at 5.4 million visitors to the Valley, an average of 15,000 per day, by 2014. They had been on course to achieving that until, in the wake of the 2011 Revolution, visitor numbers began to plummet.

Yet even at such reduced levels, the effect mass tourism has upon the fragile ecology of the Valley and its tombs is catastrophic; as archaeologists have noted, more damage has been done in the past ninety years than in the previous three thousand. The optimists among them believe that this damage can be remedied; the pessimists believe it is already irreparable.

The Tomb of Tutankhamun

Tutankhamun’s small tomb, the most visited in the Valley, is now in a critical condition. Its walls are cracking and subject to water leakage; the plaster in the Burial Chamber, affected by condensation, changes in humidity, dust and salts, is lifting; the fragile paintings are flaking off the walls. Since 2009, the tomb has been the subject of a five-year conservation rescue programme under the auspices of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) and America’s Getty Conservation Institute. As part of this programme, the tomb was due to close in 2010, or, at the latest, in 2011. But the tomb is one of the Valley’s main draws, and – being separately ticketed – brings in additional revenue. In the face of falling visitor numbers post-2011, it remained open.

In an effort to resolve these problems, a full-scale replica of Tutankhamun’s tomb was commissioned in 2009. High-tech Lucida 3D laser scanning equipment, the latest software and high-resolution printing techniques were used in its creation; it was made by the world’s leading art-replica specialists, Factum Arte, based in Madrid, whose founder, Adam Lowe, is English. It took three years to complete, was paid for via funds raised by the University of Basel and others, and was presented as a gift to Egypt from Europe.

Factum Arte’s recreation of KV62 is astonishing in its verisimilitude; it is also portable. Delivered to Cairo in packing cases on 4 November 2012, the ninetieth anniversary of Howard Carter’s discovery of that first step to Tutankhamun’s tomb, it was assembled and unveiled at a joint Egyptian and EU reception held at the Conrad Hotel, Cairo on 13 November. It was on view for two days. Press releases announced that the replica tomb would shortly be installed in, or near, the Valley of the Kings, at a location still to be determined by Egypt’s SCA. The then-favoured site for the replica tomb was next to Castle Carter, Howard Carter’s former home. Once it was in place, it was announced, the actual tomb of Tutankhamun would finally close to visitors.