EXPLORATION OF THE THEBAN TOMBS OF THE KINGS
The work of modern exploration of the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings
can be said to have begun in 1819 when the traveller Belzoni opened and
wrote a description of the tomb of Seti I. In 1881 the discovery was
made of a collection of royal mummies, many of which had been buried
about thirty centuries ago in the Valley of the Tombs, and had been
removed about 1000 B.C. and hidden in a chamber in the great cliff
(behind Deir el Bahari) that faces the Nile across the Theban plain.
This stimulated renewed interest in the famous necropolis, but it was
not until 1898 that the work of exploration there was rewarded by the
discovery of the tomb of Amenhotep II containing the mummy of that
pharaoh himself—the only king’s mummy ever found in his own tomb before
the discovery of Tutankhamen’s, in which it is confidently believed
the mummy is present and undisturbed, an unprecedented circumstance
which will make the investigations next winter peculiarly important.
For the mummy of Amenhotep II had been badly plundered like all those
discovered before or since until the opening of Tutankhamen’s burial
chamber made it practically certain that in it will be revealed for the
first time to modern men the undisturbed tomb of an ancient Egyptian
king.
When Mr Howard Carter was appointed Chief Inspector of Antiquities for
Upper Egypt his chief function was to safeguard the antiquities in the
Thebaid. The Egyptian Government through its Archæological Committee
has been in the habit (until the present year, when the wise rule that
encouraged serious archæological exploration is being revoked) of
granting to archæologists whose competence was regarded as satisfactory
permission to excavate on ancient sites, and the Antiquities Department
allowed such workers to take out of the country half the antiquities
brought to light. But the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings was
excluded from the operation of this rule, because the Antiquities
Department reserved for itself a site of such historical importance.
Hence when Mr Howard Carter took charge of the Theban inspectorate
he was in a serious dilemma. The deserted Valley of the Tombs of the
Kings, in the hidden depths of which was hoarded the remains of the
vastest collection of valuable antiquities ever assembled, was in his
charge, and alongside it the modern population of Luxor and Sheikh
abd-el-Gournah, the most skilful and persistent group of tomb-robbers
who had been habituated to the practice of this craft for many
centuries. Yet he could not solve the difficulty by the most efficient
form of control, that is, by carrying on excavations there, because the
Antiquities Department had no funds for such work and, for the reasons
already given, private excavators were not allowed to work in the
Valley of the Tombs. Mr Carter was fortunate in being able to find a
solution of the problem that evaded all these difficulties. Mr Theodore
M. Davis, of Newport, Rhode Island, who was visiting Egypt as a tourist
in the winter 1902-1903, was persuaded to place at the disposal of the
Department of Antiquities the funds for exploration in the Valley of
the Tombs without claiming any reward beyond the kudos which his action
brought. Hence in 1903 Mr Howard Carter began excavating in the Valley
at Mr Davis’s expense and discovered the tomb of Thothmes IV. The
mummy of this pharaoh, which had been found in 1898 by M. Loret in the
tomb of Amenhotep II, was unwrapped after its original tomb was found;
and at Mr Carter’s suggestion, M. Maspero asked me to investigate it.
Mr Davis published a magnificent volume giving a report of the work
in the tomb and the results of the investigation of the mummy. In the
following years the expedition financed by Mr Davis found six other
important inscribed tombs, those of Queen Hatshepsut, Yuaa and Tuaa
(the parents of Queen Tiy), King Siptah, Prince Mentuherkhepshef, King
Akhenaton and King Horemheb, and nine uninscribed tombs, one of which
contained the beautiful gold jewellery of Queen Tausret and of her
second husband Seti II, and another the pieces of inscribed gold plate
stolen during the reign of Horemheb from the tombs of Kings Tutankhamen
and Ay.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.—Mummy of Thothmes IV.]
Before the war Mr Davis had completed his share of the work. He
imagined that he had found the tomb of Tutankhamen, and in the preface
of the last of his series of magnificent reports he makes the remark:
“I fear that the Valley of the Tombs is now exhausted.” But it is a
fortunate thing that Mr Howard Carter did not share this idea. After
the war the late Lord Carnarvon, with whom Mr Howard Carter had been
working since 1907, applied to the Antiquities Department, and was
granted a concession to be allowed to continue in the Valley of the
Tombs the work which the late Mr Theodore Davis had abandoned. The work
carried out by Lord Carnarvon and Mr Howard Carter before they took
over Mr Davis’s concession led to some important discoveries, the chief
results of which were published in 1912, in a magnificent volume _Five
Years’ Exploration at Thebes_.
In the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings they carried out real and
thorough exploration, as no previous workers had done. Instead of
making mere exploratory openings into the masses of rubble they
began systematically to clear the ground, moving vast quantities of
material—they are said to have moved as much as 200,000 tons—in the
process. In spite of the discouragement of doing work of so exhaustive
and expensive a kind with no further reward than a few unimportant
pots, they pressed on, until on 5th November 1922 their indomitable
persistence was rewarded with the most wonderful discovery ever made in
the history of archæological investigation.
The day before he left London last January to return to Egypt Lord
Carnarvon gave this account of the discovery. In the famous tomb of the
Vizier Rekhmara no burial shaft could be found, and after searching
for it near the tomb-building it was decided to try in the Valley of
the Tombs. While cleaning the floor of the valley for this purpose,
Mr Carter found a step cut in the rock and after further clearance he
found a wall in the cement upon which was impressed the seal of the
Royal Necropolis. Further examination revealed the presence of a tomb
that had been entered soon after the burial. It bore the cartouche of
the King Tutankhamen.
The story of the amazing treasures that have so far been discovered in
the tomb has been told in the daily press day by day from November 1922
until April 1923, and Mr Harry Burton’s photographs have given us a
realistic idea of their appearance.
The plan of the tomb presents a marked contrast to the more familiar
Theban burial places; but it becomes more intelligible when it is
compared with those which were made at the heretic king’s capital
during the time of Akhenaton.
Of the four chambers in the tomb only one has up to now so far been
examined, and when the inventory comes to be made of the annexe,
which is now packed with furniture, and the room leading out of the
burial chamber, the largest and most wonderful collection of ancient
furniture that has ever been made will be revealed.
But the most marvellous revelations of all await the investigator
next season when the shrines in the burial chamber are opened and the
sarcophagus and the coffins within it are made to reveal to us how a
royal mummy was prepared for its eternal home.
The plan of the tomb of Rameses IV, made more than two centuries
later than the time of Tutankhamen, is the only evidence we have of
the arrangement of the coffins within the shrines; but the coffins
of Yuaa and Tuaa, the great-grandparents of Tutankhamen’s wife, and
especially the wonderful coffin made for Akhenaton, his father-in-law,
have prepared us for what we are to find next winter. But the artistic
inspiration revealed in the design of Tutankhamen’s funerary furniture
and the craftsmanship are so vastly superior to those displayed in
other tombs that we cannot predict what gems of art will be found when
the inner coffins are exposed.
Of the mummy itself we can predict the success of the embalmer’s
efforts, because the art of preserving the body was at its best in the
period from Amenhotep II until Rameses II, but some very interesting
points in the technique of embalming remain to be discovered. In the
case of Amenhotep III, the latest mummy of the eighteenth dynasty so
far examined, the new procedure for stuffing packing material under the
skin was introduced for the first time. In the nineteenth and twentieth
dynasties it was completely given up, only to be readopted in the
twenty-first dynasty. It will be interesting to discover whether or not
this procedure was still in vogue at the time of Tutankhamen.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.—Ancient Plan of the Tomb of Rameses IV with an
interpretation by Howard Carter and Alan Gardiner (_Journal of Egyptian
Archæology_).]
[Illustration: FIG. 3.—The Mummies of Yuaa and Tuaa, the latest
complete mummies known before the time of Tutankhamen, and the mummy of
Seti I, the earliest after him. These mummies will give some idea of
the state of preservation likely to be revealed in Tutankhamen’s mummy.]
The most interesting discovery of all that next season holds in store
will be the equipment of jewellery with which the mummy will be
provided. So far all that we know of such jewels has been derived from
the recovery of odd fragments and the impressions left upon the mummy’s
wrappings by the pieces long since stolen.