 Chapter 10 Work in the Laboratory This chapter is dedicated to those, and they are many, who think that an excavator spends his time basking in the sun, pleasantly exhilarated by watching other people work for him, and otherwise relieved from boredom by having baskets full of beautiful antiquities brought up from the bowels of the earth from time to time for him to look at. His actual life is very different, and, as there can be but few who know the details of it, it will be worth our while to give a general outline here before going into the question of the laboratory work of the past season. Incidentally, it will help to explain why this careful laboratory work was necessary. In the first place, it must be clearly understood that there is never any question of having basket fulls of objects brought to the excavator for him to look at. The first and most important rule in excavating is that the archaeologist must remove every antiquity from the ground with his own hands. So much depends upon it. Set apart from the question of possible damage that might be caused by clumsy fingers, it is very essential that you see the object in situ to gain any evidence you can from the position in which it lies and the relationship it bears to objects near it. For example, there may very likely be dating evidence. How many pieces there are in museums with vague, probably middle kingdom, kind of labels, which, by reference to the objects with which they were found, might easily have been assigned accurately to the dynasty to which they belonged, or even to the reign of some particular king. There will, again, be evidence of arrangement to be secured, evidence that may show the use for which some particular object was made, or give the details for its ultimate reconstruction. Take, for instance, the tiny fragments of serrated flint which are found in such enormous quantities in town sites of the middle kingdom. We can guess their use, and with the label, sickle flints, they make not uninteresting museum material. Now find, as I have done, a complete sickle lying in the ground, its wooden parts in such condition that a touch will destroy the evidence of its ever having been a sickle at all. Two courses are open to you. By careful handling and the use of preservatives, you may be able to get your sickle out of the ground intact, or, if it is too far gone for that, you can at least take the measurements and notes that will enable you to construct the wooden you. In either case, you get a complete museum object, worth, archaeologically, a thousand times more than the handful of disconnected pieces of flint that you would otherwise have secured. This is a simple illustration of the importance of field evidence. We shall have other and more striking instances to record when we come to deal with the different classes of material. One other matter before we pass on. By noting the exact position of an object, or a group of objects, you cannot infrequently secure evidence that will enable you to make a find of similar objects elsewhere. Position deposits are a case in point. In every construction, the arrangement of the deposits followed a regular system, and, having found one, it is a simple matter to put your finger upon the others. An excavator, then, must see every object in position, must make careful notes before it is moved, and, if necessary, must apply preservative treatment on the spot. Obviously, under these conditions it is all important for you to keep in close touch with your excavations. Holiday trips and days off are out of the question. While the work is actually running, you must be on the spot all day, and available at all hours of the day. Your workmen must know where to find you at any given moment, and must have a perfectly clear understanding that the news of a discovery must be passed on to you without any delay. In the case of an important discovery you will probably know something has happened before you actually get the report, for, in Egypt particularly, the news will have spread almost instantaneously, and have had a curious psychological effect upon your entire gang of workmen. They will be working differently, not necessarily harder, but differently, and much more silently. The ordinary work songs will have seized. A smaller discovery you will frequently sense in advance from the behavior of the man who brings the message. Nothing would induce him to come straight to you and tell you openly what he has found. At all costs he must make a mystery of it, so he hovers about in a thoroughly self-conscious manner, thereby advertising to the world at large exactly what has happened, and eventually makes himself still more conspicuous by beckoning you aside and whispering his news. Even then it will be difficult to get any but the vaguest of reports out of him, and it will probably not be until you have reached the actual spot that you find out exactly what has been found. This is due largely to an Egyptian's love of mystery for its own sake. The same man will tell his friends all about the find on the first opportunity, but it is part of the game to pretend that they must know nothing about it at the time. Partly too, to excitement. Not that he takes any real interest in the objects themselves, but because he looks on them in the light of a gamble. Most excavators work on what is known as the Bakshish system, that is to say they pay their workmen rewards over and above their wages for anything they find. It is not an ideal arrangement, but it has two advantages. It helps to ensure the safety of the objects, particularly the small easily concealed ones, which may be most valuable to you for dating purposes. And it makes the man keener about their work, and more careful about the manner in which they carry it out, the reward being more for the safe handling than for the value of the object. For these and for many other reasons which we could mention, it is all important for you to keep close to your work, and even if nothing is being found at the moment, you will not have much time to be idle. To begin with, every tomb, every building, every broken wall even must be noted, and if you are dealing with pit tombs, this may involve considerable gymnastic exercise. The pits may range anywhere from ten to a hundred and twenty feet in depth, and I calculated once, that in the course of a single season I had climbed, hand over hand, up half a mile of rope. Then there is photography. Every object of any archaeological value must be photographed before it is moved, and in many cases a series of exposures must be made to mark the various stages in the clearing. Many of these photographs will never be used, but you can never tell but that some question may arise whereby a seemingly useless negative may become a record of the utmost value. Photography is absolutely essential on every side, and it is perhaps the most exacting of all the duties that an excavator has to face. On a particular piece of work I have taken and developed as many as fifty negatives in a single day. Whenever possible these particular branches of the work, surveying and photography, should be in the hands of separate experts. The man in charge will then have time to devote himself to what we may call the finer points of excavation. He will be able to play with his work, as a brother digger expressed it. In every excavation puzzles and problems constantly present themselves, and it is only by going constantly over the ground, looking at it from every point of view, and scrutinizing it in every kind of light, that you will be able to arrive at a solution of some of these problems. The meaning of a complex of walls, the evidence of reconstruction of a building, or of a change in plan on the part of the original architect, the significance of a change of level, where the remains of a later period have been superimposed upon those of an earlier one, the purport of some peculiarity in the surface debris, or in the stratification of a mound, these and a score of others are the questions that an excavator has to face, and it is upon his ability to answer them that he will stand or fall as an archaeologist. Then again, if he is freed from the labour of survey and photography, he will be able to devote more time and thought to the general organisation of the work, and by that means to effect considerable economies both in time and money. Many a hundred pounds has been wasted by lack of system, and many an excavator has had to clear away his own dumps because he failed in the first instance to exercise a little forethought. The question of the distribution of the workmen is one that needs careful attention, and great wastage of labour can be avoided by moving men around from one place to another exactly when and where they are wanted, and never leaving more on a particular section of the work than are actually needed to keep it running smoothly. The number of labourers that an excavator can keep up with single-handed will depend naturally on the conditions of the work. On a big and more or less unproductive undertaking, such as pyramid clearing, he can look after an almost indefinite number. On rock-cut tombs he can perhaps keep pace with 50, whereas on shallow graves, a pre-dynastic cemetery for example, ten will keep him uncomfortably busy. The number of men who can be employed is also largely dependent on the type of site and formation of the locality of the excavation. So much for the outdoor duties, the actual conduct of his excavations. There are plenty of other jobs to be done, and his off hours and evenings will be very fully occupied if he is to keep on terms with his work. His notes, his running plans, and the registration of the objects must be kept thoroughly up to date. There are the photographs to be developed, prints to be made, and the register kept, both of negatives and prints. There will be broken objects to be mended, objects in delicate condition to be treated, restorations to be considered, and beadwork to be rethreaded. Then comes the indoor photography. For each individual object must be photographed to scale and in some cases from several points of view. The list could be extended almost indefinitely and would include a number of jobs that would seem to have but a remote connection with archaeology, such as account keeping, doctoring the men, and settling their disputes. The workmen naturally have one day a week off, and the excavator will very likely begin the season with the idea that he too will take a weekly holiday. He will usually be obliged to abandon the idea after the first week, for he will find in this off-day too good an opportunity to waste of catching up with the hundred and one jobs that have got ahead of him. Such, in broad outline, is the life of the excavator. There are certain details of his work, more particularly those which have to do with note-taking and first aid preservation of the different classes of objects which we should like to dwell on at somewhat greater length. These are subjects which the ordinary reader will probably know little about, and they will be well illustrated in our description of the laboratory work of the past season. Woodwork, for instance, is seldom in good condition and presents many problems. Damp and the white aunt are its chief foes, and in unfavorable conditions nothing will be left of the wood but a heap of black dust, or a shell which crumbles at a touch. In the one case an entry in your notes to the effect that wood has been present is the most that you can do, but in the other there will generally be a certain amount of information to be gleaned. Measurements can certainly be secured, and the painted remains of an inscription, which may give you the name of the owner of the object, and which a single breath of wind or touch of the surface would be sufficient to efface, can be copied if taken in hand without delay. Again there will be cases in which the wooden frame or core of an object has decayed away, leaving scattered remains of the decoration, ivory, gold, pheons, or what not, which originally covered its surface. By careful notes of the exact relative positions of this fallen decoration supplemented by a subsequent fitting and piecing together, it will often be possible to work out the exact size and shape of the object. Then by applying the original decoration to a new wooden core you will have, instead of a miscellaneous collection of ivory, gold, and pheons fragments, useless for any purpose, an object which for all practical purposes is as good as new. Preservation of wood, unless it be in the very last stage of decay, is always possible by application of melted paraffin wax. By this means an object which otherwise would have fallen to pieces, can be rendered perfectly solid and fit to handle. The condition of wood naturally varies according to the site, and fortunately for us, Luxor is in this respect perhaps the most favourable site in the whole of Egypt. We had trouble with the wood from the present tomb, but it arose not from the condition in which we originally found it, but from subsequent shrinkage owing to a change of atmosphere. This in an object of plain wood is not such a serious matter, but the Egyptians were extremely fond of applying a thin layer of gesso, on which prepared surface they painted scenes or made use of an overlay of gold foil. Naturally, as the wood shrank, the gesso covering began to loosen up and buckle, and there was considerable danger that large parts of the surface might be lost. The problem is a difficult one. It is a perfectly easy matter to fix paint or gold foil to the gesso, but ordinary preservatives will not fix gesso to the wood. Here, again, as we shall show, we had recourse eventually to paraffin wax. The condition of textiles varies. Cloth, in some cases, is so strong that it might have come fresh from the loom, whereas in others it has been reduced by damp almost to the consistency of suit. In the present tomb the difficulty of handling it was considerably increased, both by the rough usage to which it had been subjected, and by the fact that so many of the garments were covered with a decoration of gold rosettes and beadwork. Beadwork is in itself a complicated problem, and will perhaps tax an excavator's patience more than any other material with which he has to deal. There is so much of it. The Egyptians were passionately fond of beads, and it is by no means exceptional to find upon a single mummy an equipment consisting of a number of necklaces, two or three collars, a girdle or two, and a full set of bracelets and anklets. In such a case, many thousands of beads will have been employed. Therein lies the test of patience, for in the recovery and restoration of this beadwork every single bead will have to be handled at least twice. Very careful work will be necessary to secure the original arrangement of the beads. The threads that held them together will all have rotted away, but nevertheless they will be lying for the most part in their correct relative positions, and by carefully blowing away the dust it may be possible to follow the whole length of necklace or collar and secure the exact order of the beads. Re-threading may be done in situ as each section is laid bare. On a mini-strength girdle I once had twelve needles and thread going simultaneously, or better still the beads may be transferred one by one to a piece of cardboard on which a thin layer of plasticine has been spread. This has the advantage that gaps of the required length can be left for missing or doubtfully placed beads. In very elaborate objects where it is not possible to thread the beads as they are found, careful notes must be made, the restringing being done later, not in exact order, bead for bead, but in accordance with the original pattern and design. A tedious business this restringing will be, and a good deal of experimental work will probably be necessary before you arrive at the correct method of dealing with the particular problem. In a collar, for example, it may be necessary to have three independent threading strings to every bead if the rows are to lie smoothly in place. Restoration of missing or broken parts will sometimes be necessary if a reconstruction is to be affected. I once found a set of bracelets and anklets in which the rows of beads had been separated by perforated bars of wood covered with gold foil. The wood of which these separators was composed had entirely gone, leaving the gold foil shells, so I cut new pieces of wood to the shape, burnt out perforation holes with a red hot needle, and covered the new bars with the original gold. Such restorations, based on actual evidence, are perfectly legitimate and well worth the trouble. You will have secured for your museum in place of a tray full of meaningless beads, or worse still, a purely arbitrary and fanciful reconstruction, an object attractive in itself, which has very considerable archaeological value. Papyrus is frequently difficult to handle, and in its treatment more crimes have been committed than in any other branch of archaeology. If in fairly sound condition it should be wrapped in a damp cloth for a few hours, and then it can easily be straightened out under glass. Roles that are torn and brittle, sure to separate into a number of small pieces during the process of unwrapping, should never be tackled unless you have plenty of time and space at your disposal. Careful and systematic work will ensure the correct spacing of almost all the fragments, whereas a desultery sorting carried out in the intervals of other work, and perhaps by various hands, will never achieve a satisfactory result, and may end in the destruction of much valuable evidence. If only the Turin Papyrus, for instance, had received careful treatment when it was first found, what a wealth of information it would have given us, and what heartburnings we should have been saved. Stone as a rule presents few difficulties in the field. Limestone will certainly contain salt, which must be soaked out of it, but this is a problem that can be taken in hand later in the museum and need not detain us here. In the same way phions, pottery and metal objects can usually be left for later treatment. We are only concerned here with work that must be carried out on the spot. Detailed and copious notes should be taken at every stage of this preliminary work. It is difficult to take too many. For, though a thing may be perfectly clear to you at the moment, it by no means follows that it will be when the time comes for you to work over your material. In tomb work as many notes as possible should be made while everything is still in position. Then when you begin clearing, card and pencil should be kept handy, and every fresh item of evidence should be noted immediately you run across it. You are tempted so often to put off making the note until you have finished the actual piece of work on which you are engaged, but it is dangerous. Something will intervene, and as likely as not that particular note will never be made at all. Now let us move to the laboratory and put into practice some of the theories that we have been elaborating. It will be remembered that it was the tomb of Setide II, number 15 in the Wilkinson catalogue of tomb numbers, that had been selected for us, and here we had established ourselves with our note cards and our preservatives. The tomb was long and narrow so that only the first bay could be used for practical work, the inner, darker part being serviceable merely as storage space. As the objects were brought in they were deposited, still in their stretches, in the middle section, and covered up until they should be wanted. Each in turn was brought up to the working bay for examination. There, after the surface dust had been cleared off, measurements, complete archaeological notes, and copies of inscriptions were entered on the filing cards. The necessary mending and preservative treatment followed, after which it was taken just outside the entrance for scale photographs to be made. Finally, having passed through all these stages, the object was stored away in the innermost recesses of the tomb to await the final packing. In the majority of cases no attempt at final treatment was made. It was manifestly impossible for months, probably years, of reconstructive work unnecessary with full uses to be made of the material. All we could do here was to apply preliminary treatment, sufficient in any event to enable the object to support a journey in safety. Final restorations must be made in the museum and they will need a far more fully equipped laboratory and a much larger staff of skilled helpers than we could ever hope to achieve in the valley. As the season advanced and the laboratory grew more and more crowded, it became increasingly difficult to keep track of the work and it was only by close attention to detail and strict adherence to a very definite order of procedure that we managed to keep clear of complications. As each object arrived, its registration number was noted in an entry book and in the same book a record was kept of the successive stages of its treatment. Each of the primary objects had been given its own registration number in the tomb, but as these were worked over in the laboratory an elaborate system of sub-numbering became necessary. A box, for instance, might contain 50 objects, any one of which must be clearly identifiable at all times and these we distinguished by letters of the alphabet or were necessary by a combination of letters. Constant care was necessary to keep these smaller objects from being separated from their identification tickets, especially in cases where protracted treatment was required. Not infrequently it happened that the component parts of a single object scattered in the tomb were entered under two or more numbers and in this case cross-references in the notes were necessary. Note cards as completed were filed away in cabinets and in these filing cabinets we had, by the end of the season, a complete history of every object from the tomb, including 1. Measurements, Scale Drawings and Archaeological Notes 2. Notes and the Inscriptions by Dr. Allen Gardiner 3. Notes by Mr. Lucas on the Preservative Treatment Employee 4. A photograph showing the position of the object in the tomb 5. A scale photograph or a series of photographs of the object itself 6. In the case of boxes a series of views showing the different stages in the clearing So much for our system of work. Let us turn now to the individual treatment of a selected number of the antiquities. The first that required treatment in the laboratory was the wonderful painted casket, number 21 in our register, and if we had searched a whole tomb through we should have been hard put to it to find a single object that presented a greater number of problems. For this reason it will be worth our while to give a detailed description of its treatment. Our first care was for the casket itself, which was coated with gesso and covered from top to bottom with brilliantly painted scenes. With the exception of a slight widening of the joints owing to shrinkage the wood was in perfect condition. The gesso had chipped a little at the corners and along the cracks but was still in a reasonably firm state, and the paint, though a little discoloured in places, was perfectly fast and showed no signs of rubbing. It seemed as though but little treatment was necessary. The surface dust was removed, the discolouration of the painted surfaces was reduced with benzyne, and the whole exterior of the casket was sprayed with a solution of celluloid in amyl acetate to fix the gesso to the wood, particular attention being paid to tender places at the cracks. At the moment this seemed to be all that was required, but it was our first experience of the wood and gesso combination from the tomb, and we were to be disillusioned. Three or four weeks later we noticed that the joint cracks were getting wider, and that the gesso in other places were showing a tendency to buckle. It was clear enough what was happening. Owing to the change of temperature from the close humid atmosphere of the tomb to the dry airiness of the laboratory, the wood had begun to shrink once more, and the gesso, not being able to follow it, was coming away from the wood altogether. The position was serious, for we were in danger of losing large parts of the painted surface. Drastic measures were necessary, and after much discussion we decided on the use of melted paraffin wax. Courage was needed to take the step, but we were thoroughly justified by the result, for the wax penetrated the materials and held everything firm, and so far from the colours being affected, as we had feared, it seemed to make them more brilliant than before. We used this process later on a number of other objects of wood and gesso, and found it extremely satisfactory. It is important that the surface should be heated, and that the wax should be brought as near to boiling point as possible, otherwise it will chill and refuse to penetrate. Failing an oven, we found the Egyptian sun quite hot enough for the purpose. Surplus wax can be removed by the application of heat, or by the use of benzine. There is another advantage in the process, in that blisters in the gesso can be pressed down into place again when the wax is still warm, and will hold quite firmly. In very bad cases it may be necessary to fill the blister in from behind by means of hot wax supplied by a pipette. So much for the outside of the casket. Now let us remove the lid and see what the inside has in store for us. This is an exciting moment for there are beautiful things everywhere, and thanks to the hurried repacking carried out by the officials, there is nothing to forewarn us as to what the contents of any individual box may be. In this particular case, by reference to the four views on plates 34 and 35, the reader can himself follow the successive stages in the clearing, and it will give him some idea of the difficulty of handling the material, if I explain that it took me three weeks of hard work to get to the bottom of the box. The first photograph was taken immediately after the lid had been removed and before anything was touched. On the right there is a pair of rush and papyrus sandals in perfect condition, below them just showing a gilt headrest, and lower again a confused mass of cloth, leather and gold, of which we can make nothing as yet. On the left crumpled into a bundle there is a magnificent royal robe, and in the upper corner there are roughly shaped beads of dark resin. The robe it was that presented us with our first problem, a problem that was constantly to recur, how best to handle cloths that crumpled at the touch, and yet was covered with elaborate and heavy decoration. In this particular case, the whole surface of the robe is covered with a network of phion's beads, with a gold sequin filling in every alternate square in the net. These, beads and sequins, had originally been sewn to the cloth, but are now loose. A great many of them are upside down, the releasing of the tension when the thread snapped having evidently caused them to spring. At the borders of the robe, they are underneath, and do not show in the photograph, there are bands of tiny glass beads of various colors arranged in patterns. The upper layer of cloth was very deceptive in appearance. It looked reasonably solid, but if one tried to lift it, it fell to pieces in one's hand. Below, where it had been in contact with other things, the condition was much worse. This question of cloth and its treatment was enormously complicated for us in the present tomb, but a rough usage to which it had been subjected. Had it been spread out flat or neatly folded, it would have been a comparatively simple matter to deal with it. We should, as a matter of fact, have had an easier task if it had been allowed to remain strewn about the floor of the chamber, as the plunderers had left it. Nothing could have been worse for our purposes than the treatment it had undergone in the tidying-up process, in which the various garments had been crushed, bundled, and interfolded, and packed tightly into boxes with a mixture of other, and, in some cases, most incongruous objects. In the case of this present robe, it would have been perfectly simple to solidify the whole of the upper layer and remove it in one piece, but this was a process to which there were serious objections. It involved, firstly, a certain amount of danger to whatever might lie beneath, for in the unpacking of these boxes we had to be continually on our guard, lest, in our enthusiasm over the treatment or removal of an object, we might inflict damage on a still more valuable one which lay under it. Then again, if we made the upper part of the robe solid, we should seriously have reduced the chances of extracting evidence as to size and shape, to say nothing of the details of ornamentation. In dealing with all these robes there were two alternatives before us. Something had to be sacrificed, and we had to make up our minds whether it should be the cloth or the decoration. It would have been quite possible by the use of preservatives to secure large pieces of the cloth, but, in the process, we should inevitably have disarranged and damaged the bead ornamentation that lay below. On the other hand, by sacrificing the cloth, picking it carefully away piece by piece, we could recover as a rule the whole scheme of decoration. This was the plan we usually adopted. Later, in the museum, it will be possible to make a new garment of the exact size to which the original ornamentation, beadwork, gold sequins, or whatever it may be, can be applied. Restorations of this kind will be far more useful and have a much greater archaeological value than a few irregularly shaped pieces of preserved cloth and a collection of loose beads and sequins. The size of the robe from this casket can be worked out with reasonable accuracy from the ornamentation. At the lower hem there was a band composed of tiny beads arranged in a pattern, a pattern of which we were able to secure the exact details. From this band there hung, at equal intervals, a series of bead strings with a large pendant at the end of each string. We can thus calculate the circumference of the hem by multiplying the space between the strings by the number of pendants. That gives us the width of the robe. Now we can calculate the total area of decoration from the number of gold sequins employed and, if we divide this total area by our known circumference at the bottom, we shall arrive at a fairly accurate approximation of the height. This naturally presupposes that our robe is the same width throughout, a method of cutting borne out by a number of undecorated garments of which we were able to secure the exact measurements. This has been a long digression, but it was necessary to show the nature of the problem with which we had to deal. We can return to the casket now and really begin to explore its contents. First of all we removed the rush sandals, which were in beautifully firm condition and presented no difficulties. Plate 34B. Next came the gilt headrest, and then very carefully we removed the robe. One large portion of its upper surface we managed to take out whole by the aid of a celluloid solution, and short lengths of the band decorations of small beads we preserved in wax for future reference. The third photograph, Plate 35C, shows what we may call the second layer of the casket's contents. Here, to begin with, were three pairs of sandals, or rather to be accurate, two pairs of sandals and a pair of loose slippers. These were of leather, elaborately decorated with gold, and of wonderful workmanship. Two of them are shown on Plate 36. Unfortunately their condition left much to be desired. They had suffered from their packing in the first place, but worse than that some of the leather had melted and run, gluing the sandals together and fastening them to other objects, making their extraction from the box a matter of extreme difficulty. So much of the leather had perished that a question of restoration became a serious problem. We secured the gold ornamentation that still remained in place with a solution of Canada balsam, and strengthened them generally as far as we could, but eventually it will probably be better to make new sandals and apply the old decoration to them. Beneath the sandals there was a mass of decayed cloth, much of it of the consistency of suit, thickly spangled throughout with rosettes and sequins of gold and silver. This, sad to relate, represents a number of royal robes. The difficulty of trying to extract any intelligible record from it can be imagined, but a certain amount of assistance was given by the differences in the sizes and shapes of the sequins. There were at least seven distinct garments. One was an imitation leopard skin cloak in cloth with gilt head and spots and claws of silver. See last photograph of the series, plate 35D. While two of the others were headdresses made in the semblance of hawks with outstretched wings of the type shown in plate 78. Bundled in with the actual garments there were a number of other objects. Two pheon's colorettes of beads and pendants, two caps or bags of tiny beadwork which had almost entirely fallen to pieces, a wooden tag inscribed in hieratic, papyrus, sandals of his majesty, a glove of plain linen, an archer's gauntlet, tapestry woven in colored thread, a double necklace of large flat pheon's beads. See plate 35D and a number of linen belts or scarves. Below the garments there was a layer of rolls and pads of cloth, some of which were loincloths and others mere bandages, and below these again, resting on the bottom of the box, there were two boards perforated at one end for hanging, whose purpose is still doubtful. With very few exceptions, the rush sandals are a case in point, the garments it contained were those of a child. Our first idea was that the king might have kept stored away the clothes he wore as a boy, but later, on one of the belts and on the sequence of one of the robes, we found the royal cartouche. He must then have worn them after he became king, from which it would seem to follow that he was quite a young boy when he succeeded to the throne. Another interesting piece of evidence in this connection is supplied by the fact that on the lid of one of the other boxes there is a docket which reads, the king's side lock as a boy. The question raises an interesting historical point, and we shall be eager to see, when the time comes, the evidence of age that the mummy will supply. Certainly whenever the king appears upon the tomb furniture, he is represented as little more than a youth. One other point with regard to the robes found in this and other boxes, many of them are decorated with patterns and coloured linen threads. Some of these are examples of tapestry weaving, similar to the fragments found in the tomb of Tothmes IV, but there were also undoubted cases of applied needlework. The material from this tomb will be of extreme importance to the history of textile art, and it needs a very careful study. We shall not have space here to describe the unpacking of the other boxes, but all were in the same jumbled state, and all had the same queer mixture of incongruous objects. Many of them contained from fifty to sixty individual pieces, each requiring its own registration card, and there was never any lack of excitement in the unpacking, for you never knew when you might not happen upon a magnificent gold scarab, a statuette or a beautiful piece of jewelry. It was slow work, naturally, for hours at a time had to be spent working out with brush and bellows the exact order and arrangement of collar, necklace or gold decoration, covered, as they ordinarily were, with the dust of decayed cloth. The collars were a frequent source of trouble. We found eight in all of the Tel El Amarna leaf and flower type, and it needed great care and patience to work out the exact arrangement of the different types of pendants. One of these is shown on plate 39, laid out loosely on ground glass to be photographed. They still need quite a lot of treatment to bring them back to their original colors, and there will have to be a certain amount of restoration of the broken and missing parts before they are ready for the final restringing. In one case we were lucky, for an elaborate three string necklace with a gilt pectoral at one end and a scarab pendant at the other, lay flat upon the bottom of a box, so that we were able to remove it bead by bead and restring it on the spot in its exact original order. Plate 40. The most elaborate piece of reconstruction that we had to do was in connection with the corslet, which has been referred to more than once. This was a very elaborate affair consisting of four separate parts, the corslet proper, inlaid with gold and carnelian, with border bands and braces of gold and colored inlay, a collar with conventional imitation of beads in gold, carnelian and green and blue pheons, and two magnificent pectorals of openwork gold with colored inlay, one for the chest, the other to hang behind as make-weight. Corslets of this type are depicted commonly enough on the monuments, and were evidently frequently worn, but we have never before been lucky enough to find a complete example. Unfortunately, the parts of it were sadly scattered, and there were points in the reconstruction of which we could not be absolutely certain. Most of it was found in Box 54, but, as we have already stated in Chapter 7, there were also parts of it in the small gold trine and in boxes 101 and 115, and single pieces from it were found scattered on the floor of the antechamber, passage and staircase. It was interesting working out the way in which it all fitted together, and the photographs on Plate 38 show our tentative reconstruction. In Plate 37 we see the corslet proper as it lay in Box 54, resting upon a number of phion's libation bases. This gave us the pattern and arrangement, with its upper and lower bands of inlaid gold plaques, and we were also able to recover from it its exact height in two or three separate places, and the fact that it was not the same height all the way round. It showed us, besides, that the upper row of the collar was joined onto the gold plaque brace bands, and that the gold bars fitted at the shoulders to the top of the brace bands. The exact order of the collar was recovered from the parts found in the gold trine. The pectorals were also in the gold trine, lying beside the collar sections, and that they actually fitted to the collar was proved by the curve of their upper edges. There were other gold bars in addition to those for the shoulders, and the perforated thread holes in these, corresponding exactly with the holes in the scales, showed that they must have belonged to the corslet proper. These bars and the shoulder bars alike were held together by sliding pins to be adjusted after the corslet was in position. Our present reconstruction is purely a tentative one put together for photographic purposes, but the only really doubtful point in it is whether the gold bars fit to the front and back of the corslet, as they are here shown, or to its sides. The reason we have placed them in this position is that the bars are of different sizes, and by no combination is it possible to make the two equal lengths which the sides would require. The front and back of the corslet, on the other hand, we know where of different lengths. There are still a number of pieces missing, and these we hope may still turn up in the innermost chamber or in the annex. The greater part of our winter's work in the laboratory was concerned with the boxes, working out and sorting over their confused jumble of contents. The single, larger objects were much easier to deal with. Some were in very good condition, requiring nothing but surface cleaning and noting, but there were others which needed a certain amount of attention, if only minor repairs, to make them fit for transport. In all our mending we had constant recourse to our box of floor sweepings, fragments recovered by sweeping up and sifting the last layer of dust from the floor, both of the empty chamber and entrance passage, and not infrequently we found there the piece of inlay, or whatever it might be, for which we were looking. The chariots we have not yet made any attempt to deal with. That must be done in Cairo later on, for they are in a great many sections, and their sorting and treatment will require very considerable working space, much more space than we can possibly arrange for in the valley. As I explained earlier in the chapter, the restoration and study of the material from this tomb will provide work for all of us for many years to come. In the field, preliminary work is as much as we can hope to do. At the end of the season there came the question of packing, always an anxious business, but doubly so in this case owing to the enormous value of the material. Protection from dust as well as from actual damage was an important point, so every object was completely wrapped in cotton wool or cloth or both before it was placed in its box. Delicate surfaces, such as the parts of the throne, the legs of the chairs and beds, or the bows and staves, were swayed in narrow bandages in case anything should work loose in transit. Very fragile objects, like the funerary bouquets and the sandals, which would not bear ordinary packing, were laid in bran. Great care was taken to keep the antiquities in strictly classified groups, textiles all in one box, jewelry all in another, and so on. There may well be a delay of a year or two before some of the boxes are unpacked, and it will be a great saving of time and labour if all the objects of one type are in a single box. Eighty-nine boxes in all were packed, but to lessen the danger in transit these were enclosed within thirty-four heavy packing cases. Then came the question of transport. At the river bank a steam barge was waiting, sent by the Department of Antiquities, but between the laboratory and the river stretched a distance of five and a half miles of rough road, with awkward curves and dangerous gradients. Three possibilities of transport were open to us, camels, hand-porterage, and deco-veal railway, and we decided on the third as least likely to jar the cases. They were loaded, accordingly, on a number of flat cars, and by the evening of May 13th they were ready to begin their journey down the valley, the road by which they had passed under such different circumstances three thousand years before. At daybreak on the following morning the cars began to move. Now, when we talk of railways, the reader must not imagine that we had a line laid down for us all the way to the river, for a permanent way would take many months to construct. We had, on the contrary, to lay it as we went, carrying the rails round in a continuous chain as the cars moved forward. Fifty labourers were engaged in the work, and each had his particular job, pushing the cars, laying the rails, or bringing up the spare ones from behind. It sounds a tedious process, but it is wonderful how fast the ground can be covered. By ten o'clock on the morning of the fifteenth, fifteen hours of actual work, the whole distance had been accomplished, and the cases were safely stowed upon the barge. There were some anxious moments in the rough valley road, but nothing untoward happened, and the fact that the whole operation was carried out in such a short time, and without any kind of mishap, is a fine testimonial to the zeal of our workmen. I may add that the work was carried out under a scorching sun, with a shade temperature of considerably over a hundred, the metal rails under these conditions being almost too hot to touch. On the river journey the cases were in charge of an escort of soldiers supplied by the mudir of the province, and after a seven-day journey all arrived safely in Cairo. There we unpacked a few of the more valuable objects to be placed on immediate exhibition. The rest of the cases remain stored in the museum until such time as we shall be able to take in hand the question of final restorations. By the middle of February our work in the anti-chamber was finished, with the exception of the two sentinel statues left for a special reason, all its contents had been removed to the laboratory, every inch of its floor had been swept and sifted for the last bead or fallen piece of inlay, and it now stood bare and empty. We were ready at last to penetrate the mystery of the sealed door. Friday the 17th was the day appointed, and at two o'clock those who were to be privileged to witness the ceremony met by appointment above the tomb. They included Lord Canarvon, Lady Evelyn Herbert, His Excellency Abdel Halim Pasha Suleiman, Minister of Public Works, Monsieur Lacau, Director General of the Service of Antiquities, Sir William Garstyn, Sir Charles Cust, Mr. Lithgow, Curator of the Egyptian Department of the Metropolitan Museum New York, Professor Breasted, Dr. Alan Gardiner, Mr. Windlock, the Honourable Mervyn Herbert, the Honourable Richard Bethel, Mr. Engelbach, Chief Inspector of the Department of Antiquities, three Egyptian inspectors of the Department of Antiquities, the Representative of the Government Press Bureau, and the members of the staff, about 20 persons in all. By a quarter past two the whole company had assembled, so we removed our coats and filed down the sloping passage into the tomb. In the antechamber everything was prepared and ready, and to those who had not visited it since the original opening of the tomb it must have presented a strange sight. We had screened the statues with boarding to protect them from possible damage, and between them we had erected a small platform just high enough to enable us to reach the upper part of the doorway, having determined, as the safest plan, to work from the top downwards. A short distance back from the platform there was a barrier, and beyond, knowing that there might be hours of work ahead of us, we had provided chairs for the visitors. On either side standards had been set up for our lamps, their light shining full upon the doorway. Looking back, we realized what a strange incongruous picture the Chamber must have presented, but at a time I questioned whether such an idea even crossed our minds. One thought, and one only, was possible. There before us laid a sealed door, and with its opening we were to blot out the centuries and stand in the presence of a king who reigned three thousand years ago. My own feelings, as I mounted the platform, were a strange mixture, and it was with a trembling hand that I struck the first blow. My first care was to locate the wooden lintel above the door. Then, very carefully, I chipped away the plaster and picked out the small stones which formed the uppermost layer of the filling. The temptation to stop and peer inside at every moment was irresistible, and when after about ten minutes of work I had made a hole large enough to enable me to do so, I inserted an electric torch. An astonishing sight its light revealed, for there, within a yard of the doorway, stretching as far as one could see, and blocking the entrance to the Chamber, stood what to all appearance was a solid wall of gold. For the moment there was no clue as to its meaning, so as quickly as I dared I said to work to widen the hole. This had now become an operation of considerable difficulty, for the stones of the masonry were not accurately squared blocks, built regularly upon one another, but rough slabs of varying size, some so heavy that it took all one's strength to lift them. Many of them, too, as the weight above was removed, were left so precariously balanced that the least false movement would have sent them sliding inwards to crush upon the contents of the Chamber below. We were also endeavouring to preserve the seal impressions upon the thick mortar of the outer face, and this added considerably to the difficulty of handling the stones. Mason'd calendar were helping me by this time, and each stone was cleared on a regular system. With a crowbar I gently eased it up, mace holding it to prevent it falling forwards, then he and I lifted it out and passed it back to calendar, who transferred it onto one of the foremen, and so by a chain of workmen up the passage and out of the tomb altogether. With the removal of a very few stones the mystery of the golden wall was solved. We were at the entrance of the actual burial chamber of the King, and that which barred our way was the sight of an immense skilled shrine built to cover and protect the sarcophagus. It was visible now from the anti-chamber by the light of the standard lamps, and as stone after stone was removed, and its gilded surface came gradually into view, we could, as though by electric current, feel the tingle of excitement which thrills the spectators behind the barrier. The photographs on plates 43 and 44, taken during the progress of the work, will give the reader some idea of what they actually saw. We who were doing the work were probably less excited, for our whole energies were taken up with the task at hand, that of removing the blocking without an accident. The fall of a single stone might have done irreparable damage to the delicate surface of the shrine, so, directly the hole was large enough, we made an additional protection for it by inserting a mattress on the inner side of the door blocking, suspending it from the wooden lintel of the doorway. Two hours of hard work it took us to clear away the blocking, or at least as much of it as was necessary for the moment, and at one point when near the bottom we had to delay operations for a space, while we collected the scattered beads from a necklace brought by the plunderers from the chamber within, and dropped upon the threshold. This last was a terrible trial to our patience, for it was a slow business, and we were all of us excited to see what might be within, but finally it was done, the last stones were removed, and the way to the innermost chamber lay open before us. In clearing away the blocking of the doorway, we had discovered that the level of the inner chamber was about four feet lower than that of the anti-chamber, and this, combined with the fact that there was but a narrow space between door and shrine, made an entrance by no means easy to affect. Fortunately, there were no smaller antiquities at this end of the chamber, so I lowered myself down, and then, taking one of the portable lights, I edged cautiously to the corner of the shrine and looked beyond it. At the corner, two beautiful alabaster vases blocked the way, but I could see that if these were removed we should have a clear path to the other end of the chamber, so, carefully marking the spot on which they stood, I picked them up, with the exception of the king's wishing cup, they were of finer quality and more graceful shape than any we had yet found, and passed them back to the anti-chamber. Lord Canarvon and Monsieur Lacourt now joined me, and, picking our way along the narrow passage between shrine and wall, paying out the wire of our light behind us, we investigated further. It was beyond any question the sepulchral chamber in which we stood, for there, towering above us, was one of the great guild shrines beneath which kings were laid. So enormous was this structure, 17 feet by 11 feet and 9 feet high, we found afterwards, that it filled within a little the entire area of the chamber, a space of some 2 feet only separating it from the walls on all four sides, while its roof, with cornice top and torus molding, reached almost to the ceiling. From top to bottom it was overlaid with gold, and upon its sides there were inlaid panels of brilliant blue pheons, in which were represented, repeated over and over, the magic symbols which would ensure its strength and safety. Around the shrine, resting upon the ground, there were a number of funerary emblems, and at the north end the seven magic ores the king would need to ferry himself across the waters of the underworld. The walls of the chamber, unlike those of the anti-chamber, were decorated with brightly painted scenes and inscriptions, brilliant in their colors, but evidently somewhat hastily executed. These last details we must have noticed subsequently, for at the time our one thought was of the shrine and of its safety, had the thieves penetrated within it and disturbed the royal burial. Here on the eastern end were the great folding doors closed and bolted, but not sealed, that would answer the question for us. Eagerly we drew the bolts, swung back the doors, and there within was a second shrine with similar bolted doors, and upon the bolts a seal intact. This seal we determined not to break, for our doubts were resolved, and we could not penetrate further without risk of serious damage to the monument. I think at the moment we did not even want to break the seal, for a feeling of intrusion had descended heavily upon us with the opening of the doors, heightened probably by the almost painful impressiveness of a linen pole decorated with golden rosettes, which drooped above the inner shrine. We felt that we were in the presence of the dead king and must do him reverence, and in imagination could see the doors of the successive shrines open one after the other till the innermost disclosed the king himself. Carefully, and as silently as possible, we reclosed the great swing doors and passed on to the farther end of the chamber. Here a surprise awaited us, for a low door eastwards from the sepulchral chamber gave entrance to yet another chamber, smaller than the outer ones and not so lofty. This doorway, unlike the others, had not been closed and sealed. We were able, from where we stood, to get a clear view of the whole of the contents, and a single glance sufficed to tell us that here, within this little chamber lay the greatest treasures of the tomb. Facing the doorway on the farther side stood the most beautiful monument that I have ever seen, so lovely that it made one gasp with wonder and admiration. The central portion of it consisted of a large shrine-shaped chest, completely overlaid with gold and surmounted by a cornice of sacred cobras. Surrounding this, freestanding, were statues of the four tutelary goddesses of the dead, gracious figures with outstretched protective arms, so natural and lifelike in their pose, so pitiful and compassionate the expression upon their faces, that one felt it almost sacrilege to look at them. One guarded the shrine on each of its four sides, but whereas the figures at front and back kept their gaze firmly fixed upon their charge, an additional note of touching realism was imparted by the other two, for their heads were turned sideways, looking over their shoulders towards the entrance, as though to watch against surprise. There is a simple grandeur about this monument that made an irresistible appeal to the imagination, and I am not ashamed to confess that it brought a lump to my throat. It is undoubtedly the canopic chest and contains the jars which play such an important part in the ritual of mummification. There were a number of other wonderful things in the chamber, but we found it hard to take them in at the time, so inevitably were one's eyes drawn back again and again to the lovely little goddess figures. Immediately in front of the entrance laid a figure of the jackal god Anubis upon his shrine, swathed in linen cloth, and resting upon a portable sled, and behind this the head of a bull upon a stand, emblems these of the underworld. In the south side of the chamber lay an endless number of black shrines and chests, all closed and sealed save one, whose open doors revealed statues of Tutankhamun standing upon black leopards. On the father wall were more shrine-shaped boxes and miniature coffins of gilded wood, these last undoubtedly containing funerary statuettes of the king. In the center of the room, left of the Anubis and the bull, there was a row of magnificent caskets of ivory and wood, decorated and inlaid with gold and blue-fie arms, one whose lid we raised, containing a gorgeous ostrich feather fan with ivory handle, fresh and strong to all appearance as when it left the maker's hand. There were also, distributed in different quarters of the chamber, a number of modal boats with sails and rigging all complete, and, at the north side, yet another chariot. Such, from a hurried survey, were the contents of this innermost chamber. We looked anxiously for evidence of plundering, but on the surface there was none. Unquestionably the thieves must have entered, but they cannot have done more than open two or three of the caskets. Most of the boxes, as has been said, have still their seals intact, and the whole contents of the chamber, in fortunate contrast to those of the anti-chamber, anti-enex, still remain in position exactly as they were placed at the time of burial. How much time we occupied in this first survey of the wonders of the tomb, I cannot say, but it must have seemed endless to those anxiously waiting in the anti-chamber. No more than three at a time could be admitted with safety. So, when Lord Carnarvon and Monsieur Lacourt came out, the others came in pairs. First Lady Evelyn Herbert, the only woman present, with Sir William Garstyn, and then the rest in turn. It was curious, as we stood in the anti-chamber, to watch their faces, as one by one they emerged from the door. Each had a dazed bewildered look in his eyes, and each in turn, as he came out, threw up his hands before him, an unconscious gesture of impotence to describe in words the wonders that he had seen. They were indeed indescribable, and the emotions they had aroused in our minds were of too intimate a nature to communicate, even though we had the words at our command. It was an experience which, I am sure, none of us who were present is ever likely to forget, for in imagination, and not wholly in imagination either, we had been present at the funeral ceremonies of a king long dead and almost forgotten. At a quarter past two we had filed down into the tomb, and when, three hours later, hot, dusty, and dishevelled, we came out once more into the light of day, the very valley seemed to have changed for us, and taken on a more personal aspect. We had been given the freedom. February 17 was a day set apart for an inspection of the tomb by Egyptologists, and fortunately most of those who were in the country were able to be present. On the following day the Queen of the Belgians and her son Prince Alexander, who had come to Egypt for that special purpose, honored us with a visit, and were keenly interested in everything they saw. Lord and Lady Allenby and a number of other distinguished visitors were present on this occasion. A week later, for reasons stated in an earlier chapter, the tomb was closed and once again reburied. So ends our preliminary seasons where I conned a tomb of King Tutankhamun, now as to that which lies ahead of us. In the coming winter our first task, a difficult and anxious one, will be the dismantling of the shrines in the sepulchral chamber. It is probable, from evidence supplied by the Ramesses for Papyrus, that there will be a succession of no fewer than five of these shrines, built one within the other before we come to the stone sarcophagus in which the king is lying, and in the spaces between these shrines we may expect to find a number of beautiful objects. With the mummy, if, as we hope and believe, it remains untouched by plunderers, there should certainly lie the crowns and other regalia of a king of Egypt. How long this work in the sepulchral chamber will take we cannot tell at present, but it must be finished before we tackle the innermost chamber of all, and we shall count ourselves lucky if we can accomplish the clearing of both in a single season. A further season will surely be required for the annex with its confused jumble of contents. Imagination falter is at the thought of what the tomb may yet disclose, for the material dealt with in the present volume represents but a quarter, and that probably the least important quarter of the treasure which it contains. There are still many exciting moments in store for us before we complete our task, and we look forward eagerly to the work that lies ahead. One shadow must inevitably rest upon it, one regret which all the world must share, the fact that Lord Carnarvon was not permitted to see the full fruition of his work, and in the completion of that work we, who are to carry it out, would dedicate to his memory the best that in us lies.