 Dedication and Preface of the Tomb of Tutankhamun The Tomb of Tutankhamun Discovered by the late Earl of Carnarvon and Howard Carter by Howard Carter and A.C. Mace Volume 1 Dedication With the full sympathy of my collaborator, Mr. Mace, I dedicate this account of the discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun to the memory of my beloved friend and colleague, Lord Carnarvon, who died in the hour of his triumph. But for his untiring generosity and constant encouragement our labours could never have been crowned with success. His judgment in ancient art has rarely been equaled. His efforts, which have done so much to extend our knowledge of Egyptology, will ever be honoured in history, and by me his memory will always be cherished. Preface This narrative of the discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun is merely preliminary. A final record of purely scientific nature will take some time, nor can it be adequately made until the work of investigation of the Tomb and its vast material has been completed. Nevertheless, in view of the public interest in our discovery, we felt that some account without loss of time, no matter how summary, was necessary, and that is the reason for the publication of this book. We have here for the first time a royal burial very little disturbed in spite of the hurried plundering it has suffered at the hands of the ancient Tomb robbers, and within the shrines of the Tomb chamber I believe the pharaoh lies intact in all his royal magnificence. It has been suggested by certain Egyptologists that we should write up in the summer and publish at once all we have done in the winter. But there is, outside the stress of work and other duties, a strong reason against this. Our work will take several seasons of concentrated labour on our discovery, the Tomb of the contents of which we are making as faithful a record as possible. If, following the advice of our critics, we were to write up our progress in detail before our work could be collated in its entirety, mistakes would necessarily creep in, which, when once made, would be hard to rectify. We dare for adventure to hope that the method we have adopted is more in the interest of scientific accuracy and less likely to give rise to erroneous impressions. Nor are warnings wanting against undue haste. For instance, we bear in mind the vault containing the cache of Ankenatan found in this valley. The account of this important and interesting discovery was hurriedly published and announced as the Tomb of Queen Tiye, whereas, after more careful investigation, only one object in that magnificent find, the so-called canopy, which apparently had had an extraordinary influence on the minds of its discoveries and recorders, could be claimed as possibly belonging to that queen. Such mistakes as these we wish to avoid. Moreover, as we have yet seen, only one quarter of the contents of this tomb in this preliminary account we venture to claim the indulgence of the reader. He will understand that it must be subject to possible future correction in accordance with the nature of facts revealed by the further progress of our work. When, by the dim light of a candle, we made the first cursory examination of the anti-chamber, we thought that one of the caskets, number 101, contained rolls of papyri. But later, under the rays of a powerful electric light, these proved to be rolls of linen, which had even then some resemblance to rolls of papyri. This was naturally disappointing, and gave rise to the suggestion that the historical harvest, compared with the artistic value of our discovery, will be unimportant because of the lack of literary evidence concerning King Tutankhamun and the political confusion of his time. It has also been argued that these chambers do not represent the actual tomb of the king, but that Horemhub, Tutankhamun's second successor, had probably usurped his real tomb and hurriedly placed his furniture in the chambers of this vault. Nor is this all. It has also been said that it was merely a cache, and further it has even more improbably been conjectured that the objects found therein were a collection of palace furniture, belonging to the dynasty, and hidden there, as Tutankhamun was the last of that royal line, and that of these many were of Mesopotamian origin. I may perhaps be pardoned for here observing that these criticisms have been advanced by authors who have never seen the tomb, let alone its contents. Now, in reply to these objections, I would here say that, so far as we have gone, we have found nothing that should not belong to the funerary equipment of the king. All the objects are in perfect keeping with the evidence and knowledge gleaned from the fragmentary material of the royal tombs of the new empire discovered in this valley, and they are in every way pure late 18th dynasty Egyptian. That this discovery is the real tomb of Tutankhamun, there can, I think, be no doubt, but it must be remembered that, like the tomb of Ay, his immediate successor, it is of semi-royal and semi-private type. In fact, it is rather the sepulchre of a possible heir to the throne, than that of a king. A comparison of the tomb plan with that of the tombs of the king's mothers, the king's wives, and the king's children, in the valley of the queens, and with the tombs of his predecessors and successors in the valley of the kings, will, I think, show this. From its style of work and certain idiosyncrasies observable, it is not improbable that it was made by the same hand as the vault that contained the transported burial of Ankenadten, which is in its near vicinity. The plan of that vault closely resembles the tomb of Tutankhamun, and both are alike variants of the plan and principles of the tombs of the Theban monarchs of the empire. The apparent curtailment of design in the Ankenadten vault, it having alone the only completed chamber, was probably due to its being made for a cash to receive nothing but the revered mummy, with a few essentials belonging to its burial. It may be for that reason that we find only the first chamber, the anti-chamber, prepared and plastered to receive those remains. It should also be noted that in the right hand wall of this one chamber the ancient Egyptian mason commenced the second room, which now, in its incomplete state, suggests a niche, but on comparing it with the grave of Tutankhamun the idea and the intention become obvious. It was to be a sepulchral hall. In other words, in the design there is a certain affinity with the tomb of Ankenadten at El Amarna, and the vault devised for a cash in this valley for the so-called heretic king, and also with the tombs of Tutankhamun and I, which is peculiar to that El Amarna branch of the dynasty. With them we also find the finest art of the imperial age in Egypt, and also the germ of its decadence, which made itself manifest in the succeeding nineteenth dynasty. It was King I, Tutankhamun's successor, who buried our monarch, for there, on the inner walls of Tutankhamun's tomb-chamber, I, as king, has caused himself to be represented among the religious scenes, officiating before Tutankhamun, a scene unprecedented in the royal tombs of Disnacropolis. It were, perhaps, well, at this point, to say something concerning the mentality of the ancient Egyptians as manifested in their art, which is closely associated with their religion. If we study the ancient Egyptian religious ideas, we may be absorbed by the curious medley of their methodology, yet in the end we shall feel that we have progressed beyond them. But if once we have acquired the power of admiring and understanding their art, we do not, for the most part, entertain this assurance of aesthetic progress and superiority. Perhaps we may do so in minor details, but no sensible person will ever imagine that he has got beyond the essentials their art embodies. We cannot with all our progress get beyond those essentials. Egyptian art expresses its aim in a stately and simple convention, and is thus dignified by its own sedateness, and was never wanting in reverence. No doubt lack of perspective in their art implies limitation. Therefore not a little must be surrendered to this limitation, but within its convention the best Egyptian art embodies refinement, embodies love of simplicity, patience in execution, and never descends to an unideal copy of nature. Simplicity is the sign of greatness in art, and the Egyptians never stove to be original or to be sensational. Within the travels of his convention the ancient Egyptian looked at nature through his own eyes, and thus character was imparted alone by his subjective personality, whether from a religious or aesthetic point of view. It is for this reason that Egyptian portraiture to the untrained eye often appears to have a certain sameness and even monotony. This, however, is really due to the convention of the epoch, whereby individual traits were softened in accordance with the ideals of the Egyptian convention. These facts are manifested by the material in the tomb of Tutankhamun. We are astounded by the immense productivity of the art of its period which it contains, but in studying it a somewhat unexpected aspect of the character and domestic tastes of the king is suggested. Tutankhamun's tastes seem to have been rather those of a nobleman than those associated with the religious and official art dominant in this royal Theban cemetery. In the art of his tomb it is the domestic affection and solar tendency that are the dominant ideas, rather than the austere religious convention that characterizes all the other royal tombs in this valley. Among the immense quantities of material in Tutankhamun's tomb, as also exhibited in the beautiful reliefs of his reign in the great colonnade of the temple of Luxor, we find extreme delicacy of style, together with character of the utmost refinement. In the case of a painted scene, vase or a statue, the primary idea of art is obvious, but in utilitarian objects such as a walking stick, staff or wine strainer, art, as we know too well today, is not a necessity. Here in this tomb the artistic value seems to have been always the first consideration. This is scarcely the place to discuss the question of ancient Egyptian art, as the book deals mainly with the actual finding of the tomb. But the valley cannot be overlooked, and it will be helpful to include some general statements upon its impressive history, as well as to record certain unexpected events to which the discovery gave rise. After so many years of barren labour a sudden development of great magnitude finds one unprepared. One is, for instance, confronted by the question of adequate and competent assistance. In this case the help needed obviously included the all-important recording, photographing, planning and the preservation of the objects, the letter demanding chemical knowledge. But the first and most pressing need was that of photography and drawing. Nothing could be contemplated until a full pictorial record of the contents of the antechamber had been made. This must not only include photographs of the general disposition of the objects therein and the order of their sequence, but must afterwards be followed by diagrammatic drawings showing relative positions as seen from above, a task involving not only photographic skill of a high order, but also that of an experienced surveyor. Then came the consideration of their preservation, their removal and their description, the work of a chemist, of a man experienced in the handling of antiquities, and finally of an archaeologist. This problem was quickly solved through the generosity of our colleagues of the American Expedition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York. In answer to my appeal, my most esteemed friend and colleague, Mr. A. M. Lithgow, the curator of the Egyptian Department of that Museum, whose kind offer was subsequently most generously confirmed by his trustees and director, cabled and placed at my disposal to the detriment of their own work such members of their staff as might be required. For such luck as this I had not dared to hope. It included the services of Mr. A. C. Mace, one of their associate curators, of Mr. Harry Burton, their expert photographic recorder, to whom the photographs in this volume are due, and of Mesa's Hall and Hauser, draftsmen to their expedition, a group of very able fieldmen, and all of wide archaeological knowledge. And let me hear place on record the sacrifice that Mr. Mace, the director of their excavations on the pyramid field at Lischt, made in our interests, which meant the abandonment of his many years of research work at Lischt, and I should add that the preparation of this book has fallen largely on his shoulders. At the same time I must express our most sincere and grateful thanks to the trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York, to their director, Mr. Edward Robinson, to Mr. Lithgow, and also to Mr. H. E. Windlock, whose expedition for them at Thebes was thus considerably denuded. While in Cairo another stroke of good luck occurred. Mr. Lucas, director of the chemical department of the Egyptian government, for the moment free of his official duties, offered us the valuable aid of his chemical knowledge. Previous to this, when I realized the probable magnitude of the discovery, Mr. A. R. Callender at Erment, who had often assisted me on former occasions, at once came to my aid. Dr. Alan Gardiner also very kindly placed his unrivaled philological knowledge at our disposal. Moreover, Professor James H. Breasted, of the University of Chicago, the eminent historian of ancient Egypt, then in Egypt, gave me his valued advice and enlightened me upon the historical data and evidence of the seal impressions on the four sealed doorways found in various conditions in the tomb. Throughout the whole of this undertaking, we received the utmost courtesy and kindness from all the officials connected with the department of antiquities of the Egyptian government, and I herewith desire to express the acknowledgement due to Mr. Lacot, Director-General of the Service des Antiquités. And here I may mention how much I am indebted to the members of the Times staff for all their ready cooperation in all matters, even those outside the sphere of their own interests. My appreciative thanks are also due to Lady Berkley, Lord Canarvon's devoted sister, for the biographical introduction which she has so kindly contributed, for no one could have been better fitted to carry out this task. I must also thank my dear friend Mr. Percy White, the novelist, Professor of English Literature in the Egyptian University, for his ungrudging literary help. Lastly, I should like to express my recognition of the services of my Egyptian staff of workmen, who have loyally and conscientiously carried out every duty which I entrusted to them. The letter on page 15, which, in its quaint English, shows their seal during my absence, should perhaps go on record. Howard Carter, August 1923 August 1923 End of Preface Section 1 of The Tomb of Tutankhamun by Howard Carter This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Abahi in March 2019 Introduction Part 1 Biographical Sketch of the Late Lord Canarvon by Lady Berkley If it is true that the whole world loves a lover, it is also true that either openly or secretly the world loves romance. Hence, doubtless, the passionate and far-flung interest aroused by the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb and interest extended to the discoverer and certainly not lessened by the swift tragedy that waited on his brief hour of triumph. A story that opens like Alladin's Cave and ends like a Greek myth of Nemesis cannot fail to capture the imagination of all men and women, who, in this workaday existence, can still be moved by tales of high endeavour and unrelenting doom. Let it be gratefully acknowledged by those to whom Canarvon's going must remain an ever-enduring sorrow that the sympathy displayed equals the excitement evoked by the revelations in the Valley of the Kings. It is in thankful response to that warm-hearted sympathy that this slight sketch of a many-sided personality around whom such emotions have centred finds place here as introduction to the history of that discovery to which the discoverer so eagerly devoted his energies and ultimately sacrificed his life. To those who knew Lord Canarvon, there is a singular fitness in the fact that he should have been the hero of one of the most dramatic episodes of the present day, since, under the quiet exterior of this reticent Englishman, beat in truth a romantic heart. The circumstances of his life had undoubtedly fostered the natural bent of his character. Born on June 26, 1866, George Edward Stanhope Molyneux-Herbert, Lord Porchester, enjoyed the inestimable privilege of being reared in an atmosphere coloured by romance and permeated by a fine simplicity. Nor was he less happy in his outward surroundings. Even when matched against the many stately homes of England, High Clear must rank as a domain of rare beauty. Much of its charm is due to its contrasted scenery. From the close-cropped lawns shaded by giant cedars of Lebanon, where in a past century Pope sat and discoursed with his friend Robert Caroline Herbert, the godson and namesake of George II's queen, the transition is brief to thickets of hawthorn, woods of beach and oak, and lakes, the happy haunts of wildfowl, while all around stand the high downs either densely timbered or as bare and wild as when the Brightons built their camp of refuge on Beacon Hill, the great chalk bastion that dominates the countryside. To children nurtured on Arthurian legends, it needed little mental effort to translate the woodlands where they galloped their ponies into the forest of Procellion, or the old monkish fishponds where they angled for pike and gathered water lilies into that magic mea which swallowed up the good blade-excalibre, whilst the mount rising from a distant gravel pit merely required the drawbridge, erected by the obliging house carpenter across its surrounding trickle of water, to become tinta-drill. If, as any Catholic priest would assure us, the indelible impressions on the human mind are those stamped in the earliest years, portraits are graduated in a school of romance and adventure. Moreover, hereditary influences combined with environment to give an individual outlook on life. The son of two high-minded parents, who were ever striving to give practical effect to their ideas for the benefit of others, there was nothing to unlearn in the early education. Indeed, it can confidently be asserted that, throughout his childhood, the curly-headed little boy neither heard nor witnessed anything that common was or mean. The village, the household, were members of the family. It was the feudal, the patriarchal system at its best, the dreams of young England realized. For the law that governed the community at high clear was the law of kindness, though kindness that permitted no compromise with moral laxity. An amusing commentary on the standards recognized as governing, or at any rate expected to govern, home life, was furnished on one occasion by the children's nurse. One of her nurselings, thoroughly scared by the blood-curdling descriptions of hell and hellfire, contained in a horrible little religious primer, the people-day, now mercifully discarded by later generations, administered to her by an interditious governess, naturally turned to the beloved nana for consolation. She did not seek in vain. Don't worry, dearie, over such tales, said the good old woman, no one from high clear castle will ever go to hell. By common consent, Porchester's father, the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, was regarded as a statesman who had never allowed ambition to deflect him by a hair's breadth from the path mapped out by a meticulous conscience. But although he had resigned from the derby Disraeli government, rather than support the franchise bill of 1867, he was the reverse of a reactionary. Both in imperial and social schemes, he was far in advance of most of his contemporaries on both sides in politics. Indeed, it is interesting to speculate how much of blood and treasure would have been spared to this country if the measures and judgment of this truly conservative statesman had commanded the support of the cabinets and party with which he was connected. Little boys are not interested in politics, except in lighting bonfires to celebrate successful elections, but whatever are the eventual developments, environment and heredity are the bedrock whence character is hewn. The Fifth Earl of Carnarvon, the archaeologist, in his physical and mental makeup, to use the modern phrase, did not recall his father. But it was from the letter that he inherited the quality of independent thought, coupled with an extreme pleasure in putting his mind alongside that of other men. Moreover, the power of scholarly concentration which he brought to bear on the many and varied subjects in which he was interested was certainly part of the paternal heritage, for the Fourth Earl was one of the finest classical scholars of his generation. Indeed, there are those still living who can bear witness to his faultless Latin oration as viceroy at Trinity College Dublin, and remember his admission, when pressed, that he could as easily have made the speech in Greek. In 1875 a shadow fell across to boy's life. His mother died after giving birth to a third daughter. The shadow was destined to be enduring, since Evelyn Stanhope, Lady Carnarvon, was one of those rare women who are in the world and yet not of it, and the want of her clever sympathy was a lifelong loss to Porchester. His whimsical wit and her keen sense of humor were made for mutual understanding. She would have helped him to overcome the ingrained reserve, which it needed the action of years to wear away at the outset interpreting an unusual character to the world and the world to her son. Even when the surviving parent is as devoted a father as was Lord Carnarvon, it is perhaps unavoidable that the mother's death should bring an element of austerity into children's lives, though it also tends, as it certainly did in this instance, to tighten the links between brother and sisters. After their mother's death, Porchester or Porchy, as he was then habitually called, and the little girls were, however, unspeakably blessed in the devoted affection lavished upon them by their father's sisters Lady Gwendolyn Herbert and Evelyn Lady Portsmouth. The former was a delicate invalid, around whose sofa young and old clustered secure of sympathy in sorrow or in joy. The fact that an unhappy chance had cheated her of her share of youth's fun and gaiety made her the more intent on securing these for the motherless children in whose lives she'd realized her own life. She was the natural interpreter when vengeance threatened to follow on chemical experiments resulting in semi-asphyxiating and wholly malodorous vapours, or when excursions amongst water taps sent cataracts of water down the van dykes. The schoolroom discipline of the seventies was not conceived on Montessori lines. The extreme mildness of Lady Gwendolyn's rule did not always commend itself to tutors and governesses. They recalled that a spear, which at his earnest entreaty she had bestowed on Porchy, was fleshed in a valuable engraving, while another of her gifts, a large saw, was regarded as so dangerous that it became taboo and hung suspended by a broad blue ribbon, a curious ornament on the schoolroom wall. Nor can it be denied that to present a small boy with half a crown to console him for breaking a window is a homeopathic method of education, which would excite protests from pastors and teachers of any age. But despite her unfailing indulgence, her influence was never enervating. It is what we are, not our sayings, and still less our scoldings that count with those keen-eyed critics, the younger generation. Naughtiness in Gwendolyn's neighbourhood was unthinkable. In her own person she so endeared the quality of gentleness, not a virtue always popular with the young of the male sex, that Porchy's sisters and small half-brothers never suffered from roughness at his hands. At ease he was, a terrific tease then and to the end of life, in sober middle age getting the same rapture from a rise out of his friends or family as a fifth-form schoolboy. But the strand of gentleness that ran through his nature was not its least-attaching quality, fostered in those early days by the one effectual method of education, the example of those we love. Long years afterwards, when her nephew laid Lendo Gwendolyn to rest at High Clear, he reverted with grateful tenderness to the memories, the lessons of that selfless love. What a blank he wrote would the absence of that little figure in grey mean to him at the family gatherings, the christenings, the weddings, where her presence carried him back to all the lovely memories of childhood. Never robust it is doubtful whether Lord Carnarvon would have accomplished even his brief span of life but for the part played in his boyhood by Lady Portsmouth and her home, Eggsford, which became his second home. The England of the Seventies was still an age of hermetically closed windows, overheated rooms, comforters and, worst horror of all, respirators. Fortunately for the boy, Lady Portsmouth, a pioneer in many phases of work and thought, was a strenuous advocate of open air. The delicate, white-faced child, after a couple of months spent in hunting and out-of-door games with the tribe of cousins in North Devon, was transformed into a hardy young sportsman. At Eggsford, horses and hounds were as much the foreground of life as politics and books at High Clear. Mr. Sponges' sporting tour replaced Marmian, though it was the talisman and Ivanhoe that Lady Portsmouth read aloud to the family in the cherished evening hour, the climax of the busy, happy day at Eggsford. Different as the two houses might appear, they were, however, alike in essentials. They owned the same ethics, they acknowledged the same standards. High Clear could not be called conventional, but Eggsford, in a country which before the advent of the motor preserved much of the flavour of the past, was distinctly unconventional. The meats brought into the field are motley assembly of men, boys, horses and ponies, such as probably outside Ireland could have been collected in no other corner of the United Kingdom. Of these, not the least individual figure was Lord Portsmouth, probably the most popular MFH in England. Seldom, indeed, can Goodwill to men of Goodwill have been more clearly writ large on human countenance than on this great gentleman's, whose varied raciness of expression only the more endeared him to the hunt. In later life Lord Canarvon's friends often noted with amusement his fondness for those they describe as quaint personalities. It may be that this taste owed its origin to those holiday hours spent waiting for the fox and spinnies, and by large words dappled with the early greenery of the incomparable West Country springtide. Perhaps it was there also that he received lessons in a less facile art than the observation of the quaint and curious. The perfect ease of friendship, a friendship that excludes alike patronage and familiarity, was the keynote of the old MFH's intercourse with man, woman, and child on those mornings. It was much the same keynote that governed Lord Canarvon's relations with persons whose circumstances and mentality might seem to set a wide distance between them. Those who traveled with him on his annual journey, or progress, rather, from Paddington to a high clear at Christmas, can never forget the warmth of greetings his presence called forth in the railway employees of all grades, from inspectors to engine drivers. The festival gave them, and gave him, an opportunity of expressing their feeling, their genuine feeling, for one another. It is no exaggeration to say that it was a moving scene, singularly appropriate to the celebration of the great family feast of the year. A private school and Eaton are the successive steps which automatically prepare a boy in Porchester's position for a future career. His private school was not happily chosen. It subsisted on its former reputation, and neither diet nor instruction was up to the mark, but he was at least fortunate in emerging alive from an epidemic of measles, which the boys treated by pouring jugs of cold water on each other when uncomfortably feverish. To the end Eaton retained in his eyes that glamour which marks the true Eatonian, and his tutor, Mr. Merendin, shared in that affection. Yet it was something of a misfortune that school did nothing for the formation of methodical habits in a boy endowed with an exceptionally fine memory and unusual quickness. It would, for instance, have been a blessing if an expensive education had taught him to answer his letters. Thus, on one occasion, literary circles rang with the wrathful denunciations of a distinguished critic, who had vainly applied to Lord Carnarvon, as heir to the 18th-century Lord Chesterfield, for information regarding that statement's relations with Montesquieu. It was known that the author of L'Esprit de Loire had visited either Chesterfield House or Bretby, where it was presumed that some trace of the visit might be found. On inquiry it transpired that Lord Carnarvon had spent hours, if not days, searching the library at Bretby, a library collected entirely by Lord Chesterfield for any vestiges of Montesquieu. But the search having proved vain, it had not occurred to Carnarvon to send a postcard to that effect, if only to point out how much trouble he had taken on an unknown stranger's behalf. Before he left home for school, tutors and governesses had pronounced Porchy to be idle, and probably, as in the case of most active young creatures, it was no easy task to hold his sustained attention. Yet, judged by the less exacting standards of the present day, a child of ten would now scarcely be considered backward, who was bilingual, French being the language used with mother and teachers, was possessed of a fair knowledge of German, the Latin grammar and the elements of Greek, and sang charmingly to the old tin kettle of a schoolroom piano. Labels are fatal things. Once labelled idle, it is the pupil and not the instructor who earns the blame. Perhaps also the perfection of the father's scholarship was a stumbling block to the son. It is one of life's little ironies, on which schoolmasters should ponder, that a man destined to reveal the whole chapter of the ancient world to the 20th century frankly detested the classics as taught at Eaton. The fourth Earl was too sensible to insist on his son pursuing indefinitely studies doomed to failure. Porchester left Eaton early to study with a tutor at home and abroad, what would now be called the modern side. The amount of strenuous scientific work achieved in the little laboratory by the side of the lake at Highclear, or during walking tours through the Black Forest, was probably small, but at any rate these two Wanderjahren left him in possession of a store of miscellaneous information seldom accumulated by the average schoolboy, the very material to stimulate his natural versatility. Some months were spent at Emberton under the tuition of the future Bishop of London, Dr. Creighton, to whose memory he remained much attached. Work with crammers in England and at Hanover, with a view to entering the army, formed the next phase. The project of a military career, however, proved evanescent, and in 1885 Lord Porchester was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge. It was characteristic that, being struck with the beauty of the panelling in his college rooms, he offered the authorities to have the many coats of paint disfiguring the woodwork scraped off, and the rooms restored at his own expense, an offer unfortunately refused. Collecting was not then the universal mania it has now become, but the undergraduate was fathered to the man who was eventually regarded as a court of appeal by the big dealers in London. But long before Cambridge curiosity shops had been his happy hunting grounds. As a little lad, besides the stereotyped properties of the average schoolboy, the inevitable stamp album and a snake, the letter housed for a whole term at Eaton in his desk, when he had a few shillings to spare, blue and white cups or specimens of cottage china would be added to his store of treasures. He was still at Cambridge when he began collecting French prints and drawings, notably the Robs drawings, now highly valued by connoisseurs, then bought for a few francs. Nevertheless, at this period sport rather than antiquities was the main interest of the young man's life, and it is to be feared that he was more often seen at new market than at lectures. His father had recently built a villa on the Italian Riviera at Portofino, a lonely promontory, then absolutely remote from tourists, as a deep chasm in the high road leading to the little seaport formed an effectual barrier to communications, safe by sea, with the outer world. As a means of locomotion, Porchester acquired a sailing boat, and therewith acquired a passion for the water. The Mediterranean is not the Halcyon Lake it is sometimes painted by Northern imagination. Indeed, Lerici, with its tragic memories of Shelley, is a warning, almost within view of Portofino, of the risks that attend on the mariner who neglects to shorten sail when a sudden gust sweeps down from the overhanging mountains. These squalls more than once nearly brought about the end of the young me-lord, the Italian boatmen having a tiresome habit at such crisis of falling on their knees to invoke the Madonna, while Porchester and his stolid English servant were left unassisted to bring the boat to harbour. To the born adventurer the zest of adventure lies in its flavour of danger, and it was the hazards run on these excursions that inoculated him with the love of seafaring. When he left Cambridge in 1887, he had once embarked in a sailing yacht for a cruise around the world, and henceforth it may be said that the lure of adventure never ceased to haunt him. From Vigo he sailed to the Cupverde islands, the West Indies, posted Pernambuco, and then led drive for forty-two days on end through the great solitude of the tropical seas till he brought up a trio. It was on this voyage that he acquired the passion for reading, which was to be the mainstay of his existence, again which was cheaply purchased at the cost of those long months spent under the Southern Cross. He was wont to say that, fond as he was of sport and motoring, he would gladly never stir out of his chair, if only when he finished one absorbing book another equally absorbing could drop into his hands. Thus the curtain being wrung down on his academic studies, the once idle undergraduate, flung himself with avidity into the pursuit of knowledge, and especially of history, certain periods of which he studied with the meticulous research of a professor preparing a course of lectures. Life on board the Aphrodite was not, however, solely dedicated to placid readings of successive series of improving tomes. There are bound to be pleasant and unpleasant episodes on a long voyage, and the young man had his fill of both. In a high gale, while the captain lay unconscious and delirious, Porchester took command, and luck and a good first mate being with him brought the yacht safe to land. Again, when one of the crew injured himself, and the ship's doctor was forced to operate, it was Porchester who, his finger on the man's pulse, administered the chloroform with the neatness and calm of a professional anesthetist. At Buenos Aires, then in the flood tide of prosperity, with two Italian opera companies performing nightly to Argentine millionaires, the young Englishman met with a cordial welcome from all classes of the community, native and foreign alike. In the style of the traditional Milord, he feasted the president on the Aphrodite, the first yacht to cast anchor in Argentine waters, while he also made friends with men of business, the admiral commanding the British squadron, and the Italian opera singers. He rather plumed himself on the latter company, having once called on him to replace their missing accompanist at a rehearsal. He admitted, for he loved telling a story against himself, that the request was never repeated, as he insisted on taking the artists according to his, rather than according to their notion of time. Of all these acquaintances and friendships, admiral Kennedy's undoubtedly was the most valuable, since it was thanks to his vigorous remonstrances that Porchester finally abandoned his projected journey through the Straits of Magellan, which, at the wrong time of year, and in a sailing boat, the admiral declared to be suicidal. The complete tour of the world planned by Porchester therefore failed, but the journey was rich in experiences of all kinds, to a young man fresh from college. From Buenos Aires, Porchester returned in somewhat leisurely manner homewards. Many of the places he visited were Terra Incognita, to the Englishman of that date, and even now are unfamiliar to the average tourist. In the Great War he was one of the few people able to give a first-hand description of the scene of battle at the Falkland Islands, where he had predicted that a decisive fight for the control of the South Atlantic must take place. From these early travels he brought back, however, something more than acquaintance with the waste places of the Earth, beautiful scenery or strange types of humanity. In these wanderings he also saw something of the elemental conditions of life, where a man's hand must needs keep his head, an experience too often denied to the rich man of our latter-day civilization. A bibliophile, a collector of China and drawings, and, indeed, of all things rare and beautiful, with a fine taste intensified by observation and study, his happiest hours were probably those when the unsought adventure called for rapid decision and prompt action. But it should be understood that the adventure must be unsought, for no one was ever less cast in the mold of a Don Quixote. His courage was of that peculiar calm variety, which means a pleasurable quickening of the pulse in the hour of danger. On one occasion in his youth he hired a boat to take him somewhere off the coast to his ship, lying far out to sea. He was alone, steering the little bark rode by a couple of stalwart fishermen. Suddenly, when far removed from land and equally distant from his goal, the two ruffians gave him the choice between payment of a large sum or being pitched into the water. He listened quietly and motioned to them to pass his dressing-bag. They obeyed, already in imagination fingering the English lords ransom. The situation was, however, reversed when he extracted not a well-stuffed pocket-book but a revolver, and pointing it at the pair sternly bait them row on, or he would shoot. The chuckle with which he recalled what was to him an eminently delectable episode still remains with his hero. Truth compels his biographer to admit that he did not always emerge so triumphantly from his adventures. His next long journey was to South Africa. From Durban he wrote to the present writer, announcing his intention to go elephant hunting, and hunting he went, but the parts of hunter and hunted were reversed. Accompanied by a single black, he lay in wait in the jungle for an elephant, and in due course the beast made his appearance. Porchester, generally an admirable shot, fired and missed him, and, after a time, seeing no more of his quarry, slid down the tree where he was perched, intending to ample quietly homewards. To do this he had to cross a piece of bare felt which cut the forest in two. He was well in the middle of this shelterless tract when he perceived that he was being stalked by the elephant, so he had no time to reload, and took to his heels with a speed he had never imagined he could compass. His rifle, his cartridge pouch, his glasses, his coat were all flung away as he ran for dear life, with the vindictive beast pounding on behind him. To him, as to the Spaniard, haste, on foot at least, had always been of the devil. Yet now, with life as the goal, it was he who won the race. He reached the friendly jungle, again climbed the tree, and was saved. To be chased by an elephant and escape, he was afterwards told, was a more unusual feat than to bring one down to his gun. Eventually he became one of the half dozen best shots in England, but never again did he go elephant hunting. The journey to South Africa was followed by another to Australia and Japan, when Sporchester returned in the early summer of 1890, happily just in time to be with his father, during Lord Carnarvon's last illness and death. The new Lord was only twenty-three when he entered on his heritage, and save that his passion for sport kept him at High Clear and Bretby during the shooting season, and his love for the opera for a few weeks in London during the summer, he remained constant to his love of travel. He would suddenly dash off to Paris or Constantinople, Sweden, Italy or Berlin, for long or short periods, returning home equally unexpectedly, having collected pictures and books and any number of acquaintances and friends, some of whose names, unfamiliar then, have since loomed as large in the world's history as they did in the young traveller's tales. Not that at this phase he was unduly communicative, he rather affected the elusive style as, when I saw the chief of the mafia in Naples, a style eminently adapted to wet curiosities which he would then smilingly put by, to the despair of a hero who naturally wished to know how he came across that mysterious potentate. His sense of fun made him more explicit with regard to his efforts to achieve acquaintance with another lurid character. This was no other than the late Sultan Abdul the Damned, with whom during one of his visits to Constantinople, Carnarvon was seized with a desire to obtain an interview. Carnarvon's wardrobe was never his strong point. He had no uniform, but he fervished up a yard jacket with extra brass buttons and hoped his attire would pass muster with the Chamberlain's department. His name having been submitted through the Embassy to the proper quarters, he was informed that an inquiry and a carriage would convey him to the yieldest kiosk. On the appointed day the official made his appearance wearing, however, an embarrassed air, for he had to explain that H.M., though profoundly desolated, found himself unable to receive his low-chip. Perhaps another day? No, the Sultan feared no other day was available, but as a slight token of his esteem he begged Lord Carnarvon's acceptance of the accompanying High Order. Carnarvon declined the order, which he would certainly never have worn, and was left equally vexed and puzzled. It took some time to arrive at any explanation, but at last this was achieved. His father, the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, had travelled extensively in Turkey, with the results that he retained a profound horror of the misgovernment of that unhappy country and an equally profound sympathy for the persecuted Christian races. He became the chairman of the society for the protection of the Armenians and was regarded as one of their chief sympathisers. This was known to Abdul, though neither he nor his ministers had realized that this Lord Carnarvon was dead and that a young man, bearing his name indeed, but otherwise not having inherited his political views or influence, was the English Lord who had requested an audience of the Sultan. Abdul lived in perpetual dread of assassination and in a special of assassination by one of the race he had so cruelly persecuted. He therefore jumped to the conclusion that Lord Carnarvon had asked for an interview with the purpose of killing him and firmly declined to allow the supposed desperado to enter his prisons. Lovers of history, like Carnarvon, are anxious to come face to face with those who, for good or ill, are the makers of history. Consequently, he was genuinely disappointed at the failure to see one of the ablest, though most sinister, of these letter day figures. But the notion of his father, of all men, being regarded as a potential murderer, was too ludicrous not to outweigh the vexation, and he frequently had a quiet laugh over this side of the story. In later life, when he was largely thrown into their company, the Lord, or Lordy, as he was called by the Egyptians, contrived to establish more points of contact with orientals of all classes, from Pasha to Phelach than is usually possible to the Western man. But indeed he had an undeniable charm, which, when he chose to exert it, attracted the confidence of men and women all the world over. An instance in point which also illustrates the mingled shrewdness and whimsicality of his character concerned a visit to California. On his way thither he paused in New York, where he had promised a friend he would try to obtain information respecting a certain commercial undertaking. The fashion in which he sought for information was, to say the least, highly original. For it was of his hair-cutter that he inquired as to the person in control of the venture. The hair-cutter, having proved, strange to say, able to enlighten him on the subject, Lord Canarvon wrote a note to the financier in question, requesting an interview. In due course he was received by a typical captain of industry, with eyes like gimlets and a mouse like a steel trap, who must have admired the candor of the stray Englishman, asking him straight out for advice. The magnate listened courteously to his request for information, and then unequivocally urged him on no account to touch the stocks. Canarvon looked hard at him, thanked him, and went straight off to the telegraph office, where he cabled instructions to buy. He then departed to California, where he fished rapturously. He delighted in all varieties of sport, for tarpon. Six weeks later he returned to New York to find that the shares had soared upwards, and that his city friend was in ecstasies at the profit made owing to Canarvon's decision. He then asked for another interview with the financier, and was again civilly received. This time Canarvon explained that he felt he could not leave America without returning thanks for advice which had proved so profitable that it had defrayed the expenses of a very costly trip. The magnate stared and exclaimed, But Lord Canarvon, I advised you against buying. Oh yes, I know you said that, but of course I saw that you wished me to understand the reverts. There was a moment's pause, and then the great man burst into a roar of laughter, held out his hand and say, Pray consider this house your home whenever you return to America. And was your captain of industry the most interesting person you met on that journey? His hero inquired. Oh dear no! was the characteristic reply. The most interesting man by far was the breaksman on the railway cars to California. I spent hours talking with him. In 1894 Lord Canarvon chartered the steam-yard Caterina, and in company with his friend Prince Victor Duleep Singh, again visited South America. On his return in the summer of 1895 on his 29th birthday he married Miss Almina Womwell. The marriage was celebrated at St. Margaret's, Westminster. The wedding breakfast took place at Lansdowne House. All was sumptuous. The very pretty bride might have well set as a model to Gros, and the bridegroom's singular air of distinction was no less marked than her good looks. Moreover he had been persuaded to order and to wear a frock coat for the great occasion. But when they set off for High Clear with its triumphal arches and its cheering tenets, the bride herself wearing rose-collar gauze bespangled with emeralds and diamonds, Lord Canarvon thankfully reverted to his straw hat and his favourite blue-surge jacket, which the devoted old housekeeper, his mother's maid, had, much to her own scandal, darned that self-same mourning. The funny little detail was eminently characteristic, for though his fastidious taste welcomed all that made for the refinements of existence, with regard to himself, he preserved intact his own curious simplicity. During the next eight or ten years the couple lived the usual life, as it was lived in those cheerful pre-war days of young folk whose lot has been cast in pleasant places. In 1898, much to their rejoicing, a son, Henry, Lord Porchester, was born to them, followed in 1901 by a daughter, Evelyn, destined to become her father's dearest friend and close companion in the last eventful and fatal journey to Egypt. About 1890 Lord Canarvon took up racing, in which he soon became deeply interested for he was incapable of giving half-hearted attention to any business or pursuit. Ultimately his main interest lay in his stud farm, where he was considered fortunate. He won some of the big races, many of the Ascot steaks, the Stewards Cup at Goodwood, the Doncaster Cup and the City and Suburban. He was a member of the Jockey Club. Undoubtedly, especially as he grew older, the human element accounted for a large proportion of the entertainment he derived from the turf. Apart from his friendships with those of his own world, he was generally interested in the many quaint personalities known to him, one and all, by nicknames he never forgot, and into whose domestic lives, joys and anxieties he was initiated. When the spare figure, unmistakably that of a gentleman, appeared in the paddock or on the race course, wearing a unique sort of low-crowned felt hat, of a shape never seen on any head but his, his throat in all weather smuffled in a yellow scarf, and short, whatever the smartness of the meeting, with brown shoes, that fellows darned brown shoes, as a great personage, noted for his observance of the ritual of dress, once described them, he could count on a special welcome as peculiar to himself as his dress and his presence. This is perhaps the place to say something of his friendships, which were indeed an integral part of himself. No man ever laid more to heart Polonius's axioms on that momentous side of life, and undoubtedly it was with links of steel that he grappled to himself his friends and their affections tried. As one of the most distinguished of these rites, he was a very firm friend. It perhaps took a long time before one was admitted to his friendship, but once admittance was granted it was for always and for ever. Nothing would change or weaken his friendship. Those thus privileged knew well that even if separated for years, the bonds of his friendship existed as strong as ever, and when they met again they would be met as if they had never been parted from him. It is indeed true that nothing could weaken his friendship. One of the few occasions on which the present writer saw him break down was when he was forced to confess that a very dear friend, recently dead, had abused his confidence. But even then he would not reveal what the offence had been. He jealously guarded the man's reputation, nor cut to the heart as he was would he allow the man's dependence to suffer for his fault. It was only years afterward that by a mere chance his hero was put into possession of the facts and was enabled to estimate the magnitude of the injury and the generosity of the injured. A man who is generous in thought is bound also to be generous indeed. The number of lame dogs he helped over styles will never be known, for he religiously obeyed the evangelical precept not to allow his right hand to know what his left hand did. Only occasionally, when he felt he could trust his hero, would his sense of humor get the better of his discretion. Thus one of his old tenants, whose farm was rented at 727 pounds, 11 shillings, four pence a year, for three years in succession brought exactly 27 pounds, 11 shillings, four pence to the annual audit, and quite honestly considered that he was entitled to receive a discharge in full. When this happened for the third time, and as evidently the land was going to rack and ruin, Lord Carnarvon felt he must give the man notice. It was not an over-entered holding, he anxiously explained, since no sooner was his decision known than he received an offer of 1100 pounds. But, he added, I was so sorry for the poor old fellow who had spent his life on the place that I arranged to give him a sort of pension of 250 pounds. I thought it would be a comfort. But for the farmer's singular views on the balancing of accounts, which appealed to Carnarvon's sense of humor, the little tale would have remained untold. The same loyal fidelity which bound his affections in perpetuity to his family, his sisters and brothers and friends, made him an admirable master and a true friend to his servants. He falsified, rather amusingly, the proverb that a man cannot be a hero to his valet. Short of a serious fault, once a man entered his employment, he remained in it for life, but on the condition that he gave good service. That, Lord Carnarvon expected, and that he got. In the same way, being courteous and considerate himself, he expected civility in return. He was seldom disappointed, for, as he said in his last letter to the present writer, it is wonderful what a little politeness can do. But meeting with rudeness he could give a rebuke, which, for being rather obliquely delivered, was nonetheless effective. In the war, having occasioned to go to one of the control departments, he was received by a damsel with bobbed hair and bobbed manners, who, in a voice of utter scorn, demanded to know on what business he could have come. Since no human being could enter the department, save for the one purpose of obtaining the commodity in which the control dealt, the question, apart from the fashion in which it was delivered, was an impertinence. In the sweetest of voices, Lord Carnarvon replied, Of course, I have come to talk to you about the hippopotamus and the zoo, after which speech his business was put through in double-quick time. A fine shot, an owner of race-horses, a singularly well-inspired art collector, his privately printed catalogue of rare books as a model of its kind, Lord Carnarvon was also a pioneer of motoring. He owned cars in France before they were allowed in England. In fact, his was the third motor registered in this country, after the repeal of the act making it obligatory for all machine-propelled carriages to be preceded on the high road by a man carrying a red flag. Motoring was bound to appeal to one of his disposition, and he threw himself with passion into the new sport. He was a splendid driver, well-served by his gift, a gift which also served him in shooting and golf, of judging distances accurately, whilst possessing that unruffled calm in difficulties, which often, if not invariably, is the best insurance against disaster. Though Carnarvon enjoyed a reputation for recklessness, he was in reality far too collected and had too much common sense to woo danger. When the present writer reproached him for taking unnecessary risks, he replied, Do you take me for a fool? In motoring the danger lies round corners, and I never take a corner fast. This was probably true, but the best-laid schemes of mice and men gang after clay, and it was on a perfectly straight road that he met with the accident that materially affected his whole life. It was on a journey through Germany that disaster overtook Carnarvon. He and his devoted chauffeur, Edward Trotman, who accompanied him on all his expeditions for eight and twenty years, had been flying for many miles along an empty road, ruled with Roman precision through an interminable Trutonic forest, towards Schwalbach, where Lady Carnarvon was awaiting their arrival. Before them, as behind, the highway still stretched out, when, suddenly, as they crested a rise, they were confronted by an unexpected dip in the ground, so steep as to be invisible up to within twenty yards, and at the bottom, right across the road, were drawn up two bullock carts. Carnarvon did the only thing possible. Trusting to win past, he put a car at the grass margin, but a heap of stones called the wheel, two tires burst. The car turned a complete somersaults and fell on the driver, while Trotman was flung clear some feet away. Happily for them both, the latter's thick coat broke his fall, and with splendid presence of mind, he lost not a second in coming to his master's rescue. The car had fallen as slant across a ditch. Had it fallen on the road, Carnarvon must have been crushed to death, instead of being embedded head foremost in mud. With the energy of despair, Trotman contrived to drag the light car aside and to extricate Carnarvon, who was unconscious, his heart even appearing to have stopped. The bullock drivers knowing themselves in fault had bolted, but Trotman saw some workmen in an adjoining field, saw they had a can of water, and without pausing to apologise, seized the can and dashed the water in Lord Carnarvon's face. The shock set the heart beating anew, and meanwhile the workmen, who had followed hot foot in pursuit of their can, arrived on the scene. They had no common language, but the awful spectacle and the chauffeur's signs were sufficient explanation, and they brought a doctor to the spot. He found a shattered individual, evidently suffering from severe concussion, his face swollen to shapelessness, his legs severely burnt, his wrist broken, temporarily blind, the palate of his mouth and his jaw injured, caked in mud from head to foot. In fact, he was only just alive, but he recovered consciousness to put the one question which overpowered all else. Have I killed any one? was reassured, and lapsed again into unconsciousness. In this condition he was carried to the nearest pot-house, where Lady Carnarvon, who almost instantly rejoined him, summoned doctors and surgeons to his bedside. It was characteristic that almost the first words he murmured when he had recovered speech were, I don't think I have lost my nerve. He was right, he had not lost his nerve, but he had lost his health. Nothing that skill or care could affect then or later was spared, but throughout the remainder of his life he suffered from perpetually recurrent operations and dangerous illnesses. He bore these with a noble courage, and emerged mellow rather than embittered from these trials, and the renunciations of work and ambitions curtailed. Sometimes he lapsed into long silences, seldom into complaints. It was a fine triumph of will, assisted by the sense of humour which was the warp and woof of his being. With regard to recreations his versatility came to his help. When agonising headaches made shooting too painful he took to golf, at which he was scratch. When golf proved beyond his strength he set himself to study the technique of photography, and aided by his artistic faculty he shortly became a master of the art. Indeed, in the words of an expert, Carnarvon's work was known in all parts of the globe where pictorial photography has an honoured place, and it is not too much to say that his productions were unique in their artistry and in the knowledge that he displayed in their production. Quarterly Journal of the Camera Club, Volume 1, 202, May 1923, Page 13, by F. J. Mortimer, Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. In 1916 he was elected president of the Camera Club. He appreciated the distinction, but the recognition of his work in this field that brought him the greatest pleasure was a summons he received during the war to the front to advise Royal Headquarters' flying corps on the subject of aerial photography. The three days he spent at St. Andre went a little way, though only a little way, to console him for not being a combatant, and he rejoiced accordingly, though on his return to England he paid for the effort with a sharp attack of illness. He had always been attracted by mechanical inventions. It was under Beacon Hill on his property that Captain de Havilland constructed the first aeroplane, which in its perfected form of DH-9 became the chief fighting aeroplane in the war. Nevertheless, strive as he would, the renunciations involved were not inconsiderable. He was deeply interested in the elections of 1905 and 1910 at the House of Lords controversy of 1911, and he would probably have taken an active part in politics, but for his belief that a serious injury to his mouth and jaw must militate against public speaking. He may have exaggerated this drawback for, when he delivered his lecture at the Central Hall Westminster on January 11, 1923, he was easily heard by a large audience. But he disliked doing things badly, and his fear of being indistinct added to his many illnesses extinguished his hope of entering public life. Many of his friends both now and then regretted this forced abstention from the public life of the country. Sir William Garstyn, whose verdict must carry weight, writes, Lord Carnarvon took a deep interest in all questions connected with English politics, but it was the foreign policy of this country that more particularly interested him. His extensive travels, as well as his studies, gave him a grasp of the subjects connected with world policy that is unusual in Englishmen who live much of their lives at home. Perhaps the politics of the Near East attracted him more than those of any other country. His frequent visits to Turkey and the Balkan states, and his recognition of the ties that closely bind England with these nations, gave him a direct personal interest in the questions. He certainly could and did talk well and intelligently upon everything connected with England's relations with Turkey and the East. End of Section 2 Section 3 of The Tomb of Tutankhamun by Howard Carter This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Avayee in May 2019 Introduction Part 3 The net result of the accident was the necessity to winter out of England since, with his difficulty of breathing, a bad attack of bronchitis would probably have proved fatal. In 1903 he consequently went to Egypt and was at once captivated by the fascination of digging. An unfinished fragment on the subject, on which he was engaged at his death, gives an account of these early days. It had always been my wish and intention, even as far back as 1889, to start excavating, but for one reason or another I had never been able to begin. However, in 1906, with the aid of Sir William Garsten, who was then advisor of the public works, I started to excavate in thieves. I may say that at this period I knew nothing whatever about excavating, so I suppose with the idea of keeping me out of mischief, as well as keeping me employed, I was allotted a site at the top of Sheikh Abdel Gurna. I had scarcely been operating for twenty-four hours, when we suddenly struck what seemed to be an untouched burial pit. This gave rise to much excitement in the antiquities department, which soon simmered down when the pit was found to be unfinished. There, for six weeks, enveloped in clouds of dust, I stuck to it day in and day out. Beyond finding a large mummified cat in its case, with now graces the Cairo Museum, nothing whatsoever rewarded my strenuous and very dusty endeavours. This utter failure, however, instead of disheartening me, had the effect of making me keener than ever. The more he toiled, however, the more it became clear to him that he needed expert aid. Accordingly, he consulted Sir Gaston Maspero, who advised him to have recourse to Mr Howard Carter. Sir Gaston Maspero's advice proved even more fruitful of good than Lord Carnarvon anticipated. In Mr Howard Carter, Carnarvon obtained the collaboration not only of a learned expert and archaeologist gifted with imagination and, as Lord Carnarvon said, a very fine artist, but that of a true friend. For the next 16 years the two men worked together with varying fortune, yet ever united not more by their common aim than by their mutual regard and defection. An account of Lord Carnarvon and Mr Carter's work is to be found in the sumptuous volume entitled Five Years Explorations at Thebes, which they published in 1912. Lord Carnarvon's description of the first excavations affected with Mr Howard Carter should, however, find place here. After perhaps ten days' work at Der El-Bahadi in 1907, he writes, we came upon what proved to be an untouched tomb. I shall never forget the first sight of it. There was something extraordinarily modern about it. Several coffins were in the tomb, but the first that arrested our attention was a white, brilliantly painted coffin with a pearl loosely thrown over it and a bouquet of flowers lying just at its foot. The Addis coffins had remained untouched and forgotten for 2,500 years. The reason for the sepulture being in violet was soon apparent. There was no funerary furniture and evidently the owners of the coffins were poor people and they or their relations had put all the funeral money they were able to spend into the ornamental coffins that contained their bodies. One of these coffins I presented to the Newbury Museum. The results of this season were very poor. Still, one day we thought that we had at last found something which had every appearance of an untouched tomb some four hundred yards from the temple of Der El-Bahadi. In the morning I wrote out, and no sooner did I see Carter's face than I knew something unpleasant and unforeseen had occurred. Alas, what looked promising the day before turned out to be merely a walled up sort of stable where the ancient Egyptian foreman had feathered his donkey and kept his accounts. But this is a common occurrence. For an excavation it is generally the unexpected that happens and the unexpected is nearly always unpleasant. So wrote the future revealer of Tutankhamun's tomb. In 1907 Lord Canarvin began to form his now celebrated Egyptian collection. My chief aim, he writes, was then and is now not merely to buy because a thing is rare, but rather to consider the beauty of an object than its pure historic value. Of course, when the two, beauty and historic interest, are blended in a single object, the interest and delight of possession are more than doubled. The testimony of that eminent authority, Sir Ernest Budge, strikingly confirms Lord Canarvin's own account of his collection. He only cared, says Sir Ernest, for the best, and nothing but the best would satisfy him, and having obtained the best he persisted in believing that there must be somewhere something better than the best. His quest for the beautiful in Egyptian design, form and colour, became the cult of his life in recent years. His taste was faultless, and his instinct for the true and genuine was unrivaled. When compared with the beautiful Antica, money had no value for him, and he was wont to say with Sir Henry Rawlinson, it is easier to get money than Anticas. Of all the renunciations forced upon him by bad health, the one which cost him most was his inability to take a personal part in the Great War. Although he was past military age, his quick intelligence and his intimate knowledge of the French language and French mentality would have made him a valuable liaison officer. Indeed, at one moment he cherished the hope that he might accompany his friend General Sir John Maxwell to the front, but as at the moment the jolting of a taxi caused him almost unbearable pain, he had to content himself with such work as he could find to do at home. Nevertheless, when his brother Aubrey Herbert, to whom he was specially devoted, was wounded and lost during the retreat from Mons, he was preparing to go, pain or no pain, to hunt for him in his motor, when the news of Aubrey's escape arrived. At a later stage of the war to attempt such an adventure would have been unsinkable, but at that crisis, immediately after the victory of the Marne, before the war had hardened into a war of trenches, it is just possible that Carnarvon's mingled resource and calmness might have been successful. It was characteristic that quite a week before the war was declared, being convinced that it was imminent and believing that food shortage would be the immediate danger, he quietly made preparations for feeding the population on his property. The beauty of his scheme lay in the fact that it did not entail a run on the shops. The potatoes remained in the field, the corn in the ricks, though ready when the pinch came to be doled out, carefully rationed to the little community of two hundred fifty souls for whom he held himself responsible. As we know, he had misstated that particular peril, and quick to realize his mistakes, he promptly turned his energies in other directions. From the very outbreak of the war, Lord and Lady Carnarvon converted high clear into an officer's hospital, which was subsequently transferred to thirty-eight Brixton Square, and whether in town or country noted for the tender and efficient care of its inmates. After Lady Carnarvon moved to a hospital to London, Carnarvon occupied himself, amongst other things, in promoting the conversion of pasture at high clear into arable land. He was well seconded by his old and attached employees, and was more successful than those who knew the thin chalk soil dared to hope. While alone, on one of his periodical visits to high clear, he was seized with appendicitis. Lady Carnarvon, accompanied by surgeons and doctors, rushed down and carried him off to the hospital in London, where he was promptly operated upon. And thus, in all probability, it was owing to the hospital this husband and wife had founded that his life was eventually saved. For nowhere else at that particular time could he have obtained the same unremitting care. It was, however, a close call. The great surgeon, Sir Berkeley Moynihan, who was summoned from Leeds to his bedside, admitted that he himself had only given him another three-quarters of an hour to live. Lord Carnarvon afterwards declared that, though he realised his danger, he was convinced that his sufferings were too acute to allow him to die. True to his inextinguishable sense of humour, even at this crisis, he contrived to make a joke, and was surprised that it did not seem to amuse his medical attendance. It was not much of a joke, but still there was a point to it, and only George, his very devoted servant, smiled, he complained. In the circumstances the doctors might be excused, for it was something of a miracle when their patient pulled through. He himself ascribed his recovery to his wife's resource and exertions, and to the skill and devotion with which she surrounded him, devotion readily given, for his nurses adored the patient who, even in extremis, remained considerate and courteous. Two years later he had to undergo another vital operation, and again he recovered and seemed to have got a firmer grip of life. By that time, moreover, the war had come to an end, and his only son, who had fought through the Mesopotamian campaign, was once more safe at home at his side. This was an untold relief to Carnarvon. He was too true an Englishman to grudge his boy to the country's service, but in many little ways he showed how greatly he felt the strain. Habitually the most reserved of men, when one of the pencil-letters reached him, for which so many hungry hearts yearned in those dark days, he would hurry round to read the precious epistle to a sympathetic audience. And from the moment of the young soldier's embarkation, my boy's little fox terrier never left his side. Carnarvon's love for his children played a great part in his life. He thoroughly enjoyed their companionship, and perhaps even more the evident pleasure they took in his society. His love for them enlarged his outlook on life as a whole, or rather perhaps swept away the remnant of the constitutional reserve, which sometimes set a veil between his true self and the outer world. He, who, as a friend said, laughed through life, and in a special laughed at himself and his tribulations, confessed himself surprised at the extent that fear for their welfare could penetrate his defensive armour. When anxious about his daughter, his gallant little guives deserted him. I cannot tell you how this has upset me, he wrote. I really can't sleep or eat. I had no idea that anything could worry me so. And it is doubtful whether the great discovery itself would not have lost half its saviour if this daughter, his inseparable companion, had not been there to share in the rapture of that amazing revelation. Even during the war Lord Carnarvon had made efforts to get to Egypt. In fact, but for a bad attack of pleurisy, which at the last moment detained him in England, he would have arrived at Cairo the very day the Turks made their unsuccessful onslaught on the canal. Naturally, as soon as the armistice was signed, he took steps to rejoin Mr Carter, who in the intervals of this war work at GHQ in Cairo had been able to start preliminary investigations in the Valley of the Kings. Journeys were, however, no easy matter in 1919. With great difficulty, births were procured on a boat, which was protected during the crossing by paravains to avoid the disaster that had recently overtaken a French ship, sunk by a floating mine. But mines were a less danger than the sanitary condition of the boat. She had served as a troop ship during the war, had not yet been disinfected, and was packed with Arabs to be landed at Bezerta. Happily the journey was short, but in that short space there was much sickness and a few deaths. The journey, so inauspiciously begun, did not improve as time went on. It was a period of unrest in Egypt, and it was fortunate that Carnarvon's desire to explore the Fayoum, with a view to excavations, brought the party back earlier than usual from Luxor to Cairo. Everything had been arranged for the Fayoum expedition, and the hour for the departure fixed, when, the evening before the start, Carnarvon received such disquieting reports of the situation in the provinces that he decided to defer the journey. It was a lucky decision, since the next day witnessed the beginning of trouble in the Fayoum, and in the day or two, as he himself wrote, the country was in a state of anarchy. During a lull in the general disorder, he continues, I managed to pack off my family to Port Said, and I will remember how relieved I was to get a telegram to say they had embarked safely. As for himself, he remained on for a time in Cairo, partly in the hope of being able to achieve some more digging, but also because he was genuinely interested in the situation. As Sir William Garstein remarks, it was Carnarvon's interest in Egyptology that first drew him to Egypt. He very soon, however, became much interested in Egyptian politics. He had a great liking for the Egyptians, and for those who were trying to restore her as a nation, and he showed a sympathetic interest in them to which they readily responded. Few Englishmen have been more liked in Egypt, and the sorrow that was evinced at his death was universal and sincere. Sir William Garstein's estimate of Lord Carnarvon's position in Egypt is fully confirmed by Sir John Maxwell, also a great authority on Egyptian politics. He was one of the few Englishmen, he says, who realized and appreciated what Egypt did for us during the war, and how difficult it would have been for us had she taken an unfriendly attitude, also that a loyal, contented friend on our Eastern communications was infinitely preferable to a sullen, discontented enemy. He was convinced that the former could be accomplished. He was a good and patient listener and gained the confidence of many of the best class in Egypt. Both in London and at High Clear he entertained the Egyptian delegations. All were appreciative of his hospitality and consideration, and all felt that, in his death, they had lost a real friend of their country. As the days passed it became evident, however, that any work for that season was out of the question. He was needed in England, and he decided to leave. This was not easy, and he was about to charter a sailing boat when he obtained the passage home. Lord Canarvan was fated to pay several more visits to Egypt. After his operation in 1919, while scarcely convalescent, he insisted on leaving for Luxor at the usual season, and there recovered his health and strength. A description of Tutankhamun's tomb and its discovery does not fall within the province of Disketch, which concerns the man rather than the archaeologist. Canarvan was never addicted to self-analysis, and though he could give detailed descriptions of the beautiful objects discovered in the tomb, words failed him to express the effect on himself personally of the actual discovery. He could only assure his hearers that it was a very exciting moment. Nor, unlike most events, as the weeks passed, did the excitement wane for the public or for Lord Canarvan, and naturally, perhaps, to know one more than to him that these successive revelations bring delight. He was as happy as he was modest, said a distinguished scholar. In this sad world it would seem that triumphs have to be paid for in weariness of soul and body. It was a glorious episode, but when the tomb was closed for the season Lord Canarvan was very tired. A mosquito bit him, the wound got poisoned, and the wife and daughter, doctors and nurses, fought valiantly for his life. It was a losing fight. Through those long three weeks of pain and misery he remained his old gallant self. Readers of the bulletins may remember that the gloomiest generally concluded with an assurance that the patient's spirits were good. But he himself had no illusions. I have heard a call, he said to a friend. I am preparing. On the 6th of April 1923 he passed away. In his will he expressed the wish to be buried on Beacon Hill. It was, therefore, on the summit of the great down overlooking the home that he had so passionately loved that he was late to rest. Only his nearest and dearest and a few workmen and servants, many of whom had grown gray in his service, stood around the grave. But these, too, he had accounted part of his family and the element, of course he was my master, but he was my friend, too, was the epitaph he would himself have chosen. Organ, music, choristers, there were none at this burying. The beautiful old office, commending the body of our dear brother to the ground to ensure and certain hope, had something of the stark grandeur of a funeral at sea. But the whole air was alive with the springtide song of the larks. They sang deliriously in a passion of ecstasy which can never be forgotten by those who heard that song. And so we left him, feeling that the ending was in harmony with the life. Here, here his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, lightnings are loosened, stars come and go. Let joy break to storm, peace let the dew send. Lofty design must close in like effects. Loftily lying, leave him. Still loftier than the world suspects, living and dying. Winifred Burklear. The Lake. High clear. September 17, 1923. End of Section 3. Section 4 of The Tomb of Tutankhamun by Howard Carter. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Avayee in May 2019. Chapter 1. The King and the Queen A few preliminary words about Tutankhamun, the king whose name the whole world knows, and who in that sense probably needs an introduction less than anyone in history. He was the son-in-law, as everyone knows, of that most written about and probably the most overrated of all the Egyptian pharaohs, the heretic king A'Kennethon. Of his parentage we know nothing. He may have been of the blood royal and had some indirect claim on the throne on his own account. He may, on the other hand, have been a mere commoner. The point is immaterial. For, by his marriage to a king's daughter, he at once, by Egyptian law of succession, became a potential heir to the throne. A hazardous and uncomfortable position it must have been to fill at this particular stage of this country's history. Abroad, the empire founded in the 15th century BC by Tothmas III and held, with difficulty it is true, but still held, by succeeding monarchs, had crumpled up like a pricked balloon. At home dissatisfaction was rife. The priests of the ancient faith, who had seen their gods flouted and their very livelihood compromised, was draining at the leash, only waiting the most convenient moment to slip it all together. The soldier class, condemned to a mortified inaction, was seething with discontent and apt for any form of excitement. The foreign harem element, women who had been introduced into the court and into the families of soldiers in such large numbers since the wars of conquest, were now, at a time of weakness, a sure and certain focus of intrigue. The manufacturers and merchants, as foreign trade declined and home credit was diverted to a local and extremely circumscribed area, were rapidly becoming sullen and discontented. The common populace, intolerant of change, grieving, many of them, at the loss of their old familiar gods, and ready enough to attribute any loss, deprivation or misfortune to the jealous intervention of these offended deities, were changing slowly from bewilderment to active resentment at the new heaven and new earth that had been decreed for them. And through it all, Ankenatun, Gallio of Gallios, dreamt his life away at Tel El Amarna. The question of a successor was a vital one for the whole country, and we may be sure that intrigue was rampant. Of male heirs there was none, and interest centers on a group of little girls, the eldest of whom could not have been more than fifteen at the time of her father's death. Young as she was, this eldest princess, Myrta Ten by name, had already been married some little while, for in the last year or two of Ankenatun's reign we find her husband associated with him as co-regent, a vain attempt to avert the crisis which even the archdreamer Ankenatun must have felt to be inevitable. Her taste of queenship was but a short one, for a smanky car ray, her husband, died within a short while of Ankenatun. He may even, as evidence in this tomb seems to show, have predeceased him, and it is quite possible that he met his death at the hands of a rival faction. In any case he disappears, and his wife with him, and the throne was opened to the next claimant. The second daughter, Mactatun, died unmarried in Ankenatun's lifetime. The third, Ankes and Pa Atun, was married to Tutankatun as he then was, the Tutankamun with whom we are now so familiar. Just when this marriage took place is not certain, it may have been in Ankenatun's lifetime, or it may have been contracted hastily immediately after his death to legalize his claim to the throne. In any event they were but children. Ankes and Pa Atun was born in the eighth year of her father's reign, and therefore cannot have been more than ten, and we have reason to believe, from internal evidence in the tomb, that Tutankamun himself was little more than a boy. Clearly in the first years of this reign of children, there must have been a power behind the throne, and we can be tolerably certain who this power was. In all countries, but more particularly in those of the Orient, it is a wise rule, in cases of doubtful or weak succession, to pay particular attention to the movements of the most powerful court official. In the Tel El Amarna court, this was a certain eye, chief priest, court chamberlain, and practically court everything else. He himself was a close personal friend of Ankenatun's, and his wife Taiyi, was nursed to the royal wife Nefertiti, so we may be quite sure there was nothing that went on in the palace that they did not know. Now looking ahead a little, we find that it was this same eye who secured the throne himself after Tutankamun's death. We also know, from the occurrence of his cartouche in the sepulchral chamber of the newly found tomb, that he made himself responsible for the burial ceremonies of Tutankamun, even if he himself did not actually construct the tomb. It is quite unprecedented in the valley to find the name of a succeeding king upon the walls of his predecessor's sepulchral monument. The fact that this was so in this case seems to imply a special relationship between the two, and we shall probably be safe in assuming that it was I who was largely responsible for establishing the boy king upon the throne. Quite possibly he had designs upon it himself already, but not feeling secure enough for the moment, preferred to bide his time and utilized the opportunities he would undoubtedly have, as ministered to a young and inexperienced sovereign, to consolidate his position. It is interesting to speculate, and when we remember that I in his turn was supplanted by another of the leading officials of Ankenatun's reign, the general Horemheb, and that neither of them had any real claim to the throne, we can be reasonably sure that in this little byway of history, from 1375 to 1350 BC, there was a well-set stage for dramatic happenings. However, as self-respecting historians, let us put aside the tempting might-have-bins and, probably's, and come back to the cold-hard facts of history. What do we really know about this Tutankhamun with whom we have become so surprisingly familiar? Remarkably little when you come right down to it. In the present state of our knowledge we might say with truth that the one outstanding feature of his life was the fact that he died and was buried. Of the man himself, if indeed he ever arrived at the dignity of manhood, and of his personal character we know nothing. Of the events of his short reign we can glean a little, a very little, from the monuments. We know, for instance, that at some time during his reign he abandoned the heretic capital of his father-in-law and removed the court back to Thebes. That he began as an attun-worshipper and reverted to the old religion is evident from his name Tutankhamun changed to Tutankhamun, and from the fact that he made some slight additions and restorations to the temples of the old gods at Thebes. There is also a steel in the Cairo Museum which originally stood in one of the Karnak temples in which he refers to these temple restorations in somewhat grand eloquent language. I found, he says, the temples fallen into ruin with their holy places overthrown and their courts overgrown with weeds. I reconstructed their sanctuaries, I re-indowed the temples and made them gifts of all precious things. I cast statues of the gods in gold and electrum decorated with lapis lazuli and all fine stones. Footnote. These steel, parts of which are roughly translated above, were subsequently usurped by a Horemheb as were almost all Tutankhamun's monuments. End footnote. We do not know at what particular period in his reign this change of religion took place, nor whether it was due to personal feeling or was dictated to him for political reasons. We know from the tomb of one of his officials that certain tribes in Syria and in the Sudan were subject to him and brought him tribute, and on many of the objects in his own tomb we see him trampling with great gusto on prisoners of war and shooting them by hundreds from his chariot. But we must by no means take for granted that he ever in actual fact took the field himself. Egyptian monarchs were singularly tolerant of such polite fictions. That pretty well exhausts the facts of his life as we know them from the monuments. From his tomb so far there is singularly little to add. We are getting to know to the last detail what he had, but of what he was and what he did we are still sadly to seek. There is nothing yet to give us the exact length of his reign. Six years we knew before as a minimum, much more than that it cannot have been. We can only hope that the inner chambers will be more communicative. His body, if, as we hope and expect, it still lies between the shrines within the sepulcher, will at least tell us his age at death and may possibly give us some clue to the circumstances. Just a word as to his wife, Ankesen Pa Atun, as she was known originally, and Ankesen Amun after the reversion to Thebes. As the one through whom the king inherited, she was a person of considerable importance, and he makes due acknowledgement of the fact by the frequency with which her name and person appear upon the tomb furniture. A graceful figure she was too, unless her portraits to her more than justice, and her friendly relations with her husband are insisted on in true Tell L. Amarna style. There are two particularly charming representations of her. In one, on the back of the throne, plate two, she anoints her husband with perfume. In the other, she accompanies him on a shooting expedition, and is represented crouching at his feet, handing him an arrow with one hand, and with the other pointing out to him a particularly fat duck, which she fears may escape his notice. Charming pictures these, and pathetic too, when we remember that at seventeen or eighteen years of age the wife was left a widow. Well, perhaps. On the other hand, if we know our orient, perhaps not, for to this story there is a sequel, provided for us by a number of tablets found some years ago in the ruins of Bogoskei, and only recently deciphered. An interesting little tale of intrigue it outlines, and in a few words we get a clearer picture of Queen Ankesen Amun than Tutankhamun was able to achieve for himself in his entire equipment of funeral furniture. She was, it seems, a lady of some force of character. The idea of retiring into the background in favour of a new queen did not appeal to her, and immediately upon the death of her husband she began to scheme. She had, we may presume, at least two months' grace, the time that must elapse between Tutankhamun's death and burial, for until the last king was buried it was hardly likely that a new one would take over the rains. Now, in the past two or three rains there had been constant intermarriages between the royal houses of Egypt and Asia. One of Ankesen Amun's sisters had been sent in marriage to a foreign court, and many Egyptologists think that her own mother was an Asiatic princess. It was not surprising, then, that in this crisis she should look abroad for help, and we find her writing a letter to the king of the Hittites in the following terms. My husband is dead, and I am told that you have grown up sons. Send me one of them, and I will make him my husband, and he shall be king over Egypt. It was a shrewd move on her part, for there was no real heir to the throne in Egypt, and a swift dispatch of a Hittite prince with a reasonable force to back him up would probably have brought off a very successful coup. Promptitude, however, was the one essential, and here the queen was reckoning without the Hittite king. Hurry, in any matter, was well outside his calculations. It would never do to be rushed into a scheme of dissort without due deliberation, and how did he know that the letter was not a trap? So he summoned his councillors, and the matter was talked over at length. Eventually it was decided to send a messenger to Egypt to investigate the truth of the story. Where, he writes in his reply, and you can see him patting himself on the back for his rudeness, is the son of the late king, and what has become of him. Now it took some fourteen days for a messenger to go from one country to the other, so the poor queen's feelings can be imagined, when, after a month's waiting, she received, in answer to her request, not a prince and a husband, but a dilatory futile letter. In despair she writes again, Why should I deceive you? I have no son, and my husband is dead. Send me a son of yours, and I will make him king. The Hittite king now decides to accede to her request and to send a son, but it is evidently too late. The time had gone by. The document breaks off here, and it is left to our imagination to fill in the rest of the story. Did the Hittite prince ever start for Egypt, and how far did he get? Did I, the new king, get wind of Ankes and Amun's schemings, and take effectual steps to bring them to naught? We shall never know. In any case, the queen disappears from the scene, and we hear of her no more. It is a fascinating little tale. Had the plot succeeded, there would never have been a ramisees to great.