For Davis, this was not merely a triumph but the culmination of his nine years of work in the Valley of the Kings. ‘I began my work of exploration in 1903,’ he recounted, ‘and between that date and 1909, I found seven important inscribed tombs . . . also nine uninscribed tombs, one of them containing the beautiful gold jewellery of Setuî and Taouasrît, one with pieces of gold leaf with the names of Touatânkhamanou and Aîya, and a small alabaster figure.’3
In the published account of what was to be Davis’s last major discovery, a chapter on the life and reign of Tutankhamun was contributed by no less a scholar than Maspero, the grand old man of Egyptology. He began it by confessing: ‘Very little is known about the origin of this king . . . The length of his reign is unknown.’4 In the few succeeding pages, the much-admired director of the Antiquities Service and Egyptian Museum listed the major monuments attributable to Tutankhamun’s reign – the lions from Gebel Barkal, the tomb of Huy, the Restoration Stela, and the objects found by Ayrton and Davis – before summarizing: ‘Such are the few facts we know about Touatânkhamanou’s life and reign.’5 As for Davis, he famously concluded ‘the Valley of the Tombs is now exhausted’. In February 1914, at the end of Davis’s final season in Egypt, his workmen stopped digging into the floor of the valley, fearing that further work would undermine the adjacent path.6 In any case, Davis could not imagine for a moment that the ancient Egyptians would have cut a royal tomb into the valley floor where it would be vulnerable to flooding. With the discovery of KV58, he was sure that the Valley of the Kings really had given up the last of its secrets.
The man who would prove Davis spectacularly wrong – and, in the process, cause him to be all but forgotten – was his former employee, a man who happened to be working nearby in the hills of western Thebes. Howard Carter had worked for Davis a decade earlier, and had taken part in the excavation of the tomb of Hatshepsut. By 1914, Carter was one of the most experienced archaeologists of his age. But his journey to prominence had been anything but smooth. Born in Brompton, London,7 into a comfortable middle-class family, he spent much of his childhood in Norfolk. Like Champollion and Petrie before him, Carter suffered from ill-health as a child, and was consequently educated at home. As with his great Egyptological predecessors, the freedom to follow his own interests and explore his passions was, in retrospect, a key factor in his later success. Carter’s father was an accomplished painter, specializing in animals, and passed on his skill to his son. Howard soon became a talented watercolourist, also preferring natural history subjects, and he found plenty of inspiration for his work in the countryside around the Carter family home in Swaffham. Rural Norfolk also had another advantage: the county boasted a number of aristocratic families who might, directly or through their connections, offer preferment to a budding young artist. The patrons who took an interest in the young Howard Carter were Lord and Lady Amherst of nearby Didlington Hall. By chance, Lord Amherst was not only a man of considerable means, he was also a keen amateur antiquarian who used his wealth to sponsor excavations and collect antiquities. Through a series of judicious purchases, and his own trips to Egypt, he amassed one of the finest private collections of ancient Egyptian artefacts in England, which he proudly displayed at Didlington. Carter must have seen some of the objects on his visits: his first encounter with the civilization of the pharaohs, the study of which was to consume the rest of his life.
In 1891, at the age of seventeen, Carter was given his first break. At Lady Amherst’s recommendation, he was taken on by Newberry (who, alongside his archaeological duties, acted as an agent for Lord Amherst, buying choice Egyptian antiquities when they came on the market) as an assistant member of staff of the Archaeological Survey of Egypt. Newberry was a botanist by training; his knowledge of plant remains had proved useful to Petrie on his digs in the late 1880s. With this experience, and through connections at the EEF, Newberry was subsequently given his own expedition, the Archaeological Survey mission to Beni Hasan. At this site in Middle Egypt, there was a series of fine, decorated tombs cut into the cliffs overlooking the Nile. The job of recording their beautifully preserved, complex and detailed reliefs required not just epigraphic skill but also the eye of a trained artist. In Howard Carter, the Amhersts believed they had found the ideal candidate. In late 1891, therefore, Carter travelled for the first time to Egypt, and worked for several weeks at Beni Hasan under Newberry’s supervision. Carter’s talents as a copyist and painter quickly confirmed his patrons’ judgement, and he was soon switched to another of Lord Amherst’s funded excavations, Petrie’s dig at the nearby site of Amarna. In the space of a few weeks, Carter began to build his knowledge of the late eighteenth dynasty, to familiarize himself with the names of its shadowy rulers: Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and Tutankhamun.
Petrie, for his part, was distinctly underwhelmed by the new addition to his team: ‘Mr Carter is a good-natured lad whose interest is entirely in painting and natural history: he only takes on this digging as being on the spot . . . and it is of no use to me to work him up as an excavator.’8
But Carter had been bitten by the Egyptian bug, and was only too delighted to be retained by the Archaeological Survey to work on their other missions. He resumed his work at Beni Hasan and nearby el-Bersha the following season (1892–3) before moving to Deir el-Bahri – the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut in western Thebes – as official expedition draughtsman, working under Naville. During the next six years, while copying all the scenes and inscriptions in the temple, Carter gained a deep – perhaps unparalleled – knowledge of the surrounding area. Wandering the hills, valleys and embayments, he developed an unerring eye for potential archaeological sites, and came to know every inch of the Theban necropolis: Deir el-Bahri, Sheikh Abd el-Qurna, the Valley of the Kings.
After half a dozen seasons at Deir el-Bahri, Carter gained his second lucky break in 1899. Maspero’s much-heralded return as director of the Antiquities Service ushered in a major reorganization of senior posts. Carter, with his proven abilities as a copyist, his training under Newberry, Petrie and Naville, and his deep understanding of Thebes, had all the necessary credentials, and he was duly appointed chief inspector of antiquities for Upper Egypt, a newly created post and one of the most important roles in Egyptian archaeology. He did not disappoint. Maspero’s initial impressions were perceptive: ‘very active, a very good young man, a little obstinate’.9 Taking up his position in January 1900, Carter set to work at once with his customary energy and dedication. The administration of the Upper Egyptian inspectorate was reformed, and electric light installed at the major tourist sites. The results of this particular project were transformative. Davis’s companion, Emma Andrews, recorded in her diary a visit to the tomb of Amenhotep II shortly after the power had been switched on:
We entered Amenhotep’s tomb – now lighted with electricity, showing arrangement and decoration delightfully . . . Carter has arranged the whole thing most artistically. A shrouded electric light is at the head of the sarcophagus, throwing the fine face into splendid relief – and when all the other lights were extinguished, the effect was solemn and impressive. Carter has done wonderful work . . . No more stumbling about amongst yawning pits and rough staircases, with flickering candles dripping wax all over one.10
Nor was Carter merely concerned with restoration and display. He plunged himself into a series of hands-on excavations, uncovering and recording royal tombs for the Antiquities Service and for various private sponsors. In 1900, working for two local Egyptians, Chinouda Macarios and Boutros Andraos, Carter revealed a previously unknown tomb (KV42) dating to the early eighteenth dynasty. The next year he discovered another empty tomb and a series of small finds. It was when he started working for Davis, in the winter of 1902, that Carter’s archaeological instincts really proved their worth, culminating in the discovery of the richly appointed tomb of Thutmose IV (KV43) in 1903 and the clearance of the tomb of Hatshepsut (KV20) the following season. In the latter, Carter showed not only his deep commitment to archaeology, but also his willingness to risk life and limb in the furtherance of Egyptological enquiry. Davis was hugely impressed, if a little incredulous, recounting in the subsequent publication:
The long, patient, tiresome, and dangerous work executed by Mr Carter, the difficulties which he overcame, and the physical discomforts which he suffered, are not fairly described in his modest official report . . . the air had become so bad, and the heat so great, that the candles carried by the workmen melted, and would not give enough light to enable them to continue their work . . . Braving all these dangers and discomforts, Mr. Carter made two or three descents every week, and professed to enjoy it.11
Such dedication did not go unnoticed, and in 1904 Carter was promoted to chief inspector of antiquities for Lower Egypt. (The north of the Nile Valley, with the iconic monuments of Giza, Alexandria and the Memphite necropolis, was considered more prestigious than Thebes and the south.) It was a vote of confidence by Maspero, but a calamitous move for Carter. The ever-observant Emma Andrews had summed up Carter as ‘always so pleasant – in spite of his dominant personality’.12 That character trait, which other less generous commentators dubbed an irascible temper, soon got Carter into trouble. In January 1905, only a few months into his new job, Carter was at Saqqara, inspecting the Serapeum. Though a popular tourist destination, it had not yet benefited from the installation of electric light. A group of French tourists, coming to see for themselves the greatest discovery of their compatriot Mariette, objected to paying an entrance fee; then, on finding there were no candles to illuminate the subterranean galleries, demanded their money back. Carter refused, an argument ensued, and punches were thrown. Realizing that he had overstepped the mark, he sent a telegram at once to Lord Cromer, explaining the situation and pinning the blame squarely on the tourists:
My Lord I am exceedingly sorry to inform you that a bad affray has occurred today here Mariette House Saqqara 5 p.m. with 15 French Tourists who were here in a drunken state The cause of the affray was started by their rough handling both my inspector + gaffirs As both sides have been cut and knocked about I feel it my duty to inform
Ever anxious to avoid a diplomatic incident, especially with the French, Cromer summoned Carter and demanded an explanation. To smooth ruffled feathers and prevent any escalation, Cromer asked Carter to apologize. Carter, certain that he had acted within his rights, refused. The only way open to him was to resign, not just as chief inspector, but from the Antiquities Service entirely. He later admitted: ‘I have a hot temper, and that amount of tenacity of purpose which unfriendly observers sometimes call obstinacy, and which nowadays . . . it pleases my enemies to term . . . un mauvaise caractère. Well, that I can’t help.’14
In November 1905, Carter returned to his old stamping ground of Thebes and, for the next two years, eked out an existence as a guide and jobbing watercolourist. His former patron, Davis, gave him work recording the objects from the newly discovered tomb of Yuya and Tjuyu. At other times, Carter supported himself by selling his paintings to well-heeled tourists. For example, in the winter of 1907–8, the ailing eighth Duke of Devonshire was travelling up the Nile with a small party that included his personal physician (and amateur Egyptologist), Ferdinand Platt. On a visit to Thebes, Platt met the impecunious Carter, and described the encounter in a letter home:
Carter has done some very beautiful work. What he does is to copy some of the best Egyptian figures or scenes very accurately as to the matter of outline and general colour. He leaves out all the cracks and damage and restores what is left. But the great charm is that he shades the colours to make it look real; for instance the golden vulture head dress of a queen he has shaded in such a way that without altering the drawing in the least it looks like real gold . . . After lunch I went with Carter to the Tombs of the Queens and saw the tomb of Queen Nefert-Ari, the wife of Rameses II . . . She was a beautiful woman and Carter’s painting brings this out in a wonderful way . . . If I had the money spare I would buy this particular picture without a moment’s hesitation. As you can imagine Carter’s loss of his appointment is a serious thing for him, and he was and is I believe very hard up. I told the Duke about him and he has asked me to go over to Medinet Habu with him to see Carter’s sketches as he wants to help him by buying some. I am very glad to have been the means of doing this.15
In the end, however, it was not the Duke of Devonshire who turned Carter’s fortunes around, but another English aristocrat wintering in Egypt that season: a man who was attracted to Luxor, not just for its restorative climate, but for its antiquities and its promise of undiscovered treasures.
George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, son and heir of the fourth Earl of Carnarvon, was born in 1866 at Highclere Castle, the family’s magnificent country seat on the Hampshire–Berkshire border, remodelled in high Gothic Revival taste by Charles Barry in the 1840s while the architect (who had travelled up the Nile in 1818) was also engaged in rebuilding the Houses of Parliament. Herbert’s mother died when he was just nine years old, leaving him the valuable estates she had inherited from her forebears, the earls of Chesterfield. This made Herbert – known initially by his courtesy title of Lord Porchester – independently wealthy. At Eton and Cambridge, the young ‘Porchy’ paid little attention to his studies, focussing instead on his primary interest – sport – and a growing fascination for archaeology.16 When he succeeded to the earldom, on the death of his father in 1890, he enjoyed free rein to indulge his passions. He travelled the world, visiting North and South America, Asia and Europe; he even attempted (but did not complete) a circumnavigation of the globe by sea.
By the time he reached his late twenties, he had spent much of his considerable inheritance and racked up huge debts. Fortunately, as for many British aristocrats of the time living well beyond their means, salvation appeared in the form of a wealthy bride. Almina Wombwell was the illegitimate daughter of the millionaire banker Alfred de Rothschild. As part of her marriage settlement in 1892, her father paid off all Carnarvon’s debts and settled the vast sum of £300,000 on the couple. Carnarvon picked up where he had left off, indulging his love of sport by building up a major stud at Highclere, and betting on his own horses. His obsession with speed also led him into the nascent world of fast cars. It was to prove a turning point in his career. A motoring accident in Germany17 left him injured and prone to persistent bouts of painful rheumatism, exacerbated by the cold wet winters of England. Seeking respite from his discomfort and a new hobby to occupy his time, Carnarvon had no hesitation in following his doctor’s advice and joining the steady stream of well-heeled patients who repaired for the winter months to warmer, drier climates. In January 1903, in San Francisco’s Bohemian Club, Carnarvon met a former US senator by the name of Jeremiah Lynch who had recently been to Egypt and had published a book of his travels.18 Inspired, no doubt, by Lynch’s account, Carnarvon decided to make Egypt his winter home. So it was that, towards the end of the year, Carnarvon set off to spend the first of many seasons in Luxor, in the Winter Palace Hotel on the banks of the Nile.
The earl was not a man to stand still: he needed a project to occupy his energies. During his stay in Luxor in 1905, he was present for Davis’s discovery of the tomb of Yuya and Tjuyu, with its remarkable contents and ‘the glitter of gold’. The excitement of archaeology struck a chord with Carnarvon, and before long he followed Cromer’s advice and decided to take up Egyptology himself. (He later claimed that, ‘It had always been my wish and intention even as far back as 1889 to start excavating.’19) Carnarvon duly applied to Maspero for a concession; the director of the Antiquities Service was only too happy to oblige, welcoming privately funded excavations as a way of supplementing the Service’s stretched resources. Carnarvon’s permit was for an area of the Theban necropolis known as Sheikh Abd el-Qurna. It was situated on the west bank of the Nile, but easily accessible from the Winter Palace (Carnarvon’s hotel of choice). Carnarvon may have been attracted by the romance of archaeology, but he was not well suited to its daily rigours. Indeed, he is said to have described excavation in Egypt as ‘an occupation for the damned’.20 The heat, dust and flies were a persistent irritation, and he took to sitting in a large, screened cage to watch his workmen dig. On occasions, he was joined by his wife, ‘dressed for a garden party rather than the desert, with charming patent-leather, high-heeled shoes and a good deal of jewellery flashing in the sunlight’.21 Even for the inhabitants of Luxor used to Western tourists in their three-piece suits and voluminous dresses, the fifth Earl and Countess of Carnarvon must have presented a queer spectacle.
After six weeks’ work on his first excavation, Carnarvon had little to show for his efforts except an empty chamber and a rather unprepossessing mummified cat. But archaeology seemed to offer the prospect of adventure, and he was keen to take on a more promising site. Rivalry no doubt played a big part in his calculations. In February 1907, as his own disappointing excavations were drawing to a close, Carnarvon and his wife were entertained on board the Beduin by Theodore Davis and Emma Andrews. The contrast between Carnarvon’s paltry results and Davis’s continued success – he had just discovered a tomb in the Valley of the Kings which he believed to be that of the fabled Queen Tiye – could not have been starker. For an English aristocrat, to be outdone by a nouveau riche American businessman was especially galling, and the atmosphere between Carnarvon and Davis was strained. Carnarvon later declared: ‘I should not speak to the man again.’22
Carnarvon’s problem was not his own lack of archaeological prowess – Davis possessed little more – but his lack of an experienced excavator to direct the work. Davis had always employed trained archaeologists: Newberry, then Carter, then Weigall. So, when Carnarvon wrote to Maspero later in 1907 requesting a new concession, the advice came back loud and clear: hire a good director – not just any director, but one of the most experienced. Maspero had a specific suggestion: Howard Carter. Before resigning from the Antiquities Service, Carter had proved his strengths as an archaeologist. Despite his hot-headedness, there was no doubting his abilities. And so, following Maspero’s advice, Carnarvon approached Carter. The deal was struck and the partnership was forged – a partnership that would last the rest of Carnarvon’s life and result in the greatest archaeological discovery of all time.
Almost immediately, Carter’s training and expert eye began to bear fruit, and Carnarvon’s fortunes as an archaeological patron were transformed. With Carter in charge, Carnarvon’s second digging season was marked by a series of notable finds, including a writing tablet bearing an account of the battles against the Hyksos at the beginning of the New Kingdom. (The ‘Carnarvon tablet’ remains, to this day, our most important single source for this crucial turning point in ancient Egyptian history.) Further discoveries followed in subsequent winters, including several private tombs, another temple built by Hatshepsut, a series of Ptolemaic vaulted tombs, and an extensive necropolis. Together these finds justified the publication of a lavish, heavily illustrated volume to mark the first five seasons of the Carnarvon–Carter partnership, Five Years’ Explorations at Thebes (1912). In the preface, the patron paid fulsome tribute to his archaeologist: ‘Mr Howard Carter has been in charge of all operations, and whatever successes have resulted from our labours are due to his unremitting watchfulness and care in systematically recording, drawing, and photographing everything as it came to light.’23 Within a decade, this ‘unremitting watchfulness and care’ would prove vital, and would be tested to the limit.
Although Carnarvon and Carter were focussed principally on Thebes, their curiosity and thirst for new discoveries led them to explore other, more remote sites as well. Thus, in 1912, while continuing to dig at Thebes, they decided to carry out some exploratory work at the isolated Delta village of Sakha, site of the ancient Graeco-Roman city of Xoïs, which had lain abandoned and largely unvisited for centuries. Unfortunately, conditions for excavation were less than propitious, and they had to abandon their efforts after just two weeks, ‘on account of the number of cobras and cerastes [horned vipers] that infested the whole area’.24 The following season, having tried and failed to win the concession for the pyramid field of Dahshur, Carnarvon and Carter turned their attention to another promising spot in the Delta, Tell el-Balamun. Once again, however, their hopes were dashed and they finished the season with little to show for their efforts except some silver jewellery.
Whatever the accounts of classical authors might have suggested, it seemed that the sites of the Ptolemaic and Roman age in the north of Egypt held little promise for archaeologists, and were hardly worth the investment of time and resources. There really was only one site where the efforts of excavation were more or less guaranteed to be rewarded, and that was Thebes. In Carnarvon’s own description: ‘No ancient site has yielded a greater harvest of antiquities than this famous stretch of rocky land.’25 Moreover, everyone knew that the plum concession in the whole Theban necropolis – and hence in the whole of Egypt – was the Valley of the Kings. For now, however, the concession was firmly held by Davis. His string of spectacular discoveries made it highly unlikely that he would relinquish his rights any time soon.
All that changed within the space of a few months in the spring and early summer of 1914. In February, Davis’s workmen downed tools, their patron convinced that the valley had nothing more to reveal. A few weeks later, Davis formally relinquished the concession, handing it back to the Antiquities Service. Meanwhile, Carter had not been idle in promoting his credentials. During the early weeks of 1914, the appearance of illicit antiquities in the markets of Luxor suggested that locals had been plundering a newly discovered tomb in the hills of western Thebes. Using his unparalleled knowledge of the area, Carter tracked down the tomb in question – it turned out to have been created for Amenhotep I and his mother Ahmose-Nefertari – and carried out his own, exemplary clearance. His swift action and expert archaeological skills won plaudits. Back in Cairo, Maspero was preparing to retire for good and return to Paris. Eager, no doubt, to ensure that Egypt’s most prized archaeological site remained in good hands, Maspero showed his magnanimity and good judgement. In June 1914, in his very last act as director of antiquities, he awarded the concession for the Valley of the Kings to Carnarvon. Carter’s indiscretion at Saqqara had been forgiven, if not forgotten. After years of waiting and manoeuvring, the ultimate prize had fallen into Carnarvon’s hands.
Not that he was able to enjoy it in person: the outbreak of the First World War kept him in England. All attempts to get back to Egypt were thwarted. Carter, by contrast, had remained behind in the country, to offer his services and knowledge as a diplomatic courier. Conveniently, this also allowed him the time and space to undertake limited excavations. On 8 February 1915, he formally started work under the new concession, excavating the tomb of Amenhotep III in the western branch of the Valley of the Kings. Once again, his meticulous approach yielded valuable results, rescuing a number of overlooked finds from the debris of earlier digs. The following year he cleared an unused tomb in the cliffs above the valley; prepared for Hatshepsut while she was still queen, it yielded nothing except an abandoned sarcophagus. But, all the while, Carter was honing his already intimate knowledge of the valley, identifying the most likely spots where an undiscovered tomb might yet lie concealed. As a boy, he had been inspired by reading Belzoni’s memoirs, and had dreamed of finding a lost tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Carter later admitted: ‘Ever since my first visit to Egypt in 1890 it had been my ambition to dig in The Valley, and when . . . I began to excavate for Lord Carnarvon in 1907, it was our joint hope that eventually we might be able to get a concession there.’26
In 1916, Breasted, the giant of American Egyptology, published his landmark book Ancient Times: A History of the Early World. It placed particular emphasis on the history of pharaonic Egypt, although one pharaoh passed without a single mention: Tutankhamun. The obscure king of the late eighteenth dynasty simply did not merit inclusion. But Carter remained convinced that the pharaoh’s final resting place might yet reveal itself.
Davis had found three vital clues – the faience cup, the mud-filled chamber with fragments of gold leaf, and the embalming cache – all of which bore the name of Tutankhamun, and all of which pointed to his tomb being located somewhere in the Valley of the Kings. In KV58, Davis thought he had found the missing tomb; but Carter, with his superior Egyptological training, thought otherwise. As he later explained: ‘With all this evidence before us we were thoroughly convinced in our own mind that the tomb of Tut.ankh.Amen was still to find, and that it ought to be situated not far from the centre of The Valley.’27
Earlier archaeologists had sought to find new tombs by sinking pits through the accumulated rubble and rubbish on the valley floor. By 1917, however, Carter knew that only way to locate the tomb of Tutankhamun – if it still existed – was to clear the remaining section of valley all the way down to the bedrock.28 And so, motivated by a single goal, in the autumn of that year he set to work.
Over the next five years, with an army of workers and a grim determination, Carter oversaw the systematic clearance of the remaining, unexcavated section of the valley. Altogether, his team moved some 150,000–200,000 tons of rubble and loose chippings, carried away by means of a Decauville railway, specially installed for the purpose. Five years of strenuous and expensive work yielded little: a few finds, and no tombs. Carnarvon started to lose faith and interest. Even his fortune was not inexhaustible, and in the fruitless search for the undiscovered tomb of a largely unknown pharaoh it seemed he was merely throwing good money after bad. By the summer of 1922, he had decided to call it a day and concentrate on his horse racing. But Carter, spurred on by a conviction as solid as the bedrock of Thebes, felt in his bones that he was on the right track. That summer, he decided to take the highly unusual step of travelling to Highclere in person, to plead his case with Carnarvon and beg the earl’s support for one more season. Reluctantly, Carnarvon agreed.
After the excitements of the Davis years, and the retirement and death of Maspero, Egyptology in the immediate aftermath of the First World War was in the doldrums. Among the millions of young men killed during the conflict were a number of promising archaeologists, while leading figures on both sides had lost sons. The British army had deliberately flattened the German House at Thebes in an act of retribution, and, even after the armistice, German expeditions found themselves banned from working in the Nile Valley. By 1921, even Gardiner had overcome his hostility towards Germany and was missing its contribution to Egyptology. Nearly three years after the end of the war, he wrote to Erman: ‘What a fatality it is, how disastrous for the science, that Germans cannot be working in Egypt still.’29 (It would be another eight years before the German Archaeological Institute reopened and German excavations resumed in Egypt.)
By contrast, some American missions had returned to the Nile Valley after the war. Foremost among them was an expedition funded by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and directed by Herbert Winlock. Winlock had studied at Harvard and began excavating in Egypt for the Met in 1906; but when war was declared he was evacuated back to New York and enlisted in the US forces, serving as a major. Only when hostilities ceased was he able to return to civilian life and to his work as an archaeologist, and he resumed digging at Deir el-Bahri in the winter of 1919, continuing the work begun by Naville a generation earlier. No less an authority than Petrie praised Winlock’s field technique, while Weigall went further, describing the young American as the most brilliant archaeologist of his generation.30 Winlock’s skill as an excavator was rewarded with a succession of important finds: the tomb of Meketra with its extensive collection of wooden tomb models, in that first post-war season of 1919–20, followed two years later by a remarkable archive of letters penned by an Egyptian farmer named Heqanakht in c.2000 BC. As Winlock’s friend, John Wilson, put it, the letters ‘bring us face to face with the ancient Egyptian, not in the frozen dignity of his tombs and temples, but in the homely busyness of his kitchen and his fields’.31
But such notable American discoveries did nothing to lift the gloom that had settled over British archaeology in Egypt. The cause was as much political as cultural. Although hundreds of thousands of men from the British Empire had fought – and died – for king and country, there was a strong sense that the old imperial rivalries had led the world to disaster. While the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in Paris prepared to mark the centenary of Champollion’s decipherment with official meetings and receptions, Britain’s imperial power was ebbing away. The future of its colonies and protectorates, Egypt included, looked uncertain – and so too did the future of the expatriates and archaeologists who had treated Egypt as their playground for the best part of forty years.
This post-imperial malaise was vividly captured in the writings of Arthur Weigall, who had more reason than most to look back on the pre-war years with a sense of deep nostalgia. Weigall had joined the Egyptian Research Account as a student of Petrie’s in 1901, and had been lauded by his mentor as ‘the most capable student we have ever had’.32 Within three years Weigall’s meteoric rise – assisted by his close friendship with Cromer – had taken him from research student to inspector-general of antiquities for Upper Egypt (in succession to Carter). Moreover, Weigall’s connections extended beyond the upper echelons of the British establishment across the Atlantic: he counted Theodore Roosevelt among his friends. With his network of influential acquaintances, Weigall’s views were keenly sought and his writings had influence on British policy towards Egypt. But the Nile Valley did not treat him kindly: in 1914, after a decade in post as inspector-general, he suffered a nervous breakdown and returned to England, turning his back on archaeology. In its place, he ‘occupied his spare time by painting designs for stage scenery’,33 in the London theatre, and by writing novels, song lyrics and reactionary articles for the Daily Mail.
Weigall’s most extensive surviving work, written in 1922 (and published the following year), is a book entitled, with headline-grabbing intent, The Glory of the Pharaohs. But the title is misleading: Weigall’s account was, in fact, a critical discourse on the discipline of archaeology, as practised in Egypt in the first two decades of the twentieth century. It is revealing, both of the turning point at which Egyptology now found itself, and of the contradictions and challenges that faced Britain as the colonial power in a country that clamoured for independence. Weigall had learned his trade from Petrie, and he continued to espouse the notion that, by ‘roughing it’, the body could be ‘toughened’. He boldly asserted that: ‘the study of archaeology in the open helps to train up young men in the path of health in which they should go. Work in the Egyptian desert, for example, is one of the most healthy and inspiring pursuits that could be imagined.’34
Nonetheless, he reserved special scorn for Petrie’s brand of asceticism: ‘It is not roughing it to eat canned food out of the can when a plate might be used: it is either hypocrisy or slovenliness.’35 With only a little more self-restraint, he observed:
If the experiences of a digger in Professor Petrie’s camp are to be regarded as typical, they will probably serve to damp the ardour of eager young gentlemen in search of ancient Egyptian treasure. One lives in a bare little hut constructed of mud, and roofed with cornstalks or corrugated iron . . . For seven days in the week one’s work continues, and it is only to the real enthusiast that work is not monotonous and tiresome.36
