It is the business of the archaeologist to wake the dreaming dead: not to send the living to sleep.1
ARTHUR WEIGALL, 1923
The worldwide publicity that attended the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in November 1922 reached fever pitch the following year with the official opening of the burial chamber. As the New York Times reported:
There is only one topic of conversation . . . One cannot escape the name of Tut-Ankh-Amen anywhere. It is shouted in the streets, whispered in the hotels, while the local shops advertise Tut-Ankh-Amen art, Tut-Ankh-Amen hats, Tut-Ankh-Amen curios, Tut-Ankh-Amen photographs, and tomorrow probably genuine Tut-Ankh-Amen antiquities. Every hotel in Luxor today had something a la Tut-Ankh-Amen . . . There is a Tut-Ankh-Amen dance tonight at which the piece is to be a Tut-Ankh-Amen rag.2
The ‘Egyptomania’ that the discovery sparked in Europe and America was accompanied by a national awakening in Egypt itself. The boy-pharaoh from ancient Egypt’s golden age became an icon of the country’s new independence.3 Egyptian nationalist politicians paid well-publicized visits to the tomb, discovering that the magic of ancient Egypt could be as powerful a weapon for contesting Western influence in the twentieth century as it had been for bolstering it in the nineteenth.4
The team brought together by Carter to study, record and conserve the thousands of objects from Tutankhamun’s tomb marked a new departure in Egyptian archaeology. The expedition was the first to have its own chemist (Alfred Lucas), and the sheer number of different specialisms required to do the tomb and its contents justice signalled the end of the heroic age of gentleman amateurs. Also gone were the days when a single scholar – a Young or Wilkinson, Champollion or Mariette – could hope to encompass the whole discipline of Egyptology. The sheer number of discoveries during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had outstripped the ability of any one individual to keep pace with and master such a raft of new knowledge.
The orgy of treasure-seeking in the immediate aftermath of the Napoleonic expedition had resulted in countless thousands of objects entering European collections, to be admired as curios and objets d’art; but the proper interpretation and understanding of Egyptian antiquities – as insights into pharaonic civilization – only really began with Champollion’s decipherment of hieroglyphics in 1822. His achievement allowed ancient Egyptian culture to emerge out of the fog of Classical myth and esoteric legend into the spotlight of serious scientific enquiry, to be studied and appreciated as a sophisticated culture in its own right and on its own terms. At the same time, Wilkinson’s careful observations on the ground in Egypt brought new breakthroughs in understanding. He recognized the pyramids of Giza for what they really were – the tombs of fourth-dynasty kings – while his accurate drawings of the scenes in the Tombs of the Nobles at Thebes rounded out the picture of pharaonic culture by illuminating the daily life of the ancient Egyptians. As Wilkinson was the first to observe, their manners and customs were as rich and varied as those of any other people, ancient or modern. Hunting and fishing, music and dance, arts and crafts, banquets and festivals: all were recorded in intimate detail on tomb walls, but it took a man of Wilkinson’s curiosity and diligence to bring them back to life.
Building on these foundations, scholars in the middle of the nineteenth century were able to bring a sharper focus to the study of ancient Egypt, elucidating the different periods of its long history and charting the development of its extraordinary art and architecture. Thanks to the efforts of Lepsius and his expedition, Egyptian civilization gained some texture and nuance: instead of being seen as a single, amorphous entity, it came to be understood as a succession of distinct epochs of cultural creativity (which were named the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms), each with its own recognizable artistic style. In the 1850s, Mariette’s excavations unexpectedly revealed the degree to which ancient Egypt had maintained close relations with, and been influenced by, its neighbours. The burial of King Kamose at Thebes, with its objects of Levantine inspiration; the reliefs depicting an ancient voyage to Punt (modern coastal Sudan), discovered in the Theban temple of Hatshepsut; and the lion-headed sphinxes, found at Tanis in the Nile Delta, with their strange Asiatic features: this succession of notable finds demonstrated that the pharaohs had not only traded with other cultures, but had also absorbed influences from abroad. Ancient Egypt had not, after all, been the pristine ‘civilization apart’ that earlier scholars had assumed (or wished).
With the establishment of the Antiquities Service in the late 1850s, new discoveries came thick and fast.5 The Pyramid Age was revealed in all its glory by a series of beautiful objects unearthed from cemeteries at Saqqara, Giza and Meidum: a life-sized wooden statue of a high official, nicknamed by the workmen who found it Sheikh el-Beled (‘village elder’); the majestic diorite statue of King Khafra, uncovered in situ in his pyramid temple; delicately carved wooden relief panels from the tomb of Hesira, a dentist at the court of a third-dynasty king; the exquisite statues of husband and wife, Rahotep and Nofret, found in their tomb chapel, undisturbed for over three thousand years; and the beautifully observed painting of geese from a nearby tomb. Antiquities Service excavations also revealed the world’s oldest body of religious writings, the Pyramid Texts, enabling scholars to appreciate the antiquity and complexity of ancient Egyptian beliefs; and a cache of royal mummies, allowing faces to be put to some of the great names of antiquity.
From the 1880s onwards, Petrie’s focus on small finds – the objects thrown away or disregarded by earlier archaeologists – and on meticulous, systematic excavation led to some of the most elusive and fragile remains being discovered, recorded and studied. His unerring eye and enquiring mind revealed for the first time the long prehistory of ancient Egyptian civilization, by finding a series of unassuming shallow graves, cut in the low desert north of Thebes and dating back to the early fourth millennium BC; rescued the precious mummy portraits from Hawara, which testified to the artistic and cultural sophistication of a hybrid Graeco-Egyptian culture at the end of ancient Egypt’s immense time span; and unearthed delicate paintings in the royal palaces at Amarna, illuminating life in the royal court under the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten during Egypt’s ‘golden age’ (c.1350 BC). Petrie also had the luck – or judgement – to find the only known instance of the word ‘Israel’ in Egyptian hieroglyphics, on a reused slab of stone. But, by the late 1880s, the study of ancient Egypt was no longer seen as a branch of biblical history, but as a fully formed discipline with its own questions to answer.
As knowledge grew, so further discoveries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were able to add yet more colour and detail. The Amarna Letters, discounted as forgeries by many, but recognized and acquired by Erman for Berlin, turned out to be an invaluable diplomatic archive, charting relations between Egypt and her neighbours at a time of great intrigue and power politics. A cache of delicate royal jewellery, found by de Morgan at Dahshur, illustrated Egyptian craftsmanship at its zenith. A ceremonial stone palette, dug from the mud by Quibell, turned out to have been commissioned by Egypt’s very first king, Narmer (c.3000 BC), to celebrate his rule over a united realm. And the tomb of Kha, excavated by Schiaparelli at Thebes, yielded the greatest array of objects belonging to a private individual ever found in one place – basketry, furniture, clothing, food: the perfectly preserved possessions of a man who lived over twenty centuries ago.
By the time Davis, then Carter and Carnarvon, began to dig in the Valley of the Kings, ancient Egypt was no longer just an amalgam of garbled classical accounts, no more a mythical realm of esoteric knowledge, but a complex and vibrant civilization, every bit as innovative and sophisticated as Greece or Rome – the crucible of great feats of artistic and architectural achievement, but inhabited by real people.
While assisting Carter in the Valley of the Kings, Gardiner, the foremost philologist of his generation, published his landmark Egyptian Grammar. It was, and remains, the seminal text on the ancient Egyptian language. It is not, however, easy reading. Would that Gardiner, or myriad Egyptologists in the century since, had heeded the comments of Weigall, also writing in 1923: ‘It is the business of the archaeologist to wake the dreaming dead: not to send the living to sleep.’6 But it would be Gardiner’s heirs rather than Weigall’s, specialists rather than generalists, who would chart the future of the discipline. In embracing scientific rigour, Egyptology would lose its panache.
The sense that Carter’s discovery marked the end of an era was only strengthened by the sudden and tragic death of his long-term patron and friend, Lord Carnarvon. Returning to Luxor in early 1923, after a whirlwind of interviews and audiences in England, Carnarvon was bitten on the cheek by a mosquito, allegedly while crossing the Theban plain to or from the Valley of the Kings. He subsequently nicked the top of the bite while shaving, and it became infected. Blood poisoning set in, and on 14 March he was transferred to Cairo, where he developed pneumonia. Concerned friends and colleagues hoped for the best while fearing the worst. On 20 March, Gardiner wrote to his wife: ‘Our great sorrow during the last few days has been Carnarvon’s serious illness. He . . . is not yet out of danger. It is difficult to think that only last Friday he and I dined and spent the evening together. It would be terrible if – but I just won’t think of it.’7
Just over two weeks later, Carnarvon was dead. His body was brought back to Highclere and buried on Beacon Hill – the site of an ancient earthwork – overlooking the estate. His death gave rise to speculation about the ‘pharaoh’s curse’, a myth that has proved hard to dislodge in the century since.8 Carnarvon’s sister, Lady Burghclere, recognized at once that: ‘A story that opens like Aladdin’s Cave and ends like a Greek myth of Nemesis cannot fail to capture the imagination of all men and women.’9 Carter persuaded Carnarvon’s widow to take over her late husband’s concession, so that the clearance of the tomb could continue, uninterrupted. She agreed, but the old deference by the Egyptian authorities towards aristocratic English patrons had gone forever.
In 1923, even as Petrie was being knighted by King George V ‘for services to Egypt’ (not ‘Egyptology’), the Egyptian government was re-establishing the Cairo School of Egyptology, which had lasted only three years during its first incarnation. That had been back in the 1880s, as Petrie was beginning his career in archaeology. In a bitter irony, the announcement coincided with the death of Ahmed Kamal, the first Egyptian to undertake scholarly work in Egyptology. He did not live to see his ultimate wish – for Egyptians to administer their own Antiquities Service (in which he had served faithfully for thirty-five years) – but he had done more than most to hasten the day.
Egypt’s new constitution was promulgated on 19 April 1923, and the following year, after parliamentary elections resulted in a government dominated by nationalists, the Antiquities Service promptly cancelled Carter’s permit to work in the Valley of the Kings. The symbolism was clear for all to see. Eventually, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, the concession was restored in 1925, but on the Egyptian government’s terms. The Times lost its monopoly (negotiated by Carnarvon) on news coverage of the excavation, while the Carnarvon estate had to formally renounce any claim to a share of objects from the tomb.
The one area where Westerners continued to exercise significant influence was at the Egyptian Museum. The building had been designed by a Frenchman, bore the names of exclusively Western Egyptologists, and was still the preserve of a largely European curatorial staff. But under their leadership, the building, as opposed to the antiquities inside it, had not been particularly well looked after. Only twenty years old, the roof had already started to leak and the basement flooded regularly when the Nile rose. Moreover, nobody back in 1902 had envisaged that the museum would one day have to accommodate so vast a collection of objects as had recently been unearthed in Tutankhamun’s tomb. By the 1920s, the museum was overcrowded and in a bad state of disrepair. The Egyptian government had other, more pressing priorities for public investment, but Western Egyptologists were aghast, and decided to take matters into their own hands. In 1925, Breasted persuaded his benefactor, John D. Rockefeller, to promise funding for a brand new museum – a grand, riverside building in ancient Egyptian revival style. There was one condition: that Western scholars would be guaranteed control of the museum and its associated research institute for a period of thirty-three years. The Egyptian government refused.10
The days of Western interests infringing on Egyptian sovereignty in the name of archaeology were gone forever. Breasted, like Carter, had shown himself hopelessly out of touch with Egyptian national sentiment.11 In a rare show of Egyptological discord, Reisner bitterly opposed the Rockefeller scheme. In the end, Rockefeller directed his philanthropy towards the building of the Palestine Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem, and gave additional funds to the Oriental Institute, allowing for the construction of Chicago House.
Plans for a new, Western-controlled Egyptian museum may have been thwarted, but the existing museum continued to be run by European – specifically French – directors, right up to the overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy. Etienne Drioton – the last in an unbroken line stretching back to Mariette in the 1850s – was forced from office after the revolution of July 1952. In a further gesture of anti-imperialism, the British army barracks at Qasr el-Nil, right next to the museum, were razed to the ground (to be replaced by the Nile Hilton, the first of Cairo’s modern hotels). The Suez debacle, four years later, merely confirmed and cemented the permanent loss of British and French influence in Egypt. For better or worse, the fate of the Antiquities Service and Egyptian Museum, and with them the direction of archaeology in Egypt, would henceforth be controlled by the people of the Nile Valley, not by foreigners from distant shores.
Acknowledgements
I would like to record my thanks to my agents, Peter Robinson and Jon Wood, and my editor at Picador, George Morley; to the unfailingly helpful staff of the Cambridge University Library; to the many scholars and antiquarians, from the seventeenth century to the present day, upon whose research I have drawn; to Edward Hanna at the University of Lincoln and Richard Cornes at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute for helping me track down the 1822 meteorological records from the Paris Observatoire; to Dr Michael Zimmerman for helpful clarifications; and, as always, to Michael Bailey for his unstinting support.
Notes
Introduction
1. Belzoni (1821): 80.
2. Quoted by Ambrose Lansing in Cone, ed. (1976): 5, and in Adams (2013): 51.
3. Colla (2007): 21.
PROLOGUE:
Travellers in an antique land
1. Norden (1757): 77.
2. Felix Fabri, Evagatorium in Terræ Sanctæ, Arabiæ et Egypti peregrinationem, quoted in Thompson (1992): 17.
3. Anon. (1589).
4. Reid (2002): 27.
5. Sicard (1982): 23.
6. Quoted in Tyldesley (2005): 43.
7. Pococke (1743): 13.
8. Pococke (1743): 46.
9. Pococke (1743): iii.
