Tutankhamen (14 page)

The doors of the second shrine had been opened to reveal a third, sealed, golden shrine. On 3 January 1924, in the presence of a small group of scholars, this shrine was opened to reveal a fourth shrine whose doors were shut but not sealed. Inside this fourth shrine was a large quartzite sarcophagus:

This moment of beauty and quiet triumph was soured by two malicious complaints sent to Lacau, one claiming that a representative of
The Times
had been allowed to watch the proceedings, and the other that there had been no Inspector of the Antiquities Service present when the shrine doors were opened. Both were easily proved false – Rex Engelbach, Chief Inspector of the Antiquities Service, had attended the opening and could confirm that events were conducted with the utmost propriety – but they left a nasty taste. On 10 January Lacau wrote a stiff letter to Carter, making it clear that the tomb and its entire contents were regarded as Egyptian property. By now, whatever good relationship had once existed between Carter and Lacau had entirely evaporated. Carter believed that Lacau was attempting to frustrate valuable research being conducted to the highest standard to the benefit of Egypt and Egyptology, while at the same time refusing to acknowledge any rights that the Carnarvon family might have over the work that they were financing. He also thought that Lacau in particular, and the Antiquities Service in general, were behaving in a needlessly offensive manner when they should be supporting the rights of Egyptologists against the demands of politicians. Lacau's thoughts are less well documented, but he seems to have believed quite simply that Carter and his team were arrogantly exploiting Egyptian property over which, as non-Egyptians, they had no moral authority.

 

After another month of hard labour all four shrines had been dismantled, their side panels propped against the wall of the Burial Chamber and their roofs stored in the Antechamber. It was now time to open the sarcophagus, but a crack running across the centre of the lid threatened to make this a difficult operation. Angle irons were positioned alongside the lid and a pulley system was introduced so that it might be raised in one piece. Carter had invited seventeen Egyptologists to attend the raising, which was planned for 12 February. The day before, however, the Ministry of Public Works sent an objection, stipulating that only fifteen guests would be allowed in the
tomb. The matter was resolved amicably and, as planned, in front of an audience of Egyptian dignitaries, Antiquity Service officials, and Egyptologists, the granite lid was slowly hoisted upwards to hover over its quartzite base. A shrouded figure lay within. Carter and Mace drew back the two fragile linen sheets and:

The next day the tomb was to be opened to the press, and then ‘the Ladies', the long-suffering wives and families of the archaeologists, were to be allowed a private viewing of the sarcophagus and its contents. But late on the evening of 12 February, the government sent a telegram. The press visit might go ahead, but the ladies could not be admitted to the tomb as they did not hold an official permit. This directive came from the Minister for Public Works, Morcos Bey Hanna, via his Under-Secretary, Mohammed Zaghlul Pasha. Lacau, who found the decision incomprehensible and wrote to Carter to tell him so, was blamed by many for not preventing it. However, it is perhaps not so incomprehensible. The nationalist Morcos Bey Hanna had no reason to accommodate the British: they had, after all, imprisoned him for treason, and attempted to have him hanged, the previous year.

Furious, the team – Carter, Mace, Lythgoe, Breasted, Gardiner and Newberry – held urgent discussions in the Winter Palace Hotel. These ended with Carter issuing a blunt statement:

Now, at last, the journalists had something to write about. As they composed their headlines, ‘Locked out at Luxor', the tomb was abandoned exactly as it stood, with the sarcophagus lid still precariously suspended in mid-air. Carter felt that he, his team and Lady Carnarvon had been grievously offended. The Antiquities Service, however, viewed his closure of the tomb as a childish over-reaction to an essentially trivial matter. More importantly, they saw it as a direct contravention of Lady Carnarvon's permission to clear the tomb. On 20 February 1924 her concession was formally withdrawn; on the 22nd, officials of the Antiquities Service confiscated the tomb and, as Carter had refused to hand over his keys, employed workmen to cut the padlocks off the tomb gates. As Carter commenced legal action, the response of his colleagues was muted. Those who worked on the tomb supported him, but those who excavated away from Thebes were reluctant to become involved in an essentially local dispute that might escalate and threaten their own work.

It was not in Carter's nature to concede easily. Months of negotiations followed, complicated by the fact that Carter had a long-standing commitment to lecture in America and Canada; a commitment that he could not break, as he now had no other source of income.

Carter returned to Egypt on 15 December 1924. He found himself dealing with a very different regime. On 19 November the British Sirdar (commander in chief of the Egyptian army), Sir Lee Stack, had been assassinated. This had led to the fall of the nationalist government and the imposition of stricter British controls. Saad Zaghlul Pasha had resigned, and had been replaced as prime minister by Ahmed Ziwar Pasha, an old acquaintance of Carter. Meeting accidentally in the Continental Hotel in Cairo, the two were able to start unofficial discussions over the future of the tomb. A series of official meetings followed and, eventually, an agreement was reached. Lady Carnarvon would continue to pay for the work on the tomb and its artefacts, but the Carnarvon estate would waive all rights to the tomb and
The Times
would lose its press monopoly. The question of compensation would rumble on until 1930, when the estate was offered £35,867 13s 8d as full recompense for their costs. Lady Carnarvon had promised to pay a quarter of this to Carter, but in the event she paid him £8,012 up front, with a further £546 2s 9d paid later that year. The Metropolitan Museum, whose costs have been estimated in the region of £8,000, received nothing.

From late January 1925 onwards, the shortened season of work proceeded with an unaccustomed calmness. Nothing was taken out of the tomb. Instead, the team concentrated on the artefacts already awaiting study in the conservation lab. This vital work – fascinating to the Egyptologists – was not in any way newsworthy. With no daily display of grave goods leaving the tomb, and no political infighting, the pack of reporters quickly dispersed. After two successful months, nineteen cases of antiquities were sent by steamer to Cairo Museum, and Carter and Callender travelled north by motor car – Carter had become a great motoring enthusiast – to supervise their unpacking.

Work re-started on 11 October 1925, with attention firmly focused on the Burial Chamber. Carter intended to extract Tutankhamen from his sarcophagus before the winter tourist season got under way, as an influx of visitors would only hinder operations. However, recovering the mummy proved far more difficult than anyone had anticipated. It was not immediately apparent, but Tutankhamen had been interred in a nest of three close-fitting anthropoid (human-shaped) coffins, which had been placed on a low bier and wedged into the rectangular sarcophagus. There was very little room to manoeuvre, the coffins were extremely fragile, and the combined weight of the coffins and mummy was an extraordinary ton and a quarter.

The first task was to raise the lid of the outer coffin. This had been fastened to its base by a system of silver pins securing ten silver tongues that slotted into sockets in the base. On 13 October the pins were removed and, using its original silver handles, the lid was hoisted away. This exposed a second gilded wooden coffin covered with a decaying linen shroud and disintegrating garlands of lotus flowers and cornflowers woven with olive and willow leaves.

This second anthropoid coffin was more fragile than the first; it showed signs of damp, and some of its inlay was falling away. With only a centimetre of space separating it from the base of the outer coffin (Carter could not put even his little finger between the two), it was sensible to extract the combined coffins from the deep sarcophagus before attempting to raise the second lid. Steel pins were inserted into the original sockets in the outer coffin base, and the lifting apparatus was used to raise the nested coffins above the sarcophagus. Wooden planks were quickly placed over the top of the sarcophagus, and the outer coffin base was lowered on to this improvised table. Unfortunately, although the second coffin lid had been fixed to its base using the same tongue and socket system as the outer coffin, it
had not been provided with handles. There was therefore no easy way of lifting it. After two days of deliberation, the pins holding the tongues were extended as far as the outer coffin base would allow, wires were attached to the pins, and, in what appears almost a counter-intuitive move, the second coffin was held still while the outer coffin base was lowered, leaving the second coffin dangling somewhat precariously from the hoist. The empty outer coffin was placed in the sarcophagus for storage, and the entire second coffin was lowered on to a wooden tray placed over the open sarcophagus.

The lid of the second coffin was lifted, with considerable difficulty, on 23 October, revealing a third anthropoid coffin, with a red-brown linen sheet carefully tucked around it so as to leave the face exposed. Unlike the previous two, this third coffin was made of beaten sheet gold. It was now obvious why the weight of the coffin assemblage had barely diminished as the outer coffins were removed.

Gold it may have been, but this innermost coffin was far from gleaming:

The innermost coffin, still lying in the base of the second, was transferred to the Antechamber, where there was more room to move. Here the base of the second coffin was coated with hot paraffin wax, which would, as it cooled, hold its delicate inlays firmly in position. Finally, the gold pins holding the third lid in place were extracted, using long screwdrivers adapted for the purpose. The lid was raised to
reveal Tutankhamen's mummy, his head and shoulders covered by a golden funerary mask:

The resin-based unguents, which were still tacky in places, were a part of the funerary ritual: Carter estimated that maybe two bucketfuls had been poured over the king, carefully missing the face and feet. The unguents had glued the king's bandaged face into his funerary mask, and both his mask and his body into his innermost coffin, which was itself still glued into the second coffin base. Once Tutankhamen had been extracted, Carter took a calculated gamble: