Tutankhamen (16 page)

Ancient Egyptian clothing was almost invariably made from linen, a product of the flax plant which flourished in the fertile fields of the Nile Valley. Wool was available but rarely used; cotton was not available during the 18th Dynasty. Tutankhamen was therefore buried with vast quantities of linen, including garments, rolls of cloth, sheets and bandages. There were painted linen components included in his chariots, and miniature linen cloaks tied neatly around the necks of many of the funerary figurines, some of which bore labels indicating that the linen at least dated to the reign of Akhenaten. It is impossible to estimate how much cloth was originally included in Tutankhamen's burial. Their unique and somewhat wasteful funerary practices meant that the Egyptians had an insatiable demand for cloth, and linen – expensive, portable, difficult to identify and easy to sell – would have been one of the prime targets of the robbers who ransacked his tomb.

Those textiles that survived the robbery were simply stuffed, crumpled and unfolded, into any old chest or box. When recovered from
these containers, they were in a highly fragile condition, with some far better preserved than others:

An unfortunate combination of circumstances, including sealing the tomb while the plaster and mortar were still wet, moisture percolating through the innermost wall and, maybe, the decomposition of the fruits and liquids included among the grave goods, had caused a damp, slightly humid atmosphere within the tomb. There was evidence of a brown fungus on the walls and on some of the objects, and a ‘peculiar pink film' had been deposited everywhere. Lucas, the team chemist, suggested that the ‘pink film' may have been caused by the deterioration of a ferrous compound within the stone and plaster, which was drawn to the surface by capillary action, then oxidised to iron oxide. He was, however, uncertain why the colour of the deposit varied, appearing scarlet on calcite and pink on limestone and plaster. A story which Carter tells as a footnote may be relevant here (while serving as a reminder that the tomb was at all times a magnet for enterprising thieves):

The textiles were not, of course, the only artefacts to have suffered in the microclimate of the tomb. We are accustomed to seeing the best of Tutankhamen's grave goods displayed in Cairo Museum after extensive cleaning, conservation and, in some cases, reconstruction, but this is not necessarily the condition in which they were found. Leaving aside the ubiquitous but harmless ‘pink film', much of the wood had warped, and much of the glue had dissolved, so that many objects simply fell apart as they were moved. Objects made from a combination of materials – a chest, for example, might typically be made of wooden planks veneered with ivory, ebony and gold, or might be coated with painted plaster – posed a particular challenge to the conservators, as the individual components warped and deteriorated at different rates and this caused them to separate. At the opposite extreme, some of the grave goods had to be dismantled by the excavators: the shrines, for example, could not be removed intact from the Burial Chamber, and the three animal-headed couches had to be taken apart so that they might fit through the tomb door. It would be difficult to over-estimate the importance of the immediate, on-site conservation work, but Carter believed that, without it, less than one tenth of the artefacts would have survived to reach Cairo. As it was, he estimated that less than 0.25 per cent of the artefacts were lost.

The care taken over the preservation of the delicate spangled linen pall discovered within the outermost shrine in the Burial Chamber is a shining example of Carter's innovative approach to conservation. The pall, brown with age and already tearing under its own weight, hung on a wooden frame immediately above, and blocking access to, the second shrine. After much thought, a plan was developed. First, with Carter and Mace crawling along planks placed across the outer shrine, the hundreds of gilded bronze flowers were removed. Some could simply be lifted off the linen; others had to be cut away with scissors. This greatly reduced the weight of the cloth, and allowed it to be wound on to a giant, purpose-made wooden roller. Experimentation by Dr Alexander Scott, director of scientific research at the British Museum, led to the fabric being strengthened with a mixture of duroprene (a chlorinated rubber compound dissolved in an organic solvent) and xylol.
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Unfortunately, during the 1924 Antiquities Service lockout, the pall was left unattended in the conservation tomb, and was ruined beyond redemption.

Tutankhamen's wardrobe included sleeved and sleeveless robes, kilts, sashes, gloves, headdresses, sandals, and what Carter coyly describes as ‘shirts and undergarments'.
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Although contemporary images show the New Kingdom elite dressed in conservative white (undyed) clothes, Tutankhamen's garments were lavishly embellished, and demonstrated techniques of tapestry weave, dyeing, bleaching, fringing, appliqué, embroidery (including chain stitch and buttonhole stitch), heavy beading and the application of sequin-like spangles and cartouches which unfortunately caused the tunics to tear. Some of the robes were so elaborate that they were initially identified – purely on the basis of early twentieth-century cultural expectations – as women's clothes. Others were so small that they had obviously been made for a child. There were some curious inconsistencies: Tutankhamen had almost 150 loincloths but no more than ten tunics, yet these garments were worn as sets, one tunic with one loincloth.
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A curious omission was Tutankhamen's crown or crowns. In fact no royal crown has ever been recovered from any context, and this suggests that crowns may not have been considered the personal property of individual kings. Lest there should be any doubt over his status, Tutankhamen was buried with three crooks and two flails, the symbols of his earthly kingship. He was also buried with a curious figure discovered by Carter in the Antechamber. This wooden, plastered and painted life-sized model of the king is dressed in a simple white robe resembling a tight modern T-shirt. It wears a crown with a uraeus, yet lacks arms and legs. Under normal circumstances it would be considered extremely bad luck to include an incomplete or otherwise mutilated figure of an owner in his tomb, as this might cause the deceased to be reborn with the same mutilation. It therefore seems likely that the figure had a specific purpose. Carter identified it as a mannequin, used to model Tutankhamen's robes and jewellery, and the
New York
Times
advanced this theory: ‘like a modern woman's dress dummy, called, I believe, by dressmakers an Arabella or tailor's mannequin used for trying on and fitting garments'.
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;
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Here was a thrilling, direct connection between the ancient tomb and the modern, Tut-inspired clothes that were all the rage in the West.

The textiles were recorded, treated, and then transferred to Cairo where, all but forgotten, they continued to deteriorate so that today the vibrant colours recorded by Carter have dimmed.
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They were never published, although there were occasional, tantalisingly brief, mentions in Carter's own popular books, in the
Illustrated London News
(August 1929) and in
Embroidery
(December 1932). As with all the other artefact types, the intention was that a specialist volume would eventually be produced. Now, after decades of neglect, Tutankhamen's wardrobe is finally being reconstructed and studied by a dedicated team of textile historians led by Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood at the Textile Research Centre, Leiden University.
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Their results have the potential to provide information not only about the commercially important Egyptian textile industry, and about 18th Dynasty clothing and fashion in general, but about Tutankhamen himself.

Tomb walls and statuary suggest that the elite Egyptians favoured stylish but impractical clothing, with the women hobbling around in skin-tight white sheaths, the men dressed in skimpy kilts and the children of both sexes naked. This is directly contradicted by the archaeological evidence, recovered from Tutankhamen's tomb and elsewhere, which shows that they actually wore comfortable, loose-fitting tunic-style garments that they draped and tied around the body. Even allowing for this loose fit, his reconstructed clothing indicates that Tutankhamen's vital statistics were unusual for a man of his height. His mummy, measured during the autopsy, was approximately 167.5 cm in length (almost 5ft 6ins); his chest, measured from his near life-sized mannequin, was approximately 80 cm (31 inches); his waist, estimated by measuring his belts, sashes and the mannequin,
measured approximately 75 cm (29 inches); his hips, measured from his loincloths, a disproportionately large 108 – 110 cm (perhaps as wide as 43 inches).
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This is the same, rather feminine body-shape – a narrow waist and wide hips – that we see, greatly exaggerated, on Akhenaten's formal art work. It suggests that the pear-shape was a family trait – possibly, even, the symptom of some hereditary illness – and that Akhenaten may, as Egyptologists have long suspected, have provided his own artistic inspiration.

Tutankhamen's tomb is not the Egyptian equivalent of a shipwreck, or of Pompeii, or of any other disaster where death came in an instant, preserving the unaudited evidence of life actually lived. It is a frozen rite: a collection of artefacts deliberately selected because they had meaning for either the king or those who buried him. Taken as a whole, the collection is capable of stirring emotion in the most experienced of Egyptological breasts: