Tutankhamen (37 page)

Without involving the unnecessary complications of lost religious writings and multiple murders, the Egyptian workmen always assumed that Carnarvon and Carter were looking for treasure – most probably gold – that they would sell at a great profit. Why else would they keep everything hidden from view in the tomb? The locals almost certainly knew about the first, ‘secret', nocturnal visit to the Burial Chamber and, as Weigall wrote to Carter in January 1923: ‘the natives all say that you may therefore have had the opportunity of stealing some of the millions of pounds' worth of gold …'
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Some of their colleagues wondered about this, too. It is highly likely that Carter supported himself by dealing in antiquities during his precarious period of self-employment, before he teamed up with Carnarvon. He certainly dealt during the Great War – a time when tourism and prices slumped, and there
were many bargains to be had – when he helped his patron to acquire many valuable pieces. In the early twentieth century collecting and dealing were not the absolute taboo for archaeologists that they are today, and Carter was far from the only Egyptologist to dabble. However, there was already a growing feeling that ethical excavation, and selling artefacts to the highest bidder, did not sit comfortably together. As Inspector for southern Egypt, Carter had acquired specialist knowledge of the tombs and their contents. Now, suddenly, he had changed from gamekeeper to poacher and was helping to sell items that, many believed, should not have been sold at all.

It was not illegal to buy legally acquired antiquities from a licensed dealer. However, despite a system of inspections and compulsory registers, it was not always possible to determine what had been, and what had not been, legally acquired. Too many dealers were supplied by unofficial excavators, or by workmen who happily stole artefacts from under the noses of their archaeologist employers: we have already seen this happening with the KV 55 artefacts. These objects, stripped of their archaeological context, were beautiful but valueless from an archaeological viewpoint. As for the official excavators, Antiquities Service rules generally allowed legally excavated finds to be split 50:50 between the excavator and the Egyptian authorities, with the authorities deciding which objects should be retained by Cairo Museum. Only in the case of exceptional or unusual items could the Museum claim everything. Following the ‘division' of the finds, the excavator was free to do as he wished with his share: usually it was distributed between his backers as a reward for their financial contribution to the excavation, but occasionally it entered a private collection and effectively vanished (maybe to re-appear years later, as a gift to a local museum), or was sold as a means of recouping the cost of the excavation.

Reputable Western museums, intent on building up their Egyptian collections, did not always shy away from dubious deals and their
eagerness pushed prices ever upwards, making illicit excavation even more rewarding. Wallis Budge, Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum (1893 – 1924), frequently bought antiquities – both legitimately and on the black market – thus saving his museum the trouble and expense of conducting its own excavations. He is certainly not the only museum professional to have done this, but he is the only one to have published a highly embroidered account of his adventures. The sense of shock that comes from reading his autobiography,
By Nile and Tigris
(1920), is caused not by the events themselves, but by the fact that Budge was prepared to boast quite openly about them. Here, for example, he tells how he outwitted both the Egyptian Antiquities Service and the police. We join him the day after he has purchased Papyrus Ani, a beautifully illustrated 19th Dynasty copy of the
Book of the Dead
:

While Budge was busy ‘saving' artefacts for his museum, at the opposite end of the scale curator Émile Brugsch was strongly suspected of selling artefacts from the Cairo Museum collection for personal gain. Again, this needs to be set in context. Curious as it now
seems, this was a time when museum curators regarded their collections as their own personal property, to use and dispose of as they wished, and it was far from unknown for museum visitors to return home with a ‘worthless' pot or string of beads, the gift of a friendly curator. Cairo Museum even sold unwanted artefacts – strings of mummy beads – in its own Museum shop.

In his own defence, Carter would probably have argued that the antiquities trade was a far from black-and-white issue and that, as an Egyptologist turned dealer, he was performing a function that was all too necessary. If he did not identify the more valuable pieces, and direct them towards suitable collectors, either private or institutional, no one would, and the artefacts would simply disappear, undocumented, along with the wealthy tourists who bought souvenirs – genuine artefacts recovered from the Theban tombs, genuine artefacts ‘imported' from other parts of Egypt, genuine artefacts embellished with modern writings, or outright fakes – on a whim. The discovery, in August 1916, of the tomb of three harem queens of Tuthmosis III in the remote Wadi Gabbanat el-Qurud (Valley of the Ape) on the Theban west bank makes this point for him.

This substantially intact tomb was revealed to Theban tomb-robbers following an intensive storm that resulted in severe flooding.
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The tomb was plundered immediately and there is no record of its
in situ
contents, although contemporary accounts written by Egyptologists living in Egypt at the time of the discovery agree that there were three intact burials and a large number of grave goods, including many alabaster storage jars. The organic parts of the burial – the wood and the mummies themselves – had rotted away but the stone and gold remained. Inscriptions on their canopic jars tell us that the three queens were Manuwai, Manhata and Maruta; these non-Egyptian names suggest that all three came from the Syria/Palestine region. By the time of the official excavation in September 1916, the only objects left were those rejected by the robbers. Many of the grave goods fell
into the hands of the dealer Mohammed Mohassib, who reportedly paid a spectacular £1,100 for the haul. While the Antiquities Service showed no interest in retrieving the stolen goods, Carter was able to reconstruct the story of the robbery and to buy most of the surviving artefacts from Mohassib and other dealers, using money supplied by Carnarvon. These were subsequently purchased, in seven lots over five years, by the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a price of £53,397; they are still displayed in New York today. As Carter routinely charged 15 per cent commission, his personal profit on this deal would have been substantial. No one would argue that this is an ideal chain of events, yet without Carnarvon's and Carter's intervention, the unique collection would have been split up and effectively lost.

The spring of 1924 saw Carter and his team locked out of Tutankhamen's tomb. Carter eventually left Egypt to embark on the American lecture tour that would secure his financial future. Herbert Winlock, the universally liked and exceedingly diplomatic representative of the Metropolitan Museum, was left behind to negotiate a settlement on his behalf; a role which, when Carter decided to publish his own devastatingly frank version of events, including private correspondence with Winlock himself, drove the normally placid Winlock almost to the end of his tether.

With Carter absent and unlikely to return, the Egyptian Antiquities Service took the opportunity to appoint a committee to conduct a thorough survey of Tutankhamen's tomb, and of the associated tombs used for storage, conservation, photography and recreation. As the committee set to work, Winlock, in turn, insisted that Carter's foreman, Reis Hussein, provide him with a daily report of events in the Valley. Thus Winlock was informed almost immediately when the committee, searching the luncheon tomb (KV 4), discovered a near
life-sized wooden head of Tutankhamen neatly packed inside a Fortnum & Mason wine box. The head, which had been plastered and painted, showed Tutankhamen as the young sun god Re, emerging from the lotus blossom at the beginning of the world.

As the head lacked the notes and object number that normally accompanied Carter's methodical work, the Egyptian members of the committee took the view that Carter had stolen, or was intending to steal, the head from the tomb. A telegram was sent to Prime Minister Zaghlul, and the head was dispatched immediately to the Cairo Museum, where it was held as evidence. Lacau and Chief Inspector Rex Engelbach, who knew Carter, were inclined to believe that there might be another explanation: the head may not be from Tutankhamen's tomb, and may even have been purchased from a dealer; one of the workmen may simply have placed the head incorrectly in the luncheon tomb; the head may have been recovered from the stairwell and passageway before Carter's formal recording system was developed. It certainly made no sense for Carter to have abandoned a stolen item where anyone might find it. Winlock sent a coded telegram to Carter: