Howard Carter stole Tutankhamun’s treasure, new
evidence suggests
100 years after the discovery of the tomb of the boy
king, a previously unpublished letter backs up long-held suspicions
The new evidence about the discovery of the golden
coffin came from a member of Carter’s own team.
Dalya
Alberge
Sat 13 Aug
2022 14.00 BST
Howard
Carter, the archaeologist who discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, was long
suspected by Egyptians of having helped himself to treasures before the vault
was officially opened. But while rumours have swirled for generations, proof
has been hard to come by.
Now an
accusation that Carter handled property “undoubtedly stolen from the tomb” has
emerged in a previously unpublished letter sent to him in 1934 by an eminent
British scholar within his own excavation team.
It was
written by Sir Alan Gardiner, a leading philologist. Carter had enlisted
Gardiner to translate hieroglyphs found in the 3,300-year-old tomb, and later
gave him a “whm amulet”, used for offerings to the dead, assuring him that it
had not come from the tomb.
Gardiner
showed the amulet to Rex Engelbach, the then British director of the Egyptian
Museum in Cairo, and was dismayed to be told that it had indeed come from the
tomb as it matched other examples – all made from the same mould.
Firing off
a letter to Carter, he enclosed Engelbach’s damning verdict, which reads: “The
whm amulet you showed me has been undoubtedly stolen from the tomb of
Tutankhamun.”
Gardiner
told Carter: “I deeply regret having been placed in so awkward a position.”
But he added:
“I naturally did not tell Engelbach that I obtained the amulet from you.”
The
letters, now in a private collection, will be published in a forthcoming book
from Oxford University Press, Tutankhamun and the Tomb that Changed the World
Its author,
Bob Brier, a leading Egyptologist at Long Island University, told the Observer
that suspicions about Carter helping himself to treasures have long been
rumoured: “But now there’s no doubt about it.”
This year
marks the 100th anniversary of the discovery by Carter and his financial
backer, Lord Carnarvon, of the tomb of the boy king, filled with thrones,
chariots and thousands of objects needed in the next world. Over the next
decade, Carter supervised their removal and transportation down the Nile to
Cairo to be displayed in the Egyptian Museum.
Some
Egyptologists have challenged Carter’s claim that the tomb’s treasures had been
looted in antique times. In 1947, in an obscure scientific journal in Cairo,
Alfred Lucas, one of Carter’s employees, reported that Carter secretly broke
open the door to the burial chamber himself, before appearing to reseal it and
cover the opening.
Brier said:
“They were suspected of having broken into the tomb before its official
opening, taking out artefacts, including jewellery, sold after their respective
deaths. It’s been known that Carter somehow had items, and people have
suspected that he might have helped himself, but these letters are dead proof.
“He
certainly never admitted it. We don’t have any official denial. But he was
locked out of the tomb for a while by the Egyptian government. There was a lot
of bad feeling, and they thought he was stealing things.”
In his
book, he writes that the Egyptians were unable to prove their suspicions and
were convinced, for example, that Carter had been planning to steal a wooden
head of Tutankhamun found in his possession: “The Egyptian authorities had
entered and inspected Tomb No. 4, which Carter and the team had used for
storage of antiquities, and discovered a beautiful lifesize wooden head of
Tutankhamun as a youth.
“It had
been packed in a Fortnum & Mason crate but it had never been mentioned in
Carter’s records of the finds, nor in the volume describing the contents of the
antechamber…. Carter argued that it had simply been discovered in the rubble in
the descending passage.”
Brier said:
“Later, we do find objects on the Egyptian antiquities market from his estate
that clearly came from the tomb.”
Some
entered museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which
announced in 2010 that it would send back to Egypt 19 objects it acquired
between the 1920s and 1940s as they “can be attributed with certainty to
Tutankhamun’s tomb”.
In his 1992
book on Carter, the late Harry James drew on Carter letters in the Griffith
Institute at the University of Oxford, which refer to a row with Gardiner that
led to an amulet’s return to Cairo.
The
significance of the previously unpublished correspondence is that the
accusation came from a leading expert who was actually involved in the first
excavation.
Carter would
have struggled to challenge Engelbach, who had “too much authority and really
knew his stuff”, Brier said.
Tutankhamun and the Tomb that Changed the World
by Bob Brier
It is often
thought that the story of Tutankhamun ended when the thousands of dazzling
items discovered by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon were transported to the
Egyptian Museum in Cairo and put on display. But there is far more to the
boy-king's story. Tutankhamun and the Tomb that Changed the World explores the
100 years of research on Tutankhamun that have taken place since the tomb's
discovery, from the several objects in the tomb made of meteoritic iron that
came from outer space to new evidence that shows that Tutankhamun may actually
have been a warrior who went into battle. Author Bob Brier also takes readers
behind the scenes of the recent CT-scans of Tutankhamun's mummy to reveal more
secrets of the young pharaoh.
The book
also illustrates the wide-ranging impact the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb
had on fields beyond Egyptology. Brier examines how the discovery of the tomb
influenced Egyptian politics and contributed to the downfall of colonialism in
Egypt. Outside Egypt, the modern blockbuster exhibitions that raise great sums
of monies for museums around the world all began with Tutankhamun, as did the
idea of documenting every object discovered in place before it was moved. And
to a great extent, the modern fascination with ancient Egypt DL Egyptomania DL
was also greatly promoted by the Tutmania that surrounded the discovery of the
tomb. Deeply informed by the latest research and presented in vivid detail, Tutankhamun
and the Tomb that Changed the World is a compelling introduction to the world's
greatest archaeological discovery.
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