The "find of the century" was associated with the names of the English archaeologist Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon, who had been digging in the Valley of the Kings on the banks of the Nile for many years. Archaeological research in the Valley continued for many years and none of the seekers was successful. Chance helped - they stumbled upon an unusual architectural move that was supposed to lead somewhere.
The most unknown pharaoh
Before Carter and Carnarvon began excavations in the Valley of the Kings, the name of Tutankhamun was known only from one or two seals, where his name was mentioned. No one even knew that he had a royal title. Some believed that such a pharaoh did not exist at all, and the seals could well have belonged to just some rich Egyptian. We can say that Tutankhamun was born thanks to Carter, before that he was only a vague historical shadow.
It turned out that the pharaoh came to the throne as a child, and died at the age of nineteen. The found treasures became his "finest hour", even after death. The fact is that even well-preserved burials were plundered in antiquity. But the tomb of the young man-pharaoh was filled with a colossal amount of ritual items made of gold, bronze, precious stones. And yet a special place was occupied by a mask - a portrait of the ruler, forged from gold.
She covered the head and shoulders of the mummy. This is a beautiful and one of a kind example of a portrait of Ancient Egypt. The sculptor managed with great skill to convey the face of the pharaoh with a calm and sad expression, reminiscent of youth, which was not destined to turn into maturity. The signs of royal power are placed on the forehead: the kite Nehebt and the Butoh snake - the emblems of Upper and Lower Egypt. A braided beard is a symbol of the god of the afterlife kingdom Osiris. Archaeologists opened the mummy's shroud, removing new and new items from under each layer that were supposed to accompany the pharaoh in another life. Amulets, jewelry, necklaces, among which 143 sets were gold. A golden dagger was placed behind the mummy's belt. Its handle is ornamented with gold grain and entwined with stripes of semi-precious stones. The scabbard consists of relief images of wild animals.
Various materials were used in the design of the mask, including smalt and jade - a ritual and rare stone. He never existed in Egypt, which allows some skeptics to doubt that the mask belongs to Tutankhamun and put forward a version that it is a fake. So the mystery of Egyptian jade has not yet been solved.
On the sides of the sarcophagus, archaeologists saw several alabaster vases. One of them was made in the form of a blossoming lotus with human figures on graceful handles. Another depicted a mythical lion standing on its hind legs. In the manufacture of ritual sarcophagi for the entrails of the pharaoh, bright red and green stones, ivory, lapis lazuli and malachite, and leaf gold were used. The features of the pharaoh were repeated in numerous figurines of the king, depicted on a boat, on a lion, in the form of a priest, hunter, ruler.
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Despite the fact that seven statues of the pharaoh were discovered in the tomb, and some of them are human-sized, they are strikingly different from each other. In one he appears as a ruler, in another as a priest, in the third as a tamer of wild animals.
Among the especially artistically executed finds of the burial, one should point out a golden fan with scenes of a pharaoh's hunting, a royal scepter, a bow, pendants in the shape of a scarab - the symbol of the "sun god". Even household items that ended up in the burial due to their constant use in Tutankhamun's daily life were striking in perfection - gold earrings in the form of a duck spreading its wings, a gold pendant in the shape of a Nehebt kite, another with a scarab and two baboons holding solar discs on their heads … The symbolism of the sun god is played up in most of the decorations of the burial: the sun at sunrise and sunset, the sun and the opposing moon.
Some products, thanks to reliefs and inlays, illustrated the everyday life of the ruler, others - his participation in priestly rituals, and still others - rituals in the government of Upper or Lower Egypt. The whole world was literally intoxicated by this find. Sobering up came a little later.
And the first question in this series concerned violations of Egyptian laws.
How did you manage it?
The first fact of violation of the Egyptian law on artistic values was that the tomb was not closed after a cursory inspection through the hole by the light of a candle - and after all, some time passed between the opening of the tomb and the extraction of the treasures.
Carter, Carnarvon, Carter's daughter Evelyn, and Callender entered the building on the night of November 26, 1922, and carefully examined the first cell that formed part of the burial complex.
Here, between two large, human-sized sculptures of the boy-king, they found the door to the burial chamber, sealed and sealed by the guardian priests. Night visitors, having broken open a part of the door near the floor (to make it less noticeable), entered the tomb. When they returned to the front camera, the break-in was disguised and covered with objects.
Thomas Hoving, in his book Tutankhamun: The Untold Story, described 29 priceless pieces on display in US museums that have never been officially sold by Cairo, claiming that he owns all of Tut's treasure. It is natural to think that the originals entered both the Metropolitan Museum and the museums of Boston, Cleveland, Kansas City, Cincinnati through the hands of the archaeologist Carter and Lord Carnarvon. The documents confirmed the researcher's suspicion.
An employee of the Egyptian Department of Chemistry, Alfred Lucas, joined the Carter expedition in December 1922, and they stayed together for ten years. After the death of the leaders of the expedition, Lucas wrote a note-impression in the Egyptian archaeological journal. It is there that the continuation of the nightly story of four people who deliberately violated the law of Egypt is located.
“There are many mysterious stories about this robber hole,” Lucas wrote. "When I first entered the tomb on December 20 (that is, three weeks after the discovery), the hole was masked by a basket lid or some kind of braid and reeds raised from the floor by Mr. Carter."
So he puts an end to the question of the illegal actions of the discoverers: “The published statement by Mr. Carter that the hole was repaired and sealed in antiquity is misleading. Unlike the entrance to the tomb, the hole was sealed and sealed not by the priests, but by Mr. Carter himself.
When I first started working with him, Mr. Carter showed me this place, and when I said that it was all very different from the ancient work, he agreed and admitted that he did it!"
Some of the most valuable exhibits of the Metropolitan Museum are the figurines of a gazelle and a horse in the Egyptian section, executed by a wonderful ivory animal painter in a manner that can be compared with the plastic found in the tomb of Tutankhamun. Brilliantly modeled, with a subtle silhouette, these statuettes caught the attention of Lord Carnarvon and, along with his legacy, ended up in America. Hoving's letter to Carter about this "acquisition" indicated that the lord had warned his associate about hiding the place where his valuables were found.
Let's return to the notes of Alfred Lucas, who directly pointed out that even before the official opening, he saw a bowl and a beautiful casket for incense in Carter's house. A member of the archaeologist said: "… Obviously, he (the box - Y. G.) was found when Lord Carnarvon and Mr. Carter first entered the burial chamber." True, it should be noted that both items were later transferred to Cairo, where rare finds from the tomb were located, but they were not only too noticeable, but also marked with cards, which might not have been noticed right away. The most unexpected was the story of the wine basket, which clearly contained the stolen work, which became the subject of legal proceedings with the authorities.
Egyptian officials and workers of the Cairo Museum examined not only everything in the tomb itself and the adjoining room, but also archaeological services, warehouses, workshops, auxiliary premises of the expedition. At the warehouse of archaeologists, the Egyptians were unexpectedly interested in a pile of baskets of Fortnham & Mason wine. The container was empty, but the meticulousness of the inspectors forced them to turn over each basket and find among the used one, in which there was a wooden sculpture - a bust of the boy-king. The bust did not go through the inventory and was not registered by the archaeologist Carter.
Soon after the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamun, Carter received a message from the curator of the Egyptian department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Albert Lithgow, in which the museum offered to help the expedition with all available means. The American reported that the trustees of the museum "would very much like to adequately express their gratitude for everything that Lord Carnarvon and you have done …". Hoving was able to answer this question by building a long chain of facts that testified to many years of smuggling activities of two British scientists.
The village of Qurnet on the banks of the Nile, almost opposite modern Luxor, gained fame as a refuge for the grave-diggers of Ancient Egypt. Digging up the eroded tombs, the grave-diggers collected, if such happened, treasure and in parts offered antiquities to collectors. Archaeologist Carter served as an intermediary between them and American museums.
With bankers' money
British Egyptologist Gerald Overrall, in his study "They Deceived Tutankhamun," suggested that the tomb of the pharaoh was not opened in 1922, but seven years earlier. Howard Carter, according to the author, who was actually given over to the excavations in the Valley of the Kings, actually led a gang of professional tomb robbers, and Carnarvon financed this robbery. Two months before the publication of the report, Carnarvon gave an interview to an American magazine, in which he listed in detail … future exhibits, passing it off as a "scientific guess." According to Overoll's calculations, “the creative duet of the two Ks stole 329 priceless relics from the famous tomb, 300 of which are still kept in the Carnarvon family residence in London, and the rest are scattered in private collections in the United States.
Overoll recalls that Carnarvon was associated with the Rothschild clan, a significant part of whose fortune is associated with the practice of plundering royal tombs that kept gold and jewelry. After the death of Alfred Rothschild in 1918, Carnarvon married his only adopted daughter, and it was the multimillionaire clan that financed his excavation. According to the contract, the Rothschilds were supposed to receive a significant share of the finds, but Carnarvon tried to outsmart his sponsors by starting a business to resell the valuables in the United States.
According to Overoll, the lord was eliminated by a hired killer - poisoner, and after him a similar fate befell other participants in the excavation who knew or might have known about the swindle being turned. The chosen method of reprisals received a mystical coloring due to the fact that there were always many legends and legends around ancient burials and dead ancient cities, which lent credibility to what was happening.
Magazine: Mysteries of History No. 15, Yuri Gogolitsin