When Tutankhamen's tomb was discovered in 1922, even the most experienced archaeologists joined the international community in marveling at the incredible wealth--and seemingly bizarre rituals--of ancient Egypt. What kind of society could produce such spectacular treasures only to bury them forever?
Lost in a frenzy of speculation--anthropological, scientific, and commercial--was Tutankhamen himself. Thirty-five hundred years ago, the mightiest empire on Earth crowned a boy as its king, then worshipped him as a god. Nine years later, he was dead. Despite the young monarch's almost universal recognition in death, Egyptologists know very little about his life. Traditional histories, founded on incomplete investigation and academic dogma, shed almost no light on the details of a life as complicated and as fascinating as it was short.
In Tutankhamen: The Life and Death of the Boy-King, Christine El Mahdy finally delivers a coherent portrait of King Tut's life and its historical significance. Based on stunning tomb records, lost since their discovery, this revolutionary biography begins to answer one of the twentieth century's most compelling archaeological mysteries: Who was Tutankhamen?
When Tutankhamen's tomb was discovered in 1922, even the most experienced archaeologists joined the international community in marveling at the incredible wealth--and seemingly bizarre rituals--of ancient Egypt. What kind of society could produce such spectacular treasures only to bury them forever?
Lost in a frenzy of speculation--anthropological, scientific, and commercial--was Tutankhamen himself. Thirty-five hundred years ago, the mightiest empire on Earth crowned a boy as its king, then worshipped him as a god. Nine years later, he was dead. Despite the young monarch's almost universal recognition in death, Egyptologists know very little about his life. Traditional histories, founded on incomplete investigation and academic dogma, shed almost no light on the details of a life as complicated and as fascinating as it was short.
In Tutankhamen: The Life and Death of the Boy-King, Christine El Mahdy finally delivers a coherent portrait of King Tut's life and its historical significance. Based on stunning tomb records, lost since their discovery, this revolutionary biography begins to answer one of the twentieth century's most compelling archaeological mysteries: Who was Tutankhamen?
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Overview
When Tutankhamen's tomb was discovered in 1922, even the most experienced archaeologists joined the international community in marveling at the incredible wealth--and seemingly bizarre rituals--of ancient Egypt. What kind of society could produce such spectacular treasures only to bury them forever?
Lost in a frenzy of speculation--anthropological, scientific, and commercial--was Tutankhamen himself. Thirty-five hundred years ago, the mightiest empire on Earth crowned a boy as its king, then worshipped him as a god. Nine years later, he was dead. Despite the young monarch's almost universal recognition in death, Egyptologists know very little about his life. Traditional histories, founded on incomplete investigation and academic dogma, shed almost no light on the details of a life as complicated and as fascinating as it was short.
In Tutankhamen: The Life and Death of the Boy-King, Christine El Mahdy finally delivers a coherent portrait of King Tut's life and its historical significance. Based on stunning tomb records, lost since their discovery, this revolutionary biography begins to answer one of the twentieth century's most compelling archaeological mysteries: Who was Tutankhamen?
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466863255 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 01/28/2014 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 352 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Christine El Mahdy (1950-2008) was an Egyptologist at Yeovil College, where she was the founder and director of the Egyptian Society. Her works include Tutankhamen: The Life and Death of the Boy-King, The World of the Pharaohs and Mummies, Myth and Magic. She lived in England.
Read an Excerpt
Tutankhamen
The Life and Death of the Boy-King
By Christine El Mahdy
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 1999 Christine El MahdyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-6325-5
CHAPTER 1
The Early Evidence for Tutankhamen
Many books on Tutankhamen begin with the discovery of the tomb in 1922. But the discovery of the tomb was merely the culmination of one man's dream. In reality, the archaeological story had begun many years earlier.
By 1906, Luxor had become a magnet for hundreds of visitors each year, from the ever larger groups of British 'Cook's tourists' on their organised tours, who moved swiftly from one site to the other, to the more leisurely journeys of the wealthy 'gentlemen-travellers', the last followers of the Grand Tour. Jostling with vessels ranging from large cruise ships to dahebeyehs, the wooden boats hired by smaller private parties, the Nile was becoming a busy thoroughfare.
Back in Europe, the publication of Charles Darwin's revolutionary theories on the origins of humankind had fired a need to understand our roots, and so inspired a more methodical and focused approach to delving into the past: in short, archaeology was born. Because of the poor state of preservation of sites and artefacts in the cool, wet countries of the north, antiquarians, as the early archaeologists were known, had had to develop slow and careful methods, scientifically devised by specialists in their field who measured and recorded everything meticulously. But in Egypt, where the age of archaeology had scarcely dawned, there were unimaginable riches preserved by the hot, dry climate. The sands were liberally littered, as far as the eye could see, with objects many thousands of years old. Here, you did not have to mark out a site in yard-squares and scrape away slowly at levels in the wet soil. Here you simply bent down and picked the things up.
Luxor had been noted already in several archaeological publications as a rich site, with its temples of Karnak and Luxor on the east bank and its wide temple-encircled plain on the west bank. The temples all dated to the New Kingdom – the time encompassing the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Dynasties, when ancient Egypt's wealth and influence were greatest. The hills on the west bank that fringed the fertile plain concealed a huge number of tombs that together could contain a mine of unimaginable riches.
It was a finding twenty-five years before that fuelled speculation about treasures in the hill tombs. In 1881, in a hidden cliff-tomb at Deir el Bahri on the west bank, archaeologists had found fifty-three royal mummies in a great secret cache hidden there some 3000 years before. The mummies had been some of the New Kingdom's greatest pharaohs, moved to safety here after the tombs in the Valley of the Kings had been smashed by a marauding Nubian army. Now, in 1906, the mummies were on view to the public, laid out naked in glass cases for the prurient casual tourist to gaze upon in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo's Tahrir Square. The exhibition included a recent addition of sixteen more mummies, fourteen of which were also royal; and some of these were the mummies of kings missing from the original group. These sixteen mummies had been found just eight years earlier, in a second cache in the Valley of the Kings itself. But the bodies of many kings were still missing. While archaeologists privately speculated that the others had been destroyed long ago, anticipation for the tourist of 1906 was high, and many hoped that the hills and valleys of Luxor might hold yet more treasures.
Europe's fascination with Egypt had started at the beginning of the nineteenth century with the publication of the Description de L'Égypte, the scientific report of the work of the scholars who had come through Egypt with Napoleon. From the 1830s, tourism had increased steadily, soon having grown to such an extent that trafficking in antiquities was taken for granted. Nile travellers in those years felt themselves ill-equipped on their homeward journeys if they were not accompanied by the odd mummy, coffin, papyrus or decorated pot. The avid Europeans would have bartered for these objects with Egyptians for what seemed, in European terms, ridiculously low prices, although to the native Egyptian they were small fortunes. By the mid-nineteenth century the trickle of tourism had turned to a flood, and Egypt's antiquities, once seemingly limitless, began to appear badly depleted by the trade. In 1957 Auguste Mariette, an Egyptologist at the Louvre Museum in Paris, had persuaded the Khedive – Egypt's ruler at the time – to set up two bodies simultaneously: the first Egyptian Museum, based in Boulaq in Cairo, where some treasure might be displayed, and the Antiquities Organisation, which was controlled by French director-generals and would issue licences, or concessions, to archaeologists.
It now seems incredible, but before 1857 there was no control over excavation in Egypt. Frequently, would-be archaeologists would literally come to blows over who would dig a particularly interesting site. The new concessions stated that when a site was identified, an inspector had to be present at its initial examination; that if a site had been robbed, the objects found had to be presented to the museum, which would have the choice of the pieces, the remainder reverting to the concession holder; but that if an intact site were found, the objects should belong to Egypt as an entire group, although it was within the prerogative of the Department of Antiquities and the Egyptian government to give the concession holder some pieces at their discretion. The system started to bring order to an otherwise chaotic situation, although the export of antiquities was still permitted under licence, and the flood of antiquities began to slow a little.
In the post-Napoleonic era of mistrust between the English and the French, the creation of the Antiquities Organisation was welcome. But there were inherent problems with the organisation – namely, the persistent appointment of French rather than British directors. However, by the start of the twentieth century, it had been agreed that two British inspector-generals would be appointed, one based in Luxor, the other in Saqqara, that huge necropolis of Memphis, the ancient capital.
In 1906, the Inspector-general of Antiquities for Upper Egypt, based in Luxor, was Arthur Weigall. Photographs show him to have been dapper and clean-shaven. His books – several of which are still in print – show that he knew the sites of Upper Egypt, south of Cairo, as no one else did. Who's Who in Egyptology, however, describes his life's work as 'marred by the author's eccentric approach to certain philological and historical matters, and displaying considerable arrogance towards other contemporary Egyptologists'. Weigall was responsible for supervising any excavation work going on in Luxor. His patience must have been sorely tried by the people flooding into the area in the hope of 'trying their luck' by digging in the western hills.
Weigall's immediate predecessor was Howard Carter, a young man from Norfolk, who had first arrived in Egypt as a painter employed to copy tomb paintings in Middle Egypt, between Cairo and Luxor, and in 1895 had arrived in Luxor to copy the paintings in the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el Bahri on the west bank. Carter had trained under the great Egyptologist Flinders Petrie, and under his guidance had become an archaeologist of some repute. As was common among Englishmen of the time, Carter was given to jingoism, and was often intolerant of others, especially 'foreigners'. He was also a loner who made friends with difficulty, and often found other people irritating. As an inspector, he wrote of the amateurs digging in Luxor as people 'bored with life's mild adventures, dallying with relics in the hope of finding some thrill to stimulate their sluggard imaginations'. Like others in his field then, he dressed in Egypt as he did in England, and was usually to be found, even in the hottest weather, in heavy tweed three-piece suits complete with bow-tie, walking-stick and a smart hat.
From 1903, the concession to dig in the Valley of the Kings had been held by Theodore M. Davies, a wealthy, retired American lawyer who had invested huge amounts of his own money in trying to find the missing kings and their tombs. He had endowed an entire gallery in the Egyptian Museum for his finds and was thus highly regarded by the impecunious Antiquities Organisation. But not all shared the organisation's views. The Director of the Antiquities Organisation, Gaston Maspero, had appointed Howard Carter to supervise all activities in Luxor, even those of Davies in the Valley. And while Carter liked and respected Maspero, of whom he wrote, 'A more charming gentleman or kinder master could not be found', his relationship with Davies was more aggressive. Carter saw his job as that of the professional archaeologist offering guidance to the untrained gentleman-digger, while Davies, equally irascible, believed that as he was footing the bill for the work, he was entitled to overall control. The two men clashed. As a result, in January 1905, Carter was moved away from his beloved Luxor and sent north instead, to Saqqara. The milder-mannered Weigall replaced him.
It seems that Weigall and Davies reached a tolerable understanding. Davies was undoubtedly a difficult person to work with, being often intolerant of anyone else's ideas. The work that he did within the Valley was generally sumptuously published, although the 'excavation reports', which he wrote himself, often had little in the way of accepted archaeological detail and frequently lacked even the most basic measurements, plans and layouts. Davies would generally ignore the suggestions of archaeologists working with him. As Nicholas Reeves has written, '[Davies'] interest in careful clearance work was minimal, his employment of basic conservation methods almost non-existent, while his splendid series of publications manages to record everything but the facts.'
Carter hated his move to Saqqara, and was on edge when he arrived there. On 8 January 1905, he was involved in a public brawl in the ancient necropolis. Carter's telegram to Maspero the following day explained the incident, saying, 'Fifteen French tourists were here today in a drunken state. The cause of the affray was started by the rough handling of my Inspector and the Gaffirs [local Egyptian Inspectors] both sides being cut and knocked about.' The French claimed to have been assaulted over a demand for tickets. The affair quickly became public knowledge. Newspaper reports revealed that whatever the cause of the dispute, Carter had ordered his men to use their truncheons to break up the affray. The local press related lurid tales of French women and children running from the danger while their valiant menfolk were under attack. Whatever the truth of the matter, by February 1905 Maspero told Carter 'not to take offence', but to meet with the complainants and make some apology, for the use of the truncheons at least. Maspero emphasised that the Antiquities Organisation would shoulder some of the blame. But on the appointed day, Carter refused to turn up, insisting that the French should apologise first. Maspero did his best to pour oil on troubled waters, but at length suggested that, for the sake of peace, Carter should take three and a half months' leave from 14 March. At this suggestion Carter's temper surfaced once more, and he immediately tendered his resignation.
Now unemployed and with little money, Carter moved back to his beloved Luxor, where he set up a small shop selling watercolours and, as a profitable byline well-known at the time, selling antiquities. His role excited little attention. Alfred Lythgoe from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York wrote of him, 'There is no one more familiar with the Egyptian market.'
So in 1905 Carter made contact again with Theodore Davies. This time, though, the tables were turned. Carter no longer had any say in archaeological work in the area. Davies also by now had a willing helper in the Egyptologist Edward Ayrton, a biddable young man of twenty-three.
In early 1906, Davies was relaxing with Ayrton in the Valley of the Kings when he made a momentous discovery. He wrote, 'My attention was attracted to a large rock tilted to one side, and for some mysterious reason I felt interested in it; and being carefully examined and dug about by my assistant Mr Ayrton with his hands, the beautiful blue cup was found.' The 'beautiful blue cup' was a small glazed-composition, or faience, cup of the type used at funerals in ancient Egypt, bearing the name 'Nebkheprure'. This was the throne-name of Tutankhamen, and the cup was the first piece ever found in the Valley that bore his name. For the first time it seemed probable that Tutankhamen, one of Davies' missing kings, might have been buried somewhere nearby.
At this time virtually nothing was known about Tutankhamen except that he had existed. Much of this was due to peculiarities not only in royal history in ancient Egypt, but also in the recording of it. Even today establishing the order of the succession and length of reign of Egyptian kings is complicated. The Egyptians themselves had no systematic method of writing their own history. All events were dated by the current reign-year of the king at the time (for example, year 1 of Amenhotep Nebmaatre). This means that our knowledge of how long any king might have ruled depends on the highest number of years that has been found. This could be changed at any time by the discovery of another piece with a higher number. Sometimes individual kings, or even entire families, ruled in different places in Egypt at the same time. Courtiers could serve only one king, so they might list in their autobiographical texts the year of a certain king in which they achieved a certain feat, omitting to add that there was another king ruling somewhere else in Egypt at the same time. King-lists, carved on the walls of several temples in Upper Egypt, purportedly list every king of Egypt from the very beginning, from Menes through to the time of the carving. But in fact the lists omitted anyone the Ramessides did not approve of, including all female kings and all the turbulent rulers of the mid-Eighteenth Dynasty, including Tutankhamen. Since no tomb had been found for Tutankhamen, only a few pieces had been discovered belonging to his reign, and the king-lists omitted him altogether. Even trying to find out where in the order of kings he ruled was problematical, and there were no clues at all as to how long he reigned.
By 1906 much of the basic history of the early New Kingdom had been established. It was known that around 1650 BC Egypt had been occupied by a group of foreigners called the Hyksos. The Hyksos were driven out around 1550 BC by the family from Luxor who formed the Eighteenth Dynasty. The first kings of this dynasty had been great warriors, forging the world's first empire. For many decades Egypt prospered, until the reign of the notorious King Akhenaten, known by many as the heretic king. During his time, the temples were shut, and the treasury drained as countries refused or failed to send tribute; and the great empire crumbled. On Akhenaten's death, the throne had fallen first for a short period to Smenkhare, then to Tutankhamen and finally to Ay. The names of all these kings were omitted from the king-lists. As we've seen, when Ay died, the Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Army, Horemheb, staged a military coup and ruthlessly began to eradicate all memory of the previous royal family. He had no heir, and before he died he chose a colleague in the army, Ramesses, to become the next king and the first ruler of the Nineteenth Dynasty. Ramesses I, his son Seti I and his grandson Ramesses II carried on Horemheb's campaign to obliterate all memory of the Eighteenth Dynasty family. Everywhere they removed every trace of their names, destroyed their sites, overcarved their inscriptions and kept them off the king-lists. It was as if Akhenaten, Smenkhare, Tutankhamen and Ay had never existed. And the destruction of their remains by the Ramessides almost worked. But enough fragmentary pieces survived to show us that they had lived, although nothing else about them was known. The English Egyptologist Sir John Gardner Wilkinson had noted Tutankhamen's name on a statue as early as 1837, but Davies' find, the blue cup, was the first intimation of Tutankhamen's presence in the Valley of the Kings. From that time onward, Tutankhamen's name was added to Davies' list of names of missing kings still to be found in the Valley.
Some time in the early months of 1906 Davies contacted Carter, and asked him to work for him as a freelance draughtsman. Given the previous ill-will between the two and Carter's pride, we can speculate that Carter would have refused the offer, had it not been for the discovery, in February that year, of the intact tomb of Yuya and Thuya in the Valley of the Kings. The publication of the discovery captured the public imagination as nothing had before. Yuya and Thuya were the grandparents of Akhenaten on his mother's side, and their mummies were perhaps the finest ever found in Egypt. Carter was thus persuaded to accept the job. Yet the move hardly reconciled the two men. September found Carter writing in a letter, 'Davies has behaved like a bear to me of late.'
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Tutankhamen by Christine El Mahdy. Copyright © 1999 Christine El Mahdy. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Foreword,
Part One - The Archaeological Tutankhamen,
Introduction,
The Early Evidence for Tutankhamen,
Discovering the Tomb,
The Accepted Story,
Evidence from the Objects in Tutankhamen's Tomb,
Part Two - The Historical Tutankhamen,
Introduction,
Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye,
Akhenaten and the Religion of the Aten,
Evidence from Tell el Amarna,
Akhenaten and Nefertiti,
The Elusive Smenkhkare,
Part Three - The Real Tutankhamen,
The Life of Tutankhamen,
The Death of Tutankhamen,
Appendices,
Family Tree,
The Restoration Stela,
The Scarabs of Amenhotep III,
The Dream Stela,
The Great Hymn to the Aten,
Suggested Reading,
Index,
Photographic Credits,
Also by Christine El Mahdy,
Copyright,