A Talk With Howard Carter

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 68, 11 June 1927, Page 19 (Supplement)

A Talk With Howard Carter

Tiie Search ira the Valley ©f the liigs

(Written for THE SUN by E. S. HARSTON.)

A MEETING with Mr Howard Carter made apparent the qualities of the man. Most authorities for scores of years had held that the possibilities of the Valley of the Kings had been exhausted; Mr Theodore Davis, in association with whom Mr Carter had been previously working, had throw'n up his concession; yet after six years of fruitless work in association with Lord Carnarvon, and in face of the discouraging pessimism of Sir Gaston Maspero, then the Director of the Department of Antiquities in Egypt, Mr Carter refused to despair, and w'as mainly instrumental in bringing their quest to a successful issue. The character of the sun-tanned Englishman who has done this is clearly revealed in his strong features and piercing eyes. Though he had left his home in Luxor and was resting at Aswan to avoid the crowds who had thronged from all parts of the globe to visit the tomb, he courteously con-

| nothing. One can therefore imagine i the immense riches which must have been contained in the 27 Royal Tombs hidden i n the Valley of the Kings. From the tomb of Tut-ankh-Amen. a mere hoy, we have removed an intrinsic value of between £60,000 and £IOO,OOO of gold—its value melted down—to say nothing of the artistic and antique value of the objects found. To hide such riches so many miles out in the lonely desert was simply asking for trouble. “Enough has been said already of the work of former years. The great importance of this year’s work, which has been carried on solely in the innermost recoss of the Tomb, lies in the fact that the contents of this small chamber are of a highly religious nature. We found it to contain numerous statuettes representing the College of the Gods of the .Underworld, wrought with the finest art in wood

sented to give the readers of The Sun m acount of his work in Egypt. Mr Carter said: “I began my work .vith Sir William Flinders Petrie at Tel el Amarna, the city built by the so-called heretic king Akh-en-Aten vho, by a curious coincidence was the lather of Tut-ankh-Amen. In fact he \ r as both father and father-in-law, since Tut-ankh-Amen, his unofficial son, married Ankh-es-en-Amen his official daughter and so became heir to .he throne in the same manner as the lusbands of the princesses in traditional fairy tales. “I the n worked at Thebes with Prolessor Naville, of Geneva, until in 1900 l joined the Government, being appointed Chief Inspector of Antiquities tor Upper Egypt. Afterwards I work--3d with an American, Mr Theodore Davis, in the Valley of the Kings, where I discovered on his behalf the tombs of Queen Hat-Shep-sut and of Thothmes IV; and I later carried out some research work in Lower Egypt. “In 1908 I returned to Thebes and commenced my association with Lord Carnarvon. There we discovered the tomb of King Mensuhotep of the Xlth Dynasty, of Amenhetep I, and several private tombs. “After the war I returned with Lord Carnarvon to the Valley. There, under romantic circumstances, we found the original tomb of Queen Hat-Shep-sut which had been made for her when she was the consort of Thothmes II and before she claimed the throne after his death, and became a queen herself. Naturally it had never been used and the sarcophagus only was found in the tomb, and nothing else. “Mr Davis having given up his concession, I persuaded Lord Carnarvon to apply for it, which he did, and we directed all our energies towards the discovery of the last tomb of the Valley, namely that of Tut-ankh-Amen. “The interesting point in the search was this. As Tut-ankh-Amen was of the heretic family of Aten, there was a possibility that, even though he had become converted to Amen, he might nevertheless be buried at Tel el Amarna, the capital of the worshippers of Aten, instead of at Thebes, which was the seat of Amen. Thus opinion was divided and there was considerable risk in looking in the Valley of the Kings. Against the advice of Sir Gaston Maspero we continued to hunt for that tomb for many years, until in November, 1922, we reached our goal. “I had always thought that, though the tomb would be found there, it would be plundered. But in this case we had great luck and instead of its being, like the other Royal Tombs. 98 per cent, plundered, we found it 98 per cent intact. This was the reason for the fame of the discovery. Had the tombs of Rameses the Great and Thothmes 111 been discovered in a similar state, Tut-ankh-Amen’s would have been, comparatively speaking,

covered in gold; statuettes of the King as Pastoral Chief __ in the Hereafter and also representations of him as 'Horus the Avenger,’ who is the prototype of St. George, slayer of the Dragon. “In other boxes hidden in the chamber was the remainder of his personal jewellery—about two-thirds having been stolen at the early robbery—and there were also parts of his Royal Insignia, including his Sceptre. But the most interesting are two of his Royal Orders, pectoral ornaments suspended by elaborate chains of office, one being the Order of the Birth of the Sun, and the other the Order of the Phases of the Moon, both absolutely intact, magnificently wrought in gold and incrusted with semi-precious stones such as amethyst, lapis lazuli, turquoise, and various coloured quartz. “With these boxes there were also two hunting chariots, the king’s favourite bows and their embossed, leather cases, and his fan of ostrich feathers set in an ivory handle. These feathers were, according to an inscription, actually collected by the King himself in the Eastern Desert near Heliopolis. In fact there is one scene showing him hunting ostriches for these particular feathers, and another representing him returning from the chase with the feathers under his arm.

“Perhaps the most important monument in the chapter is a shrine-shaped chest which up to the present I have not touched, but which no doubt contains the four canopic jars wherein the viscera of the king are preserved. It is important for this reason. When we examined the mummy of the King we found it to be the body of a boy of 18 in normal condition, and we were unabie to detect any cause of death. As his death w T as obviously premature, one suspects foul play on the part of one or other of the high officials of the Court at that period. If he was poisoned an examination of the viscera may possibly give a clue, and this is actually what I will do dur : r.g the next few months. There will be a complete examination made with the help of an expert toxicologist.” Regarding the motives underlying the erection of such elaborate tombs, Mr Carter said: “The tombs were not the result of the vanity of their intended occupants, but were the product of the religion of the people. When a mar became king he also became the earthly representative of the Deity. They gave to the Deity all the sumptuousness of a palace upon earth, and to the king all the sumptuou'- T >ess of a tomb in the underworld. For instance we discovered a number of boats placed in the Tomb of Tut-ankh-Amen so that he should be independent of the favours of the Celestial Ferryman while following the great Sun-Barque in its triumphal voyage over the Heavens.

“Their religion, hough seemingly complicated by many gods, was really monotheistic. The so-called gods were earthly representatives ot the great deity, -omething lil: rv or local saints. In other words Egypt was divided up into patriarchal communities which eventually coalesced and formed two opposing kingdoms. Upper and Lower Egypt, which in turn eventually became united under one monarch. Hence we have this coalition of totemic representatives forming a College of Gods who are really nothing more than the local representatives ot one great god, the Sun. “Now come the complications. The home of the monarch became the capital, and the local earthly representative became the capital god. Thus in the course of three thousand years the site of the capital changed, and so did the capital gods. “The so-called heresy of Aten, the , father of Tut-ankh-Amen, lay in the

fact that he found these numerous gods and their priesthoods becoming too -strong for him. so he reverted to the worship of the Sun. and eliminated all other local gods except himself, i This was not heresy; but it took away ! the livings of the other priesthoods, who, after his death, regained their power and were responsible for the conversion of his son. who. really called Tut-ankh-Aten, changed his name to the form which we know. The discussion then turned upon New Zealand, and to the recent correspondence in “The Times” about the discovery of rock carvings and the possible inference that the Maoris came from the Valley of the Nile. “I do not think so,” said Mr Carter. “One must always remember that the advance of civilisation has been on substantially the same lines in every quarter of the globe—from basketry to pottery (the jar, for example, keeping the lip formation which was unnecessary in a jar, but entirely necessary in basket work to keep the neck open) and so to flint and copper. Such drawings, wherever they occur, are merely in the course of natural evolution.” In regard to the theories sometimes advanced, such as that the introduction of malaria, or that the dying out of the intellectual classes, had brought about the decay of this ancient civilisation, Mr Carter said:

“Such causes may have accelerated the process, but apart from that I do not think they had any effect upon what is after all the operation of the natural law of growth and decay. The stock which waxed strong in the days of Rameses the Great has in our day waned, just as does a man or a tree.” Mr Carter finally remarked how much New Zealand had always interested him because of its unique flora and fauna. Not only is he a painter and an archasologist, but also a naturalist. One more question had been intended, namely the nature of the fascination of Egyptology, but it answered itself early in the interview. And if it had not. the best answer is to be found in “The Tomb of Tut-ankh-Amen” by Howard Carter and A. C. Mace, “the only book of antiquities,'* an Anglo-Egyptian of standing remarked, “that I have ever been able to read.” All the human interest —all the romance of this science are there vividly, set out in a form that must interest everybody who takes up thf book.