Английская Википедия:Discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun
Шаблон:Short description Шаблон:Featured article Шаблон:Use dmy dates Шаблон:Use shortened footnotes
The tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered in the Valley of the Kings in 1922 by excavators led by the Egyptologist Howard Carter, more than 3,300 years after Tutankhamun's death and burial. Whereas the tombs of most pharaohs were plundered by graverobbers in ancient times, Tutankhamun's tomb was hidden by debris for most of its existence and therefore not extensively robbed. It thus became the first known largely intact royal burial from ancient Egypt.
The tomb was opened beginning on 4 November 1922 during an excavation by Carter and his aristocratic patron, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon. The unexpectedly rich burial consisted of more than five thousand objects, many of which were in a highly fragile state, so conserving the burial goods for removal from the tomb required an unprecedented effort. The opulence of the burial goods inspired a media frenzy and popularised ancient Egyptian-inspired designs with the Western public. To the Egyptians, who had recently become partially independent of British rule, the tomb became a symbol of national pride, strengthening Pharaonism, a nationalist ideology that emphasised modern Egypt's ties to the ancient civilisation, and creating friction between Egyptians and the British-led excavation team. The publicity surrounding the excavation intensified when Carnarvon died of an infection, giving rise to speculation that his death and other misfortunes connected with the tomb were the result of an ancient curse.
After Lord Carnarvon's death, tensions arose between Carter and the Egyptian government over who should control access to the tomb. In early 1924, Carter stopped work in protest, beginning a dispute that lasted until the end of the year. Under the agreement that resolved the dispute, the artefacts from the tomb would not be divided between the government and the dig's sponsors, as was standard practice in previous Egyptological digs, and most of the tomb's contents went to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. In later seasons media attention waned, apart from coverage of the removal of Tutankhamun's mummy from its coffin in 1925. The last two chambers of the tomb were cleared from 1926 to 1930, and the last of the burial goods were conserved and shipped to Cairo in 1932.
The tomb's discovery did not reveal as much about the history of Tutankhamun's time as Egyptologists had initially hoped, but it did establish the length of his reign and gave clues about the end of the Amarna Period, the era of radical innovation that preceded his reign. It was more informative about the material culture of Tutankhamun's time, demonstrating what a complete royal burial was like and providing evidence about the lifestyles of wealthy Egyptians and the behaviour of ancient tomb robbers. The interest generated by the find stimulated efforts to train Egyptians in Egyptology. Since the discovery, the Egyptian government has capitalised on its enduring fame by using exhibitions of the burial goods for purposes of fundraising and diplomacy, and Tutankhamun has become a symbol of ancient Egypt itself.
Background
Burial and ancient robberies
The pharaoh Tutankhamun ruled during the Eighteenth Dynasty, during the New Kingdom. He died Шаблон:Circa and was entombed in the Valley of the Kings, near Thebes (modern Luxor), like most New Kingdom rulers.Шаблон:Sfn Instead of a full-size royal tomb cut into the slopes of the valley, he was interred in a small tomb dug into the valley floor, probably a private tomb that was modified to fit the large amount of goods that accompanied a royal burial.Шаблон:Sfn
The tomb was robbed twice soon after its construction. Officials restored and resealed it, filling the entrance passage with chips of limestone to deter further intrusion. During the reigns of Ramesses V and Ramesses VI, nearly two centuries after Tutankhamun's death, his tomb was covered by debris from the construction of their tomb, KV9.Шаблон:Refn Tutankhamun's tomb was thus hidden from later waves of robbery so that, unlike the other tombs in the valley, it retained most of the goods it was stocked with.Шаблон:Sfn
Exploration of the Valley of the Kings
In the early twentieth century Egypt was a de facto British colony, ostensibly ruled by monarchs from the Muhammad Ali dynasty but in fact managed by a British consul-general, who oversaw a government staffed by Egyptians but dominated by the British. Egyptology, the study of ancient Egypt, was overseen by the Antiquities Service, a department of the Egyptian government.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn New excavations of ancient sites were heavily dependent on the system known as "partage" or "division of finds": museums or private collectors of ancient artefacts would fund an Egyptological dig in exchange for a share of the artefacts, customarily half, and the remainder went to the Antiquities Service and its museum, the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn
Many of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings had been open since ancient times.Шаблон:Sfn Dozens of others, whose entrances had been deliberately buried by their builders or had become hidden by flash flood debris, were discovered in the course of the nineteenth century.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn Royal mummiesШаблон:Sfn and individual burial goods were discovered in some of these tombs, but nothing close to a complete set of royal burial equipment was found.Шаблон:Sfn
A period of rapid discoveries in the valley began after Howard Carter became the Antiquities Service's inspector for Upper Egypt, including the Valley of the Kings, in 1900.Шаблон:Sfn Carter had come to Egypt as an artist, assisting in recording Egyptian tomb art, and was then trained as an archaeologist.Шаблон:Sfn As inspector, Carter both restored and protected the open tombs in the valley and sought to dig for undiscovered tombs. In searching for a patron to fund these efforts he found Theodore M. Davis, a wealthy American who regularly visited Egypt. With Davis's support Carter made several small finds and cleared three previously unexplored tombs.Шаблон:Sfn After the Antiquities Service transferred Carter to Lower Egypt in 1904, Davis held the concession to excavate in the valley for another ten years, his efforts managed by a series of five archaeologists.Шаблон:Sfn Davis pressured these excavators to work rapidly,Шаблон:Sfn nearly doubling the number of known tombs in the valley,Шаблон:Sfn but his discoveries were often carelessly treated and inadequately documented.Шаблон:Sfn His excavation of KV55, the tomb of a member of the royal family from Tutankhamun's time, was so poorly handled that the identity of its occupant has been uncertain ever since.Шаблон:Sfn
Little was known about Tutankhamun in Davis's time, though he was known to have restored traditional practices in the monarchy after a brief episode of radical innovation known as the Amarna Period. It was thus likely that he was buried in the Valley of the Kings, the traditional site for royal burials before and after the Amarna Period.Шаблон:Sfn Davis never found Tutankhamun's tomb, assuming no tomb would have been cut into the valley floor, but he did find signs that the king had been buried in the valley.Шаблон:Sfn One such sign was a pit, discovered in 1907 and designated KV54, that contained a handful of objects bearing Tutankhamun's name. These objects are now thought to have been either burial goods that were originally stored in the entrance corridor of Tutankhamun's tomb, which were removed and reburied in KV54 when the restorers filled the corridor, or objects related to Tutankhamun's funeral. Another was an uninscribed tomb, found in 1909 and known as KV58, that contained pieces of a chariot harness bearing Tutankhamun's name and that of his successor, Ay. Davis concluded that KV58 was all that remained of Tutankhamun's burial, which would mean that virtually all the kings' tombs expected to exist in the valley were accounted for.Шаблон:Sfn The last years of Davis's work in the valley produced almost no finds, and in 1912 he wrote: "I fear the Valley of the Tombs is now exhausted."Шаблон:Sfn
Scouring the valley
Carter left the Antiquities Service in 1905 after a group of French tourists forced their way into a closed archaeological site at Saqqara and he ordered the Egyptian guards to eject them. The use of force by Egyptians against Europeans caused a scandal and led to his resignation.Шаблон:Sfn He subsequently worked as an excavator for George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, a collector of Egyptian antiquities, at several sites in Egypt. Carnarvon bought the concession for the Valley of the Kings when Davis relinquished it in 1914, and although the First World War made it difficult to conduct fieldwork, in 1917 Carter began to clear the valley down to the bedrock.Шаблон:Sfn This required sifting through the spoil heaps produced by decades of earlier excavations, as well as the valley's natural alluvium.Шаблон:Sfn At the time neither Carter nor Carnarvon stated they were looking for Tutankhamun's tomb, but there was reason for them to believe it had not been found. The objects in KV54 and KV58 indicated that Tutankhamun had been buried somewhere in the valley, but such meagre remains were unlikely to be a royal burial.Шаблон:Sfn
During these excavations the political status of Egypt changed dramatically. The Egyptian Revolution of 1919 convinced British authorities that Egypt's current status was unsustainable, and they issued the Unilateral Declaration of Egyptian Independence in February 1922. It left the United Kingdom with substantial influence over the government, particularly in military and foreign affairs.Шаблон:Sfn Antiquities policy was one of the areas ceded to the Egyptians. The Antiquities Service retained its incumbent director, Pierre Lacau, but he now answered to an Egyptian minister of public works.Шаблон:Sfn
The season for excavation and tourism in Egypt extends from November to April, avoiding the worst of the country's heat.Шаблон:Sfn In mid-1922, when Carter and Carnarvon were paused between digging seasons, only one section of the Valley of the Kings remained covered by debris. This area was difficult to clear because it included the remains of ancient workers' huts and lay close to the entrance to KV9, which attracted heavy tourist traffic. Carnarvon discussed abandoning excavation in the valley, given how fruitless the effort had been, but Carter offered to cover the expense of clearing this final section. Carnarvon, impressed by Carter's dedication, agreed to fund the work for one more season.Шаблон:Sfn
Discovery and clearance
First season
Discovery
To minimise the disruption to tourists, Carter and his Egyptian workforce began on 1 November 1922, earlier in the season than usual.Шаблон:Sfn On 4 November a worker uncovered a step in the rock. According to Carter's published account the workmen discovered the step while digging beneath the remains of the huts; other accounts attribute the discovery to a boy digging outside the assigned work area.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Refn The step proved to be the beginning of a tomb entrance staircase. At the bottom stood a doorway sealed with limestone and plaster, into which Carter cut a peephole to see the passage beyond was filled with rubble.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn Carter sent a telegram to Carnarvon, then in England, and had the workmen re-fill the pit to secure the tomb until Carnarvon's arrival. While waiting, Carter asked his friend and colleague Arthur Callender to assist with the upcoming excavation.Шаблон:Sfn
The digging resumed after 23 November with Carnarvon's arrival in Luxor with his daughter Lady Evelyn Herbert. Upon closer examination the doorway seal was found to be inscribed with the name of Tutankhamun, suggesting that this was his tomb. The debris that filled the passage contained objects bearing the names of other kings, suggesting it might be a cache of miscellaneous objects buried during his reign. The doorway had been partially demolished before being resealed, indicating an ancient robbery. On 26 November the excavators reached another sealed doorway.Шаблон:Sfn Carter's book on the discovery, co-written with Arthur Cruttenden Mace, described the breaching of the seal in one of the most famous passages in the history of archaeology:Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn
Carnarvon asked Carter if he could see anything. Accounts differ as to the wording of Carter's answer; in the best-known version, in his book, Carter replied "Yes, wonderful things."Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Refn
Beginning of clearance
The gilded furniture and statuary that Carter saw when first looking into the tomb stood in a room that came to be known as the antechamber.Шаблон:Sfn This room alone contained burial goods in greater quantity than the excavators had ever expected. Some were types of object that were very familiar from previous finds; some were exceptionally elaborate examples of their kind; and some were entirely unexpected.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn From the antechamber led two doorways that had been blocked with plaster and then breached by ancient robbers. One was left open, revealing that the chamber beyond, dubbed the annexe, was filled with a chaotic jumble of objects. The other had been resealed in ancient times. Many of the objects bore Tutankhamun's name, leaving the excavators in no doubt that this was his original burial.Шаблон:Sfn
At some point in the days after first peering into the antechamber, the excavators breached the plaster of the blocked doorway.Шаблон:Sfn Carter, Carnarvon and Lady Evelyn Herbert squeezed through the hole to find the tomb's burial chamber, which was mostly filled by the set of gilded shrines that enclosed Tutankhamun's sarcophagus.Шаблон:Sfn The robbers had gone no further than the outermost shrine.Шаблон:Sfn Carter, in particular, may have wanted to be certain of that fact; in 1900 he had opened what he thought was an undisturbed royal tomb, the Bab el-Hosan, in front of many highly placed guests, only to find it nearly empty.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn
The excavators resealed the hole with new plaster,Шаблон:Sfn though their breach of the doorway became something of an open secret in the Egyptological community.Шаблон:Sfn Later Egyptologists have held differing opinions on the excavators' actions. T. G. H. James, Carter's biographer, argued that entering the burial chamber, before the site had been inspected by officials from the Antiquities Service, did not violate the terms of Carnarvon's concession or the standards of behaviour among archaeologists in the 1920s.Шаблон:Sfn Joyce Tyldesley asserts that it was against the terms of the concession and points out that the breach necessitated moving some of the artefacts that stood in front of the partition, meaning their original positions could not be recorded.Шаблон:Sfn
Clearing the tomb of its artefacts would require an unprecedented effort.Шаблон:Sfn Moisture from flash floods in the valley above had periodically seeped into the tomb over the centuries. As a result, alternating periods of humidity and dryness had warped wood, dissolved glue and caused leather and textiles to decay. Every exposed surface was covered with an unidentified pink film. Carter later estimated that without intensive restoration efforts, only a tenth of the burial goods would have survived being transported to Cairo.Шаблон:Sfn He needed assistance, and he called upon Albert Lythgoe, head of the Egyptian Expedition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was working nearby, to loan some of its personnel. Lythgoe sent Mace, a specialist in conservation; Harry Burton, regarded as the best archaeological photographer in Egypt; and the architect Walter Hauser and the artist Lindsley Hall, who drew scale drawings of the antechamber and its contents.Шаблон:Sfn Other experts also volunteered their services: Alfred Lucas, a chemist for the Antiquities Service, whose expertise would be a great help in the conservation effort; James Henry Breasted and Alan Gardiner, two of the foremost scholars of the Egyptian language of the time, to translate any texts discovered in the tomb; and Percy Newberry, a specialist of botanical specimens, and his wife Essie, who helped conserve textiles from the burial.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:SfnШаблон:Refn They used the entrance of KV15, the tomb of Seti II, as a storeroom and conservation laboratory; KV55 as a photographic darkroom; and KV4, the tomb of Ramesses XI, as a place to take meals.Шаблон:Sfn Four Egyptian foremenШаблон:SndAhmed Gerigar, Gad Hassan, Hussein Abu Awad and Hussein Ahmed SaidШаблон:Sndalso worked in the tomb, and a handful of Egyptian porters, whose names are not recorded, carried objects from Tutankhamun's tomb to KV15.Шаблон:Sfn
On 16 December the excavators began clearing the antechamber, starting with the objects north of the entrance and moving anti-clockwise around the room.Шаблон:Sfn Objects were labelled with reference numbers and photographed in situ before being moved.Шаблон:Sfn Carter said of the stacks of furniture and other objects in the antechamber, "So crowded were they that it was a matter of extreme difficulty to move one without running serious risk of damaging others, and in some cases they were so inextricably tangled that an elaborate series of supports had to be devised to hold one object or group of objects in place while another was being removed."Шаблон:Sfn The disorganised contents of boxes had to be sorted through, and in some cases pieces of a single object, such as an elaborate inlaid corselet, were scattered through the chamber and had to be searched for before being reassembled.Шаблон:Sfn Upon removal from the tomb, the objects were cleaned and, if necessary, treated with preservatives such as celluloid solution or paraffin wax.Шаблон:Sfn The items in most urgent need of conservation were treated on the spot, but most were removed to KV15 for treatment.Шаблон:Sfn
Tutmania
The tomb inspired a public craze that came to be known as "Tutmania", a specific instance of the long-standing phenomenon of Western Egyptomania.Шаблон:Sfn As Breasted's son Charles put it, the news of the discovery "broke upon a world sated with post-First World War conferences, with nothing proved and nothing achieved, after a summer journalistically so dull that an English farmer's report of a gooseberry the size of a crabapple achieved the main news pages of the London metropolitan dailies."Шаблон:Sfn The resulting media frenzy was unprecedented in the history of Egyptology.Шаблон:Sfn Carter and Carnarvon became internationally famous,Шаблон:Sfn and Tutankhamun, formerly unknown to the public, became so familiar as to be given a nickname, "King Tut".Шаблон:Sfn
Tourists in Luxor abandoned the normal sightseeing itinerary and flocked to the tomb, crowding around the retaining wall that surrounded the pit in which the tomb entrance lay. At times the excavators feared the wall might collapse from the weight of the people leaning on it. When possible, the excavators left objects uncovered when carrying them out of the entrance, to please the sightseers. People who demanded to enter the tomb, many of whom were too highly positioned or well-connected to refuse, presented a greater difficulty. Every visit to the tomb by a non-archaeologist increased the risk of damage to the burial goods and disrupted the excavators' work schedule; Carter and Mace estimated that a quarter of the work time during the first season was given over to accommodating such visitors.Шаблон:Sfn
The phenomenon extended far beyond the tomb itself. Guests at the Winter Palace Hotel in Luxor danced to the "Tutankhamun Rag",Шаблон:Sfn and in the United States the discovery inspired a flurry of ephemeral Egypt-themed films and a more enduring hit song, "Old King Tut".Шаблон:Sfn Interest in Egyptology, and sales of books about ancient Egypt, also surged;Шаблон:Sfn several established Egyptologists published books about Tutankhamun to capitalise on the trend.Шаблон:Sfn
The opulence of Tutankhamun's burial goods, in particular, caught the public's attention.Шаблон:Sfn Replicas of them appeared as early as 1924, when the British Empire Exhibition featured a reproduction of the tomb, though many of the contents could not be included, as they had not yet been seen even by the excavators.Шаблон:Sfn The public in Europe and the United States compared the everyday items in the tomb to modern household goods, and producers of clothing, jewellery, furniture and household decor hastened to create Egyptian-inspired designs. Some were based on actual artefacts found in the tomb; others simply adopted ancient Egyptian names and motifs. Although Egyptian Revival decorative arts had existed since the early nineteenth century, they had largely been aimed at the world of wealthy art connoisseurs. The products of Tutmania were mass-produced and marketed to the public.Шаблон:Sfn
In the nineteenth century Egyptians had little interest in ancient Egyptian civilisation.Шаблон:Sfn In the early twentieth century that attitude changed, largely because of Ahmed Kamal, one of the first Egyptian Egyptologists, who raised public awareness of ancient Egyptian history.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn In the years leading up to the First World War, Egyptian nationalists began treating ancient Egypt as a source of national identity, one that bound together Egypt's Muslims and Coptic Christians and emphasised that Egypt had once been powerful and independent.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn This ideology, known as Pharaonism, was well established by the time of the 1919 revolution. The Western mania for ancient Egypt had inspired modern Egyptians to adopt it as a source of national pride, and Tutankhamun in particular became a national symbol once Tutmania emerged.Шаблон:Sfn After the discovery, ancient imagery became ubiquitous in Egyptian print media, and ancient Egypt became a common subject for Egyptian plays and novels. Major Egyptian literary figures, such as the poet Ahmed Shawqi, focused on Pharaonist themes in the wake of the discovery.Шаблон:Sfn The first Egyptian film, made in 1923, was titled In the Country of Tut-Ankh-Amun.Шаблон:Sfn
Carnarvon embraced the publicity, hoping to defray the costs of the excavation by licensing rights to the media.Шаблон:Sfn On 9 January 1923 he signed a contract with The Times, granting its reporter, Arthur Merton, exclusive press access to the tomb.Шаблон:Sfn Other Egyptological digs had made similar arrangements with newspapers in the past, but the unique nature of the Tutankhamun find made this one a major source of conflict.Шаблон:Sfn A coalition of other press outlets criticised the Times monopoly on official information from the excavation,Шаблон:Sfn and their coverage of Carnarvon grew increasingly negative.Шаблон:Sfn Egyptian papers joined the international press in denouncing the monopoly, which they saw as a sign of continued foreign domination. At the same time Pharaonist authors expressed fear that the tomb would be subject to a division of finds, sending many of the burial goods out of the country. An editorial in Al-Ahram, written by Fikri Abaza, declared "Lord Carnarvon is exploiting the mortal remains of our ancient fathers before our eyes, and he fails to give the grandchildren any information about their forefathers".Шаблон:Sfn
Death of Carnarvon and the "curse of Tutankhamun"
The antechamber was almost entirely cleared by mid-February,Шаблон:Sfn and on 16 February Carter and Carnarvon formally opened the burial chamber with government officials in attendance.Шаблон:Sfn At the east end of the burial chamber was an open doorway to a fourth room, dubbed the treasury. It contained the canopic chest that housed Tutankhamun's embalmed organs. Carter had the entrance to this chamber boarded up so it would not be a distraction during the upcoming clearance of the burial chamber; it was only reopened in 1927.Шаблон:Sfn
After a viewing period for the press and the general public, the tomb was closed for the season on 26 February.Шаблон:Sfn As in each subsequent season, a large temporary workforce of local workmen was recruited to rebury the tomb entrance to prevent intrusion,Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn while the objects that had been conserved were packed up for the workmen to propel by hand along a length of Decauville railway track.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn The limited length of available track had to be constantly taken up and re-laid to cover the distance down to the Nile, where the artefacts were shipped to Cairo.Шаблон:Sfn
Shortly after the tomb was closed, Carnarvon accidentally cut open a mosquito bite on his cheek while shaving. The wound became infected, and after weeks of illness, culminating in blood poisoning and pneumonia, he died on 5 April.Шаблон:Sfn Carnarvon had been in frail health for twenty years, but his death soon attracted speculation that something more than infectious disease was at work.Шаблон:Sfn
Works of fiction in which Egyptian spirits or reanimated mummies exact revenge upon those who disturb their tombs first appeared in the late nineteenth century.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn This fictional trope came to be known as the "mummy's curse" or "curse of the pharaohs".Шаблон:Sfn The real-life stories of Walter Ingram, who died in 1888 after purchasing an Egyptian mummy, and of a coffin lid called the "Unlucky Mummy", which was purported to cause a variety of misfortunes, cemented the idea of the curse in the public imagination.Шаблон:Sfn Now the pre-existing concept was applied to Carnarvon's death.Шаблон:Sfn
Several people, such as the author Marie Corelli and a psychic known as Cheiro, claimed to have warned Carnarvon of mortal peril before his death.Шаблон:Sfn Arthur Weigall, a former Egyptologist who was now the Daily Mail correspondent on the tomb, said he had observed Carnarvon joking as he entered the tomb and remarked "If he goes down in that spirit, I give him six weeks to live!"Шаблон:Sfn Later accounts, such as the recollections of the anthropologist Henry Field, claimed that an ancient text wishing death upon violators of the tomb was inscribed over its doorway or on an object within.Шаблон:Sfn No written curse has ever been documented in Tutankhamun's tomb, and although some Egyptian tombs did contain such curses, most are from non-royal tombs that predate Tutankhamun by centuries.Шаблон:Sfn
Any deaths or unusual events connected with the tomb were treated as possible results of the curse. Carnarvon's son and heir, Henry Herbert, 6th Earl of Carnarvon, said that Cairo suffered a power outage at the moment of his father's death, and in England his father's dog let out a howl and died.Шаблон:Sfn Another such story, recounted by Carter and others involved in the excavation,Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn involved a canary that Carter had bought at the beginning of the digging season.Шаблон:Sfn Initially the Egyptian workmen regarded the bird as sign of good luck, and when the tomb was discovered they dubbed it "the tomb of the bird." When a cobra entered Carter's house and ate the canary, the Egyptians called it an ill omen, relating the intruding animal to the uraeus, the protective cobra emblem, on the brow of Tutankhamun's statues.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn When George Jay Gould, who had visited the tomb, died the following May, his death was attributed to the curse, as was that of Aubrey Herbert, Carnarvon's half-brother, in September.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn Later additions to the list of purportedly cursed deaths included those of Mace in 1928,Шаблон:Sfn Carnarvon's secretary Richard Bethell in 1929 and Weigall in 1934.Шаблон:Sfn Most Egyptologists dismissed such claims.Шаблон:Sfn In subsequent decades, some sources, such as the author Philipp Vandenberg, suggested natural explanations for the fatalities, such as poisons present in the tomb,Шаблон:Sfn but a study in the British Medical Journal in 2002 found no significant difference in mortality between those who had entered the tomb and those who had not.Шаблон:Sfn
Egyptian writers picked up the trope of the curse and adapted it for their own purposes. Шаблон:Transliteration published humorous stories in which Tutankhamun awoke from death to comment on the politics of the day. More serious works of fiction depicted mummies confronting the Westerners who disturb their tombs, although in a more benign manner than in the Western stories on the same theme. These stories portrayed mummies not as objects of horror but as national ancestors seeking to redress the treatment of Egypt and its heritage by foreign powers.Шаблон:Sfn
Second season
Between digging seasons, Carter and Mace wrote the first volume of The Tomb of Шаблон:Not a typo, their account of the discovery and the work that had been done thus far; it was published in October as Carter headed back to Egypt to resume work.Шаблон:Sfn With Carnarvon's death, the tomb clearance would be financed by Carnarvon's widow, Almina Herbert, Countess of Carnarvon, but with Carter now the spokesman to the government and the press.Шаблон:Sfn
Entering the burial chamber
The season began with the removal of the two life-size statues of Tutankhamun standing in the antechamber on either side of the chamber doorway. After that the excavators began to remove the sarcophagus shrines, which took up most of the burial chamber and left the excavators with little room to move.Шаблон:Sfn The partition wall between the antechamber and burial chamberШаблон:Sndwhich bore a portion of the painted decoration of the burial chamber wallШаблон:SfnШаблон:Sndhad to be partly demolished to give the excavators room to manoeuvre, and scaffolding had to be erected so the shrines could be dismantled from the top down.Шаблон:Sfn
Friction increased between the excavators and the Antiquities Service as Carter sought to strictly limit visitors to the tomb. Lacau required an Antiquities Service inspector on site and demanded that Carter submit a list of all his personnel for government approval. This regulation has since become standard on Egyptological digs but was novel at the time, and in this case it was clearly aimed at Merton, whom Carter had appointed as a member of the excavation team.Шаблон:Sfn
Lacau mentioned the division of finds in a 10 January 1924 letter to Carter,Шаблон:Sfn raising a topic the excavators had previously avoided.Шаблон:Sfn In 1922 Lacau had declared the end of the traditional half-share given to excavators; the government might grant artefacts to the sponsors of an excavation as gifts, but all antiquities in Egypt belonged in principle to the government. This change did not apply to Carnarvon's existing concession, which allowed for a division of finds except in case of an intact tomb, whose contents must be surrendered entirely to the Antiquities Service.Шаблон:Sfn Carnarvon had planned to argue that Tutankhamun's tomb did not qualify as intact because it had been robbed, even though it was restored and resealed in ancient times. He had expected to receive a share of the artefacts and had promised that the Metropolitan Museum would be "well taken care of", receiving a portion of his share, in exchange for its assistance.Шаблон:Sfn Lacau now implied that all the tomb's contents were property of the Egyptian government, meaning no division of finds would take place.Шаблон:Sfn
Other Egyptologists worried that the regulations Lacau was imposing would hamper Egyptological work. Lythgoe, Gardiner, Breasted and Newberry sent a letter of protest to Lacau and his superior, the minister of public works, asserting that the Tutankhamun discovery "belongs not to Egypt alone but to the entire world". This further inflamed the political tensions.Шаблон:Sfn The Egyptian elections of January 1924 had brought the Wafd Party to power, forming a nationalist government headed by Prime Minister Saad Zaghloul.Шаблон:Sfn The letter thus went to the Wafd's new minister of public works, Morcos Bey Hanna,Шаблон:Sfn who was not inclined to be accommodating towards Britons, as the British government had put him on trial for treason for his actions during the Revolution of 1919.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn
Once the shrines were disassembled, the excavators rigged a system of pulleys to lift the lid of the stone sarcophagus, an especially delicate task because it was cracked. On 12 February the lid was raised, revealing, beneath a shroud, a gilded and inlaid wooden coffin in human shape, bearing Tutankhamun's faceШаблон:Sndthe outermost of a nested set. It was the first complete set of royal coffins ever found, and its artistic quality and state of preservation impressed even the experienced Egyptologists who were present.Шаблон:Sfn
Strike and lawsuit
A viewing of the coffin by the Egyptian press was scheduled for 13 February, followed by a tour for the excavators' wives and families.Шаблон:Sfn Hanna saw this tour as a slightШаблон:Sndhe pointed out that wives of Egyptian cabinet ministers had not been allowed into the tombШаблон:SfnШаблон:Sndand forbade the families' visit, sending a police force to ensure his order was carried out.Шаблон:Sfn Carter and his collaborators were incensed, and they announced they were halting work in protest of what they called "impossible restrictions and discourtesies" imposed by the Egyptian government. Carter locked the tomb, where the sarcophagus lid was still suspended above the coffin.Шаблон:Sfn Hanna terminated the Carnarvon concession, and Lacau brought workmen to the tomb to saw off Carter's locks and secure the sarcophagus lid.Шаблон:Sfn The government held a lavish event at the tomb to celebrate its reopening, attended by officials and celebrity guests.Шаблон:Sfn
The attendance of British officials at the reopening ceremony signalled that the British government would not support Carter in the dispute.Шаблон:Refn Nevertheless he sued the Antiquities Service in the Mixed Courts of Egypt, a colonial institution for resolving disputes involving non-Egyptians.Шаблон:Sfn He used Carnarvon's lawyer, F. M. Maxwell, a politically insensitive choice, as Maxwell had been the prosecutor in Hanna's treason trial and sought the death penalty for him. In March Maxwell remarked in court that the government had seized control of the tomb "like a bandit".Шаблон:Sfn In Arabic the word for "bandit" is so profound an insult that news of the remark provoked riots in Cairo.Шаблон:Sfn The Mixed Courts ultimately ruled in Carter's favour, but Hanna took the case to a higher court, which on 31 March issued a decision that fully supported his actions.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn
Carter had left Egypt on 21 March, setting out on a lecture tour in the United States and Canada. His absence eased the tensions surrounding the tomb, as did the impending retirement of Maxwell, who began transferring his responsibilities to a more conciliatory lawyer, Georges Merzbach.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn Meanwhile Hanna attempted to find another Egyptologist to complete the tomb clearance, but none were willing to take on the task.Шаблон:Sfn
In April, the Egyptian government sent a committee to inspect the excavators' unfinished work in the valley. Among the materials stored in the tombs, they discovered a wooden bust of Tutankhamun emerging from a lotus flower, packed in a crate, that was not included in Carter's excavation notes. The Egyptian members of the committee suspected Carter had intended to surreptitiously remove the bust from the site. When asked about it by telegram, Carter responded that the bust had been among the objects found in the entrance corridor, and that he and Callender had packed it because of its fragile state.Шаблон:Sfn
The political situation in Egypt changed dramatically on 19 November 1924, when Sir Lee Stack, the sirdar of the Egyptian Army, was assassinated by nationalists. The furious British reaction drove Zaghloul to resign. His successor, Ahmed Zeiwar Pasha, formed a more pro-British government, with which the parties involved in the tomb clearance were able to reach an agreement. Carter would continue to oversee the clearance; Lady Carnarvon would continue to fund it but renounced her claim to a share of the burial goods;Шаблон:Refn and the Times monopoly was ended. Carter resumed work on 25 January 1925.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn
Later seasons
Resumption of work and Tutankhamun's burial
In the shortened and uneventful third season of the dig, the excavators removed nothing but worked to conserve the objects already in the laboratory tomb.Шаблон:Sfn Thus press interest quickly dwindled,Шаблон:Sfn and although coverage flared up when Tutankhamun's mummy was unwrapped, the remainder of the clearance took place out of the media spotlight.Шаблон:Sfn
Over the following summer Callender, who objected to his loss of income from the shortening of the season, fell out with Carter and resigned.Шаблон:Sfn Burton, Lucas and the foremen were thus Carter's only consistent collaborators during the remainder of the process.Шаблон:Sfn
The fourth season began in late 1925 and focused on Tutankhamun's burial itself.Шаблон:Sfn His mummy lay within a nested series of three coffins, of which the innermost was mainly composed of Шаблон:Convert of solid gold. On his body, and within his mummy wrappings, the king bore a plethora of jewellery and other objects, including a gold burial mask.Шаблон:Sfn The inner coffin and the mummy had both been covered in unguents at burial. These unguents had solidified into hard resin, gluing the mummy and its trappings into a single mass stuck to the bottom of the inner coffin, which was in turn stuck to the bottom of the middle coffin.Шаблон:Sfn The unguents had undergone a chemical reaction that had carbonised the linen mummy wrappings, and even some of the tissues of the mummy itself, rendering Tutankhamun's flesh extremely fragile.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn The excavators first tried to melt the resin by taking the coffins out of the tomb to be heated by the sun, but this failed.Шаблон:Sfn Therefore, Tutankhamun's remains were still in place within the coffins when the anatomists Douglas Derry and Saleh Bey Hamdi began examining them on 11 November 1925. Over the course of eight days they dismembered the mummy and individually chiselled the pieces out of the mass of resin, removing the burial goods as they did so, and examined the pieces individually.Шаблон:Sfn
Once the examination was complete the excavators began separating the coffins. They built trestles to suspend the conjoined coffins upside-down, then placed paraffin lamps underneath to raise the temperature to Шаблон:Convert, shielding the coffins from the heat using wet blankets and plates of zinc. Once the coffins were pulled apart, the remaining resin was cleared away with solvents.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn
In this season Carter established a pattern of work that continued for the rest of the clearance process: in the first months of the season the excavators would remove objects from Tutankhamun's tomb, then after the new year open it to the public while concentrating on conserving the objects in the laboratory tomb.Шаблон:Sfn Though the excavators had hoped to clear the treasury during the fourth season, the unexpected challenges of the burial chamber forced them to wait another year.Шаблон:Sfn
Treasury, annexe and completion
When resuming work in the fifth season Carter rearranged the pieces of the mummy to look whole once again, then placed them in the outermost coffin and covered the sarcophagus with a plate of glass instead of the original lid. With this done, the excavators dismantled the barrier to the treasury and began sorting through its contents: a shrine of the god Anubis, more boxes of belongings such as jewellery, wooden tomb models of boats and the canopic chest that contained the internal organs that were removed from Tutankhamun's body during embalming. The room's most unexpected contents were the mummies of two fetuses, which are presumed to be Tutankhamun's stillborn children.Шаблон:Sfn
In early 1927 Carter published the second volume of The Tomb of Шаблон:Not a typo, written with substantial anonymous help from a friend, the novelist Percy White. In the following season the excavators faced the annexe, which contained more than half of the individual objects in the entire tomb.Шаблон:Sfn The floor of this room was entirely covered with haphazardly piled burial goods and lay nearly a metre below the floor of the antechamber. To start work in the annexe the excavators had to clear enough space to stand in the room by having one man lean through the doorway at a precarious angle, supported by slings held by three or four others standing in the antechamber. The last object was removed from the annexe on 15 December, and the rest of the season was spent on conservation.Шаблон:Sfn
Little was achieved in the sixth season, as Lucas and Burton developed illnesses that prevented them from working for several weeks. The seventh saw more contention between Carter and the authorities, as the Carnarvon concession expired in 1929 and ownership of the tomb reverted to the Egyptian government. Egyptian law forbade anyone not employed by the government to possess the keys to government property, and Carter objected to having to rely on a government inspector to open the tomb for him each day. In early 1930, the government came to its final settlement with Lady Carnarvon, compensating her with a payout for the expenses incurred during the excavation.Шаблон:Sfn
The final challenge involved conserving the dismantled pieces of the shrines, which were still stacked in the antechamber.Шаблон:Sfn Harold Plenderleith, a scientist at the British Museum, intermittently assisted Carter and Lucas with this task.Шаблон:Sfn The last of the shrine pieces were removed from the tomb in November 1930. Conservation of objects continued until February 1932, when the last burial goods were sent to Cairo.Шаблон:Sfn
Disposition of artefacts
The artefacts from the tomb were numbered at 5,398 distinct objects.Шаблон:Sfn By Carter's estimation, one quarter of a per cent of these objects were damaged beyond repair.Шаблон:Sfn Most of the remainder were sent to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo,Шаблон:Sfn coming to form about a sixth of the museum's permanent exhibits.Шаблон:Sfn The sarcophagus, outermost coffin, and mummy remained in the burial chamber, as did a skullcap and large bib-like broad collar, both made of delicate beadwork, that Carter apparently thought too fragile to remove from the mummy.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Refn
Retrospective discussion of the clearance tends to emphasize how scrupulous and methodical the process was.Шаблон:Sfn Jason Thompson, author of a history of Egyptology, regards Carter as one of the three most skilled archaeologists working in Egypt in his time and says that if Davis had discovered the tomb in 1914, the clearance "would have been substandard at best, and the contents of the tomb probably would have been dispersed".Шаблон:Sfn Yet Carter did give out some small objects to visitors to the tomb or to fellow Egyptologists, where they may have found their way into museum collections. Gardiner, for instance, had a falling-out with Carter in 1934 after realising an amulet that Carter had given him had been stolen from the tomb.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn The Egyptologist Bob Brier says of these artefacts that "Carter believed he had a right to do with them as he pleased."Шаблон:Sfn
After Carter's death in 1939 his niece and heir, Phyllis Walker, discovered several such objects among his possessions and had them returned to Egypt.Шаблон:Sfn In 1978 Thomas Hoving, a former curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, pointed out several items in the museum's collection that were not clearly traceable to the tomb but that he thought likely to have originated there.Шаблон:Sfn The museum gave several of these objects to the Egyptian government in 2010.Шаблон:Sfn
Documentation
The final volume of The Tomb of Шаблон:Not a typo, covering the treasury and annexe, was published in 1933. Yet the three volumes, aimed at the general public, did not constitute a full archaeological description of the tomb and its contents.Шаблон:Sfn The clearance process had produced a large volume of documentation.Шаблон:Sfn Nearly every object was catalogued, and most were photographed by Burton, although many minor objects, somewhere between fifteen and twenty per cent of the total, were not photographed.Шаблон:Sfn Several experts had produced specialised contributions, such as Derry and Hamdi's anatomical examination and Newberry's botanical studies. Carter hoped to assemble all this material into a formal Egyptological report. Beyond outlining a general six-volume plan, he had not begun on the project by the time he died.Шаблон:Sfn The Egyptian Council of Ministers moved to fund a full publication of the tomb in 1951, but the effort died in the wake of the Egyptian Revolution of 1952.Шаблон:Sfn
Shortly after Carter's death, Walker donated his journals and notes on the excavation to the Griffith Institute at the University of Oxford. In the 1990s the institute launched an effort to scan this material, which they made available online in the early 2010s.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn
Legacy
When the tomb was discovered, Egyptologists hoped it might contain documents that would clarify the history of the period in which Tutankhamun lived. No such documents were found, but the artefacts did provide clues.Шаблон:Sfn The dates on wine jars from the tomb established that Tutankhamun had not reigned much longer than nine years.Шаблон:Sfn Egyptologists had previously assumed his only claim to the throne was through his marriage to his queen, Ankhesenamun, and perhaps that he had been an elderly courtier. Yet the examination of the mummy revealed that he was between the ages of 17 and 22 at death, and the unusual shape of his skull resembled that of the unidentified royal mummy from the KV55 tomb, suggesting that he was related to it and was thus of royal blood himself.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn Some artworks from the tomb are in the art style of the Amarna Period, and some refer to the Aten, the deity worshipped in that period, indicating that the return to orthodoxy during Tutankhamun's reign was gradual.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn
Much of the tomb's historical value was in the burial goods, which included sumptuous examples of ancient Egyptian decorative arts and enhanced the understanding of the material culture of the New Kingdom, primarily how royalty lived.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn Many of the clothes from the tomb, for example, are far more varied and embellished than the clothes portrayed in art from Tutankhamun's time.Шаблон:Sfn The tomb also provides exceptional evidence about tomb robbery and official restoration efforts, because the presence of most of the burial goods makes it possible to partly reconstruct what was stolen and what was restored.Шаблон:Sfn
The discovery marked a change in the history of the Valley of the Kings. Once the clearance was complete, many Egyptologists lost interest in the valley, assuming there was nothing left there to be found.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn What little archaeological work took place in the valley over the next few decades largely consisted of more fully recording what had already been unearthed.Шаблон:Sfn No further tombs were discovered in the valley until 2006, when KV63 was found.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Refn
The discovery also affected Egyptology in a different way: together with Egypt's newfound partial independence, the enthusiasm surrounding Tutankhamun helped stimulate the growth of Egyptian Egyptology.Шаблон:Sfn At the time of the discovery very few Egyptians were trained in archaeology, and those few were looked down upon by European Egyptologists.Шаблон:Sfn Hamdi was the only Egyptian among the specialised experts who worked on the tomb. The first Egyptian university programme for Egyptology was established in 1924, and over the course of the decade a new generation of Egyptian Egyptologists were trained.Шаблон:Sfn
Although Western public interest in Tutankhamun experienced a lull lasting more than thirty years, it was revived after the Egyptian government began sending the burial goods on international museum exhibitions.Шаблон:Sfn The exhibitions began in the early 1960s as a means of encouraging Western support for the relocation of ancient Egyptian monuments that were threatened to be flooded by the construction of the Aswan High Dam.Шаблон:Sfn Such exhibitions proved highly popular; the one that toured the United States in the 1970s drew more than eight million visitors and moved American museums' business model to focus on lucrative blockbuster exhibitions.Шаблон:Sfn Much of the revenue from the exhibitions went to support the monuments' relocationШаблон:Sfn and to pay for improvements to the Egyptian Museum.Шаблон:Sfn The exhibitions also served other diplomatic functions, helping to improve Egypt's relations with Britain and France after the Suez Crisis in 1956, and with the United States after the Yom Kippur War in 1973.Шаблон:Sfn
Today the discovery remains the most famous find in the Valley of the KingsШаблон:Sfn and Tutankhamun the best-known ruler of ancient Egypt.Шаблон:Sfn The Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves writes that thanks to his fame, Tutankhamun "has been reborn as Egypt's most famous son, to achieve true immortality at last."Шаблон:Sfn The tomb and its treasures are key attractions for Egypt's tourist industryШаблон:Sfn and sources of pride for the Egyptian public.Шаблон:Sfn
Notes
References
Citations
Works cited
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External links
- Archived records from the tomb clearance at the website of the Griffith Institute
- Английская Википедия
- Страницы с неработающими файловыми ссылками
- 1922 archaeological discoveries
- 1922 in Egypt
- November 1922 events
- Tutankhamun
- Valley of the Kings
- Egyptology
- Страницы, где используется шаблон "Навигационная таблица/Телепорт"
- Страницы с телепортом
- Википедия
- Статья из Википедии
- Статья из Английской Википедии
