A. Our best guess is that the woman on the bed is Kiya, Akhenaten’s minor wife, and that she has died in childbirth. The child held by the nurse is the one she has just given birth to, and that child is Tutankhamen. B. Tutankhamen is so important in our history that we will devote two lectures to him. In this first lecture, we will use Tutankhamen to illustrate how Egyptologists search for a lost tomb. II. Let’s begin with the history of the Valley of the Kings leading up to the discovery of Tutankhamen. A. As you know, the Egyptians were conquered by the Greeks, and their civilization was lost. The Valley of the Kings was left unguarded, and most of the tombs were robbed. B. Even in antiquity, however, tourists visited the Valley of the Kings. 1. In the 1st century B.C., the Greek historian Diodorus was told that the Valley held 47 tombs; only a few of these were open and visible to Diodorus. 2. Much later, in 1739, a sea captain, Richard Pococke, said that nine tombs could be entered. 3. Bonaparte’s savants visited the tombs in 1798. They discovered a new tomb, that of Amenhotep III, and made the first accurate map of the Valley of the Kings.
C. Around the beginning of the 19th century, in 1810 or 1812, Giovanni Belzoni, a former monk, circus strongman, and engineer, traveled to Egypt on a new business venture. 1. While there, Belzoni decided to make his fortune by excavating the Valley and selling his finds in Europe. 2. Belzoni began the first systematic excavation of the Valley by looking for debris that might have been left over from the original construction of the tombs and excavating nearby. In this way, he discovered the tomb of Seti I. 3. Belzoni removed the stone sarcophagus of Seti I and sold it in England, where it can still be seen today in a museum. The word sarcophagus (related to esophagus) comes from the Greek and means “flesh eater.” The word derives from the Greeks’ perception of the mummies they saw when they opened the sarcophagi—all their flesh had been eaten away. D. Despite Belzoni’s successes in finding tombs, no pharaoh’s body had yet been found in the Valley of the Kings. Where were the mummies? The mystery was solved in 1881. 1. In the late 1870s, royal antiquities began to appear on the market in Egypt. Suddenly, dealers had Books of the Dead and other ancient royal artifacts. Egyptologists knew that a significant discovery had been made. 2. The director of antiquities in Egypt traveled to the Valley of the Kings to investigate. He suspected a certain family of grave robbers that lived nearby, but he died before he could solve the mystery. His successor also traveled to the Valley of the Kings and questioned the grave robbers under torture. 3. Ultimately, one of the brothers in the family promised that he would reveal the source of the antiquities. The authorities were led to a cache of royal mummies near Deir el Bahri. Among the pharaohs buried in this location were Ramses the Great, Tuthmosis III, and others from wide-ranging dynasties. 4. We now know that in the 21st Dynasty, Egypt had declined to such a degree that the Valley of the Kings was not always guarded. The result was widespread looting, documented by an official inventory in the 21st Dynasty. The pharaoh at the time decided to move all the earlier kings to a single secret tomb for safekeeping. This is the tomb that was discovered in 1881; however, Tutankhamen was not buried there. E. In 1898, the tomb of Amenhotep II was discovered by an excavator who was mentally unstable. A side chamber in this tomb revealed the bodies of yet more pharaohs, but still no Tutankhamen.
III. Several excavators, an interesting cast of characters, had heard of Tutankhamen, who was not a well-known pharaoh. A. Flinders Petrie was the first modern Egyptologist, the first excavator who was not a treasure hunter. He excavated for 70 years in Egypt. 1. Petrie was the first to see the value in ancient pottery. Other excavators discarded the pottery they found because they were more interested in gold. Petrie realized that civilizations could be dated by studying their pottery. 2. In the 1880s, excavating at Tell el Amarna, Petrie found objects engraved with the name Tutankhaten. This unknown pharaoh would later change his name to Tutankhamen. 3. Tutankhamen’s name was engraved in a cartouche, an oval encircling the name of a king or queen. The word cartouche is French for “cartridge.” When Napoleon’s soldiers saw these oval engravings in 1798, they thought the symbol resembled a bullet. B. The next character on the scene was Howard Carter, originally an artist from a large family of artists. 1. One of the patrons of Carter’s father was Lord Amherst, who was also a collector of Egyptian antiquities. Lord and Lady Amherst were also patrons of Flinders Petrie and sent the young Howard to him when Petrie requested an artist to help with his work in Egypt. 2. Later, Carter worked under Percy Newberry in his excavations at Beni Hassan. At the age of 26, Carter was given the job of Inspector of Antiquities for the Valley of the Kings. C. Another excavator at the time was Theodore Davis, a wealthy American who had a concession to dig in the Valley. 1. Davis’s excavator, Edward Ayrton, discovered a faience (ceramic) cup with Tutankhamen’s name on it. This artifact connected Tutankhamen to the Valley of the Kings. 2. Davis also discovered a small pit containing dishes, animal bones, bandages with Tutankhamen’s name on them, and floral pectorals (collars). 3. Davis believed that he had discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen and declared, “I fear the Valley of the Kings is now exhausted.” He gave up his concession to dig in the Valley. D. Carter knew that Davis had found the remains of a last meal eaten by Tutankhamen’s relatives before his burial, rather than the tomb. However, as inspector, Carter was unable to excavate the area himself. 1. Shortly thereafter, an incident involving French tourists and an Egyptian guard employed by Carter cost Carter his job. 2. Lord Carnarvon, a wealthy Englishman, hired the unemployed Carter to excavate for him. Carnarvon has the interesting distinction of being involved in the first automobile accident—ever—in 1903
3. Around 1915, Carter and Carnarvon obtained the concession for the Valley of the Kings, but they had to put their work on hold during World War I. E. Carter drew a detailed map of the Valley of the Kings, carefully marking the areas that had been excavated to bedrock and those that had not been excavated. He and Carnarvon agreed that they would excavate every remaining inch of the Valley of the Kings. 1. After working for several years, the team had made no significant finds, and Carnarvon was ready to give up. Carter convinced him to sponsor one more year of the expedition, and on November 4, 1922, the first step to the tomb of Tutankhamen was found. 2. Carter wired Carnarvon to come to Egypt immediately. In the meantime, the steps were cleared, and a sealed door was uncovered. When the men finally looked into the tomb, they saw an antechamber piled high with artifacts. This was the first time that a pharaoh’s tomb had been found intact. 3. It would take years for Carter and Carnarvon to excavate the tomb, and under a legal arrangement, all the artifacts would remain in Egypt. Perhaps the most important find among all the treasures of the tomb was the undisturbed mummy of Tutankhamen.