CARTER HOWARD: (1874-1939) British archaeologist and Egyptologist who discovered the intact tomb of

CARTER HOWARD: (1874-1939) British archaeologist and Egyptologist who discovered the intact tomb of

‘There was something bewildering, yet interesting in the scene which lay before us’

 

CARTER HOWARD: (1874-1939) British archaeologist and Egyptologist who discovered the intact tomb of Tutankhamun in November 1922. An important typed manuscript, unsigned, with numerous corrections and annotations in Carter's hand, in pencil and ink, ten pages, 4to, n.p., n.d. (1933), being the working manuscript of chapter three ('The Annexe') of Volume III of Carter's work The Tomb of Tutankhamun (1933). The manuscript explains the thrilling moment in which Carter's party enters the crucial section of Tutankhamun's tomb, in part, 'Strange and beautiful objects call for wonder and praise, conjecture and fair words - but are they not all signs of the thought and progress of the Age to which they belong?......In contrast to the comparative order and harmony of the contents of the Innermost Recess, we find in this last chamber - the Annexe - a jumble of every kind of funerary chattel, tumbled any way one upon the other, almost defying description. Bedsteads, chairs, stools, footstools, hassocks, game-boards, baskets of fruits, every kind of alabaster vessel and pottery wine-jars, boxes of funerary figures, toys, shields, bows and arrows, and other missles (sic) all turned topsy-turvy. Caskets thrown over, their contents spilled: in fact, everything in confusion……To exaggerate the confusion that existed would be difficult. It was but an illustration of both drama and tragedy…..Two days of somewhat strenuous work had to be spent in clearing the way to the little doorway…..The southern end of the Antechamber, where the doorway is situated, was occupied by a number of large roof sections of the dismantled sepulchral shrines that had shielded the sarcophagus……The doorway of this Annexe, only 51 inches high, and 37 inches broad, had been blocked up with rough stones and plastered over on the outside. The plaster while still wet had received numerous impressions of five different sepulchral-seals of the king…..The history of this little room may have been unfortunate, but never the less romantic. There was something bewildering, yet interesting in the scene which lay before us. The incongruous medley of material jostled in wanton callousness and mischief concealed, no doubt, a strange story if it could be disclosed. Our powerful electric lamp threw a strong mass of light upon its crowded contents…..The blaze of light illuminated strange objects…..Here a vase and there a tiny figure gazing at one with forlorn expression. There were weapons of various kinds…..a boat of alabaster, a lion, and a figure of a bleating ibex. Here a fan, there a sandal, a fragment of a robe, a glove! - keeping odd company with emblems of the living and of the dead. The scene, in fact, seemed almost as if contrived, with theatrical artifice, to produce a state of bewilderment upon the beholder. When one peers into a chamber arranged and sealed by pious hands of the long past, one is touched filled with an emotion: it seems as if the very nature of the place and objects enforce and hush the spectator into noiseless silent reverence. But here in this chamber, however, where nothing but confusion prevailed, the sobering realization of a prodigious task that lay before one, took the place of that emotion……..Tradition holds that in burial custom each article belonging to tomb equipment has it prescribed place in the tomb. However, experience has shown, that no matter how true the governing conventions may be, seldom have they been strictly carried out……The foregoing are but Such were the general facts and impressions gathered during this final part of our investigations in the tomb……Nothing can ever change the fact that we have undoubtedly found evidence in this tomb of extreme felicity mingled with want of order and eventual dishonour. This hypogeum, though it did not wholy (sic) share the fate of its mightier and kindred mausoleums, it was nevertheless robbed, twice robbed, in Pharaonic times……I am also of the belief that both robberies took place within a few years after the burial. Facts such as the transfer of Akh-en-Aten's mummy, from its original tomb at El Amarna to its rock-cut cell at Thebes, apparently within the period Reign of Tut.ankh.Amen……throw considerable light upon the state of affairs in the royal necropoli at that Age……In any case the evidence afforded by those two burials and by this tomb, prove how the royal tombs suffered even within their own Dynasty. The wonder is how it came about that this burial, with all its riches, escaped the eventual fate of the twenty-seven others in the Valley'. Three of the pages feature relatively lengthy holograph additions to the text and to the verso of the ninth page Carter has drawn two pencil sketches of tomb complexes. An exceptional manuscript. Some light overall age wear and two file holes to the left edge of each page, causing a few small tears and paper loss, none of which affect the text. About VG

Carter's drawings of the tomb complex were published in The Tomb of Tutankhamun (KV 62) : Supplementary Notes, (The Burial of Nefertiti? III) by Nicholas Reeves, the British Egyptologist, as part of the Amarna Royal Tombs Project, Valley of the Kings, Occasional Paper No. 5. In the article Reeves provides an explanation of Carter's drawings 'Although at first glance this sketch might appear to record Carter's ruminations on the location of additional chambers within KV 62, a moment's reflection will indicate that this is not the case. The typescript on the reverse of which this drawing was made almost certainly post-dates Carter's failed investigation of the left-hand side of room J's north wall-meaning that, by the time the sketch was made, Carter's hopes of KV 62 being a larger tomb were already in the past……[the] document is a casual attempt to illustrate, for persons unknown, how the Annexe and Treasury within KV 62-pictured in the centre of the sheet-relate to a full-sized royal tomb. The tomb Carter here chose as example, and sketched above KV 62, was WV 22 (Amenhotep III), drawing in neat dotted line the chambers present in that earlier tomb which were missing from the tomb he had found; obviously thrown in as an aside-as reflected in the sloppiness of the line-was Carter's acknowledgement of other chambers running off from the WV 22 burial chamber and of no particular relevance to what he was then attempting to describe.'