Howard Carter The Path to Tutankhamun Read online

  making the library and other facilities of the department always available.

  Nicholas Reeves, formerly of the Egyptian Department, with his deep

  knowledge of the Valley of the Kings and the whole industry of

  Tutankhamun studies, has been a constant and willing source of refer-

  ence, and a sounding-board for ideas. David Butters, Curator of the

  Swaffham Museum, who organized two very interesting Carter exhibi-

  tions in 1989, has been a regularly ally in the provision and checking of

  Norfolk information.

  My very special thanks must be extended to the Committee of

  Management of the Griffith Institute, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford,

  where the principal Carter archive is housed; and in the Institute particu-

  larly to Dr Jaromir Malek, the Archivist, for so much positive help, for

  seeming always to be on hand and ready to discuss a matter, to Dr Diana

  Magee, Fiona Strachan and Elizabeth Miles, for answering so many

  enquiries and for opening and shutting cupboards and lifting down

  awkward bundles of drawings on many visits to Oxford. Also in Oxford,

  I am grateful to Dr Derek Hopwood, Director of the Middle East Centre

  in St Antony’s College, and Diana Ring, its librarian, for giving me access

  to the journals of Mervyn Herbert. To them and to the present Mervyn

  Herbert I am grateful for permission to use extracts in this book.

  In London, the Committee of the Egypt Exploration Society has

  allowed me to search the early papers in its archives for Carter material;

  Dr Patricia Spencer, the Secretary, and her assistant Sylvie Weens, have

  been invariably helpful. The Directors of News International PLC,

  through their Deputy Archivist, Eamon Dyas, have generously provided

  me with photocopies of documents, and allowed me to reproduce the

  text of the agreement made in 1923 between The Times and the Earl of

  Carnarvon. In Geneva I owe a special debt of gratitude to Professor

  Michel Valloggia for searching out and obtaining copies of Carter, Naville

  and Maspero correspondence in the Bibliothèque publique et universi-

  taire in that city, and to that institution for allowing me to quote from

  these documents; and also to Professor Denis van Berchem, a grandson

  of Édouard Naville, for showing much interest and encouragement.

  To the governing bodies of all the institutions mentioned above, I am

  grateful for permission to quote from the relevant documents in their

  possession.

  There are many others to whom I owe thanks for additional, occa-

  sional, and peripheral material, which has helped to enrich and diversify

  my narrative: Francis Allen, N. G. Stafford Allen, Mrs Elizabeth Reeves

  and Antony Allen (for information on Carter and the Allens of Cockley

  Cley), Margaret S. Drower (for help with Petrie information), Dr Andrew

  xiv

  Carter.book Page xv Tuesday, July 11, 2000 9:29 AM

  PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

  Gordon (for an early Carter letter), Robert Keedick (for a copy of his

  father’s recollections of Carter’s American tour), Jean Kennedy (for infor-

  mation on holdings in the Norfolk Record Office), Dr Christopher Lee

  (for Mace information), Deirdre Le Faye (for Carter’s association with the

  Lucovich family), Arpag Mekhitarian (for copies of documents and

  photographs on Queen Élisabeth of the Belgians, Jean Capart and

  Carter), Dr Peter Piccione (for investigating bricks at Elwat el-Diban),

  Julia Rushbury (for memories of William Carter), Dr Gerry Scott (for

  material on Carter’s Yale degree), Professor A. F. Shore (for a letter from

  Carnarvon to A. M. Blackman), Professor W. T. Stearn (on the botanical

  activities of Alicia Amherst and P. E. Newberry), Edna S. Weiss (for

  records of Carters at the Royal Academy Schools, and in the RA Summer

  Exhibitions), P. M. White (on Bretby bricks), Finbarr Whooley (for back-

  ground material on the British Empire Exhibition of 1924), Irma

  Wilkinson (for access to the papers of Charles Wilkinson and for general

  encouragement).

  In an early stage in the writing of this volume I receive invaluable help

  from Annette Webb, Secretary of the Institute of Egyptian Art and

  Archaeology at Memphis State University, who performed marvels of

  decipherment. To my former colleague, Christine Barratt, I am indebted

  for the maps and plan. To my editor, Carol Gardiner, go special thanks

  for eliminating so many inconsistencies, removing so many infelicities,

  and generally for giving this book a professional finish.

  Readers should not be disconcerted by variations in the spelling of

  proper names, particularly ancient royal names. The variations reflect

  differing traditions of vocalizing the unvocalized ancient forms. In the

  case of Tutankhamun the variations are many, and are retained in quota-

  tions; for most scholars in Britain the form above is commonly used.

  The ancient dates used in this volume generally follow those given in J.

  Baines and J. Malek, Atlas of Ancient Egypt.

  The kindness I have been shown in so many places has, in my experi-

  ence, been exceptional, and I have the happiest memories of hospitable

  stays with friends and colleagues during a search which began simply,

  and expanded enormously over the years. But no one has been more

  kind and forbearing than my wife Diana, and my son Stephen, who have

  at all times helped me with my research, and have latterly endured many

  months of aggrandizement in the use of space at home, and of time in

  general.

  London, January 1992

  T.G.H. James

  xv

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  PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

  xvi

  Carter.book Page 1 Tuesday, July 11, 2000 9:29 AM

  1

  EARLY YEARS

  A sad, small company gathered at Putney Vale Cemetery in South London

  on 6 March 1939 to say ‘Farewell!’ to Howard Carter. It was not the kind

  of gathering which commonly attends the obsequies of the great and

  famous, but it yet offered, in modest scale, a fair representation of the

  various parts of the life of one who had in his time achieved remarkable

  popular esteem. The ‘great Egyptologist’, as The Times obituary appropri-

  ately called him, ‘who gained fame for his part in one of the most

  successful and exciting episodes in the annals of archaeology, the discovery

  and exploration of the tomb of Tutankhamen’, had died in relative obscu-

  rity, his ultimate purposes unfulfil ed, his real achievements uncrowned by

  official recognition.1 He had been born to a life of moderate expectation;

  he ended his life with none of the pomp and splendour with which he had

  become familiar in the mortuary ceremonies and paraphernalia of the

  monarchs of Egypt in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes. And yet his life

  had been one of greater success than most can expect, and its elements

  were recognized among the few who listened to the words of the Revd H.

  C. Kemp, Vicar of Putney, on that grey day. To represent his family there

  were his brother William, a fine portrait painter, and his nephew Samuel

  John, an engineer and bearer of traditional Carter names;
there was Lady

  Evelyn Beauchamp, daughter of the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, who had

  accompanied her father in the early, heady, days of the opening of the

  famous tomb; there was Gerald Wainwright, a former colleague from the

  ranks of excavators in Egypt. George Eumorfopoulos, a great collector of

  oriental and Egyptian works of art, in a sense represented those whom

  Howard Carter had helped in their collecting in his later years.

  1 The Times for 3 March 1939; the obituary almost certainly written by P. E. Newberry.

  The account of the funeral was in the issue of 7 March.

  1

  Carter.book Page 2 Tuesday, July 11, 2000 9:29 AM

  HOWARD CARTER

  If Howard Carter had made preparations well in advance of his death,

  as the ancient Egyptians had regularly done, he would almost certainly

  have caused incorrect details to be recorded on his grave-stone. ‘It is

  strange Carter did not know his age – I am all too conscious of mine,’

  commented Alan Gardiner to Percy Newberry in 1945.2 This strange

  ignorance had been revealed by Carter’s niece, Phyllis Walker, who had

  discovered from a scrutiny of her uncle’s birth-certificate that he was

  born on 9 May 1874, and not in 1873 as he had stated in his annual

  entries in Who’s Who since 1924. It was an error perpetuated in the

  various obituaries which were written after his death, even in those

  composed by his old friend Percy Newberry. There is no need to think

  that Carter had any strange motive for falsifying his age – indeed ‘falsify’

  is surely the wrong word to use. What advantage could be achieved by

  adding one year to one’s proper age? Presumably he confused the year at

  a fairly early stage in his career and the error persisted, fixed in his mind

  as being correct. He lived, it must be conceded, at a time when form-

  filling and documentary verification were not as prevalent as they have

  since become. It would be scarcely worth while drawing attention to

  Carter’s error were it not symptomatic of much that he subsequently

  wrote, in which precision of detail was not of primary importance. He

  composed in later life a number of autobiographical sketches of consid-

  erable charm, but unfortunately so full of errors and inconsistencies –

  where precision can be secured from more reliable sources – that they

  can be taken only as rough guides to his career.3 They remain, neverthe-

  less, very interesting, if only because they are rightly flavoured with his

  own brand of personal romance and are studded with comments and

  reflections which illuminate his attitudes to a wide variety of topics.

  Some of these were crucial to his whole life – his remarks on drawing

  and epigraphy, for example – while others preserve his mature views

  often expressed anachronistically, as if formulated by himself when a

  youth or young man. His chronological errors tend to be more tiresome

  than significant, but for a biographer they are very vexing and often

  time-consuming in their explication. A good example concerns his

  father’s death in 1892. In his late sketch he describes a visit he made with

  2 Letter of Alan Gardiner to Percy Newberry of 1 March 1945; G.I. Newberry Corr. 18/ 133.

  3 A set of versions of the sketches is in the Griffith Institute, Carter Notebooks 15–17; a

  further set in the possession of Jonathan Carter; other versions in the Metropolitan

  Museum, Egyptian Department. Sketch II, ‘An Account of Myself ’, is in G.I. Carter

  Notebook 15.

  2

  Carter.book Page 3 Tuesday, July 11, 2000 9:29 AM

  EARLY YEARS

  Flinders Petrie to see the recently discovered tomb of Akhenaten at El-

  Amarna. From Petrie’s contemporary diary the visit can be fixed fairly

  precisely to about 21 January 1892.4 In his sketch Howard Carter notes

  that ‘the next morning brought one of those sad days which usher in

  another phase of life’. A cable and a letter arrived announcing his father’s

  death. His father actually died on 1 May 1892. Again the error is of little

  significance, but it does point to the unreliability of the sketches as

  primary historical documents.

  In one matter, however, the sketch of his early life preserved in the

  Griffith Institute in Oxford is correct against other published sources.

  The Who’s Who entries record that Carter was born in Swaffham,

  Norfolk. This might be described as his ‘official’ statement, for a Who’s

  Who entry is composed by the person concerned. In his sketch he states:

  ‘I was born in the early seventies at my father’s town house in Earl’s

  Court.’ The mention of Swaffham in Who’s Who is another harmless

  error which may represent a kind of inverted snobbism not now easily

  comprehended. Swaffham was certainly a place of importance, and prob-

  ably of emotional attachment, for Carter throughout his life. It seems

  altogether unlikely that he had forgotten his birthplace when he first

  compiled his Who’s Who entry, but at the time – not long after the

  discovery of the tomb of King Tutankhamun – he may have felt it neces-

  sary to dignify his origins. Swaffham suggested a good country base;

  Earl’s Court, or Brompton as it might more properly be described, has

  less comfortable associations. But the reason for the error might have

  been something quite different; yet it is strange that he allowed it to

  persist (like that of his birth date) in all entries down to his death.

  So, as his birth certificate confirms, Howard Carter was born on 9 May

  1874, at 10 Rich Terrace in the sub-district of Brompton in Kensington.

  Rich Terrace no longer exists. It occupied part of the north side of the

  Old Brompton Road to the west of the junction with Earl’s Court Road,

  and the site is now fil ed by Richmond Mansions, 248–250 Old

  Brompton Road. Rich Lane, original y perhaps a kind of mews or service

  road for Rich Terrace, stil exists to the west of Richmond Mansions. Rich

  Terrace was demolished in the 1890s, but no. 10 was recorded in the local

  directory as standing as late as 1892, the year of Howard Carter’s father’s

  death.5 ‘My father’s town house’ is Carter’s description of what was

  4 See p . 38 below.

  5 Information on Rich Terrace provided by the Town Clerk of the Royal Borough of

  Kensington and Chelsea, in a letter to B. Ripper of 20 June 1972.

  3

  Carter.book Page 4 Tuesday, July 11, 2000 9:29 AM

  HOWARD CARTER

  certainly a fairly modest terraced house with a garden. It can scarcely

  have been the property he romantically evokes as ‘this quaint old house’

  with ‘a lovely garden with beautiful trees, and for the purpose of study

  large pens for animals’. The house properly belonged not to his father

  but to his mother. It is known that it was first rented by the Carter family

  in 1868 from Miss Elizabeth Hall, who subsequently lived herself in 14

  Rich Terrace. On her death some years later, she bequeathed all her prop-

  erty to ‘Martha Joyce, wife of Samuel Carter’.6 For practical purposes,

  however, Samuel would have acted as the house owner.

  Samuel John and Martha Joyce (née Sands), Howard Carter’s f
ather

  and mother, were both natives of Swaffham in south-west Norfolk, a

  small but thriving market-town on the road from King’s Lynn to

  Norwich. Its appearance in the late twentieth century – at least as far as

  its heart, the Market Place, and its surrounds, is concerned – differs little

  from what the Carters would have known a century ago. Like many small

  country towns in East Anglia, Swaffham presents, architecturally, a mixed

  face, mostly of stone and brick, and of the eighteenth and nineteenth

  centuries. The obligatory, but tiny, shopping ‘mall’ of recent years is

  discreetly tucked away on the west side of the Square, and most of the

  remaining additions and modifications of the late twentieth century do

  little to disturb the settled, comfortable aspect of the whole. Cars have

  replaced carts, and they fill the Square except on market days when the

  town reasserts its essential character as a place for buying and selling for

  the surrounding district, and a centre for general and domestic

  concourse. As you enter the town from the direction of King’s Lynn, a

  sharp eye will spot the brightly painted carving of the Pedlar of

  Swaffham, a fifteenth-century local notable, John Chapman, ‘who did by

  a dream find a great treasure’. It is the town sign, one of the many in

  Norfolk designed and painted by Henry Robert (Harry) Carter, another

  of the Carters of Swaffham and North Norfolk – mostly interrelated and

  artistically talented – who was a distant cousin of Howard Carter.7

  Swaffham and its environs, family associations, and art, were to be

  powerful influences in the development of the young man who would go

  to Egypt in his late teens and ultimately make the most dramatic archaeo-

  logical discovery of modern times.

  6 Documents on the ownership of 10 Rich Terrace are with Jonathan Carter.

  7 For Swaffham generally see B. Ripper, Ribbons from the Pedlar’s Pack (Swaffham, 1979); for Jonathan Chapman see p. 48; for Henry Carter, p. 113. Also, David C. Butters,

  Swaffham, In the Pedlar’s Footsteps (North Walsham, 1990), pp. 1–2, 28–31.

  4

  Carter.book Page 5 Tuesday, July 11, 2000 9:29 AM

  EARLY YEARS

  Howard Carter’s immediate family has been traced back to a Robert

  Carter, his great grand-father, who married Susanna Dunger in 1785 at