Return of the King
The excavation of Tutankhamun’s tomb unearthed some of the 20th century’s most exciting discoveries. Now, the boy king’s treasures are returning to London Words: Nancy Durrant On 30 November 1922 it was frontpage news. “Great Find At Thebes – Lord Carnarvon’s Long Quest”, announced The Times. The newspaper’s Cairo correspondent revealed how a stupendous event [...]
The excavation of Tutankhamun’s tomb unearthed some of the 20th century’s most exciting discoveries. Now, the boy king’s treasures are returning to London
Words: Nancy Durrant
On 30 November 1922 it was frontpage news. “Great Find At Thebes – Lord Carnarvon’s Long Quest”, announced The Times. The newspaper’s Cairo correspondent revealed how a stupendous event had taken place the previous day in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. It was, he declared, “what promises to be the most sensational Egyptological discovery of the century”. He was right. British archaeologist Howard Carter had unearthed the tomb of the ancient Pharaoh Tutankhamun, a burial site long thought lost, most likely plundered by thieves. The Times’ correspondent said that the men who opened the door to the first chamber saw a sight that was “one that they could scarcely credit”.
He added: “First they saw three magnificent State couches, all gilt, with exquisite carving and heads of Typhon, Hathor and lions. On these rested beads, beautifully carved, gilt, inlaid with ivory and semi-precious stones, and also innumerable boxes of exquisite workmanship. One of these boxes was inlaid with ebony and ivory, with gilt inscriptions; another contained emblems of the underworld; on a third, which contained Royal robes, handsomely embroidered,
precious stones, and golden sandals, were beautifully painted hunting scenes.”
That was simply the beginning. The list of treasures went on and on. Carter, who went in first as head of the dig, described that moment with palpable wonder in his book The Tomb of Tut.ankh.Amen: “I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, ‘Can you see anything?’ it was all I could do to get out the words, ‘Yes, wonderful things.’”
This month, almost exactly 85 years since the steps leading into the tomb were first accidentally uncovered from beneath the sand by a boy carrying water to Carter’s
workers, a selection of these “wonderful things” is going on show at The O2 (formerly the Millennium Dome) in London’s Greenwich. It is the only time since the first Tutankhamun exhibition, held at the British Museum in 1972, that artefacts from the boy king’s tomb have been allowed to leave Egypt. That original event saw people
queuing for hours to get in and with nearly two million visitors, it still holds the record for the biggest-selling show ever held at the British Museum. This time around,
Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs has already toured four major American cities and has attracted in excess of three million visitors. The London leg is the last part of the tour and will include a new section, briefly outlining the story of Carter and Carnarvon’s great discovery.
But what is it, exactly, that still attracts people to the figure known popularly as King Tut? Dr John Taylor, Assistant Keeper of the British Museum’s Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, believes that firstly it’s about the scale of wealth: the kind of riches Tutankhamun has become known for is hugely compelling. Today’s Russian oligarchs have nothing on this king (though he didn’t, as far as we know, own any football clubs).
It is mystery, too. “The art is strange to us,” says Taylor. “You see these figures, part profile and part frontal; it’s very distinctive. You can instantly recognise something that’s ancient Egyptian. So on the one hand you’re drawn to it because there’s something familiar about it, but at the same time there’s something very mysterious and exotic as well. And that doesn’t disappear. It gets more and more curious… There’s always something more to find.” Even now, most people who come to the British Museum, he says, want to see two things: the Rosetta Stone and the Egyptian mummies. “Everybody is fascinated by some way of conquering death.”
Another part of the allure is the realization that, in circa 1332 BC, when Tutankhamun ascended his throne, much of Europe was in no fit state to be described as civilised. Taylor points out that what we think of as ancient Egypt went on for 3,000 years. “The basic features of the country stayed the same, “ he says. “There was a king on the throne throughout that whole period. That’s like continuity from now back into the Bronze Age in this country, with the same features of civilisation. There’s nothing to equal that. They obviously felt they’d got everything just the way they wanted it!”
What they wanted, evidently, was the best. The exhibition consists of more than 130 treasures from Tutankhamun’s
tomb and other burial sites in the Valley of the Kings, as well as a few others. Some show the skill of the ancient Egyptian craftsmen, such as an expertly carved, sinewy panther which served as the base for a statue. Some provide evidence of ceremonial life, such as an inlaid pectoral (like a chain of office), richly decorated with gold, semi-precious stones and heavily symbolic images of the king.
Other artefacts give a tantalising glimpse of the personality behind the pomp. Tutankhamun took several game boards with him into the afterlife: perhaps the prospect of eternity struck the young king as somewhat dull. Elsewhere there is a child’s chair, decorated with a geometric pattern of ebony and ivory strips, with gold foil insets on the arms and lions’ paws standing on plinths for feet. Tutankhamun was only about eight when he ascended the throne and he died at just 18. He left no heirs – the mummified foetuses of his two still-born daughters were buried with him – so the chair must have been made for him during the early years of his reign, along with a fun-sized royal flail and crook inscribed with the king’s name which are thought to have been used by him at his coronation.
Another item provides a small injection of humour, albeit a dark one. It’s a staff of gilded wood, engraved with patterns, with a curved handle carved in the shape of a Nubian prisoner (Nubia, now Sudan, was one of Egypt’s three main enemies during Tutankhamun’s reign). The rendering is beautiful, the face noble, but the arms of the
figure are shown tied tightly behind its back. The joke is that when the staff stood upright not only was the prisoner tied up, but he was also left hanging ignominiously upside down.
The staff, one of 130 found in the tomb, also poses an interesting question, especially when it is considered along with images of the young king that often depict him as seated in situations where you would expect him to stand, such as hunting with birds. This has led to speculation that Tutankhamun might have had problems walking. It’s just another of those enticing little possibilities raised by this extraordinary group of treasures. But there’s a proverbial elephant in the room here. Arguably the most important artefact hasn’t made it from the fiercely protective clutches of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. When Howard Carter finally lifted the lid of Tutankhamun’s inner coffin, almost two years after first opening the tomb, he found the last of the treasures lying over the face of the mummy inside: the gold death mask, wrought in the image of the boy king. It is unmistakably a cast of a real face, almost pensive, with slight dimples turning downward at the corners of the mouth. It is not only magnificent, but also poignant: it’s startling how young he looks, and slightly chilling. The Egyptian government doesn’t permit the death mask to leave the country – it’s the single most famous ancient Egyptian artefact in the world – but it is continuously on display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, where bmi will fly from
4 November. Around 120,000 objects await the hordes of visitors who flock there every year to gorge themselves on the mystery and exoticism of Egypt, its treasures and its ancient monuments. There’s still nothing to equal that.
Nancy Durrant writes on Visual Arts for The Times
Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs is at The O2, north Greenwich, London, from 15 November until 30 August 2008; www.kingtut.org. bmi is the official airline sponsor. The Egyptian Museum, Tahrir square, Cairo; +202 579 6974/575 4267; www.egyptianmuseum.gov.eg
