When Carnarvon arrived in Luxor on 23 November, he and Carter looked on anxiously as the rubble wall was cleared, revealing a plastered doorway. Now there could be no doubt what they had found: \u201cOn the lower part the seal impressions were much clearer, and we were able without difficulty to make out on several of them the name of Tut.ankh. Amen.\u201d<\/p>\n
In due course, the blocked doorway was dismantled, only to reveal a sloping tunnel, filled from floor to ceiling with limestone chippings. As workmen struggled in the confined space to clear the tunnel, they encountered a second doorway, likewise covered with sealings naming Tutankhamun. At four o\u2019clock on the afternoon of 26 November, archaeologist and patron gained access to the royal tomb itself. Peering into the darkness with a lighted candle, Carter could not believe his eyes:<\/p>\n
\u201cAt first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle flame to flicker, but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues and gold \u2013 everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment \u2013 an eternity it must have seemed to the others, standing by \u2013 I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, \u2018Can you see anything?\u2019, it was all I could do to get out the words: \u2018Yes, wonderful things\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n
The discovery of the tomb of the boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun<\/a> \u2013 the greatest archaeological find of all time \u2013 has passed into legend. But the story as told by Carter and Carnarvon, and perpetuated in countless retellings since, is not quite the whole truth.<\/p>\n Throughout the excavation and clearance of Tutankhamun\u2019s tomb, Carter kept a detailed digging diary and journal. Preserved in the Griffith Institute at the University of Oxford, these precious documents provide a wealth of first-hand information about the archaeological campaign in the Valley of the Kings.<\/p>\n But there is one striking omission: nowhere does Carter give credit to the Egyptian labourers who carried out the backbreaking clearance \u2013 over six long seasons \u2013 of the 200,000 tonnes of rubble and limestone chippings that overlay the entrance to the tomb. Instead, in his account of \u201cyears and years of dull and unprofitable work\u201d, the first-person plural is used, without further comment: \u201cWe had now dug in the Valley for several seasons, with extremely scanty results.\u201d<\/p>\n In the same vein, Carter recounts the breakthrough that indicated the presence of a previously undiscovered tomb: \u201cHardly had I arrived on the work next morning (4 November) than the unusual silence, due to the stoppage of the work, made me realise that something out of the ordinary had happened, and I was greeted by the announcement that a step cut in the rock had been discovered.\u201d<\/p>\n On closer reading, this description \u2013 with its unselfconscious use of \u201cI\u201d and \u201cme\u201d \u2013 reveals an aspect of the dig that is generally overlooked: it was the habit of Carter\u2019s Egyptian workmen, headed by a trusted foreman, to begin work as soon as the sun had risen, before the archaeologist arrived to oversee operations. The discovery of that crucial first step was made by one of the workers, not by Carter. Piecing together the evidence, we can identify that unsung hero.<\/p>\n One of the reasons why the discovery of Tutankhamun\u2019s tomb created such a stir around the world was the series of stunning black and white photographs taken by Harry Burton, the staff photographer of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Burton\u2019s images of the tomb and its contents are striking for their large format, fine detail and dramatic lighting. Among the hundreds of images from the time is one of an Egyptian boy, aged between nine and 12, wearing a plain white linen galabeya (a traditional loose-fitting robe) and headcloth. Suspended around his neck is one of the most lavish and dramatic pieces of jewellery from Tutankhamun\u2019s tomb: a heavy pectoral (a large necklace worn over the chest), chain and counterpoise featuring a series of large scarab beetles carved from lapis lazuli.<\/p>\n Why should such an important object from the tomb have been given to an Egyptian boy to model? The answer, omitted from Carter\u2019s account, may be that the boy in question, Hussein Abdel Rassul, had discovered the tomb.<\/p>\n The Abdel Rassul family were longstanding and somewhat notorious residents of western Thebes. In the 1870s, one of their number had discovered the cache of royal mummies hidden in the cliffs at Deir el-Bahri, behind the Valley of the Kings, when a stray goat disappeared down a partially concealed tomb shaft. Fifty years later, young Hussein Abdel Rassul was employed by Carter as a water boy, responsible for bringing water by donkey from the Nile to the dig site in the Valley of the Kings. The water jars had pointed bases, so shallow holes had to be dug in the ground to stop them toppling over. It was while he was digging such a hole, on the early morning of 4 November 1922, that the boy revealed a flat stone step in the floor of the valley. And the rest is history.<\/p>\n The story of the water boy who discovered the tomb first came to Egyptologists\u2019 attention in a book published in 1978 by Thomas Hoving, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Hoving quoted an unpublished memoir by Carter\u2019s own agent, Lee Keedick, who claimed that Carter himself had revealed the truth.<\/p>\n The subsequent whitewashing of the water boy\u2019s contribution from the official account of the discovery exemplifies the near invisibility of the Nile Valley\u2019s inhabitants from the annals of Egyptology. As early as the 1820s, in the aftermath of the Napoleon<\/a>\u2018s expedition to Egypt, 44 Egyptian students were sent from Al-Azhar in Cairo to Paris to learn modern skills; they were led by an imam named Rifa\u2019a Rafi el-Tahtawi, who went on to become a major figure in his country\u2019s 19th-century renaissance. In 1868, he published the first account of ancient Egyptian history in Arabic. Today, he is all but forgotten.<\/p>\n In the 1880s, when scientific methods of excavation and recording were first brought to the Nile Valley, the British archaeologist Flinders Petrie was working at the site of Qift in Upper Egypt when he made a discovery that surprised him (with his entrenched colonial attitudes): \u201cAmong this rather untoward people we found however, as in every place, a small percentage of excellent men; some half-dozen were of the very best type of native, faithful, friendly and laborious, and from among these workmen we have drawn about 40 to 60 for our work\u2026 they have formed the backbone of my Upper Egyptian staff, and I hope that I may keep these good friends so long as I work anywhere within reach of them.\u201d<\/p>\n The men from Qift (\u201cQiftis\u201d) whom Petrie trained passed their skills to their descendants, some of whom are still employed as professional diggers by archaeologists working in Egypt; \u201cQifti\u201d is common parlance among Egyptologists for a skilled site foreman. Yet rarely, if ever, were the Qiftis or their compatriots acknowledged in the publications of Egyptian digs.<\/p>\n Following the British invasion and occupation of Egypt in 1882, the colonial authorities allowed an Egyptian called Ahmed Kamal to establish a school of Egyptology for Egyptians, but this pioneering move lasted only three years. Kamal was later promoted to assistant curator at the Egyptian Museum, becoming the first Egyptian to be employed in a substantive position there. His appointment was followed shortly afterwards by that of Ahmed Najib as chief inspector of antiquities, but these were token gestures.<\/p>\n Generation after generation of western archaeologists were happy to take the credit for a succession of great discoveries, while barely acknowledging the indigenous labourers who made it possible. Carter was no exception. Early on in his archaeological career, before he teamed up with Carnarvon, he worked at Thebes for the American philanthropist Theodore Davis. Together, they found the longest and deepest tomb in the Valley of the Kings, created for the female pharaoh Hatshepsut<\/a> (six generations before Tutankhamun).<\/p>\n The whole tomb, from entrance to burial chamber, was filled with stone chippings, rubbish and bat droppings. Clearing it was hot, dirty and dangerous work, carried out by an army of poorly paid Egyptian workmen, but Davis barely acknowledged them in his publication, other than to reassure readers that \u201chappily the work was so well watched and conducted that no accidents occurred, though many of the men and boys were temporarily overcome by the heat and bad air\u201d.<\/p>\n In the subsequent discovery of Tutankhamun\u2019s tomb, Carter was thus only the latest in a long line of Egyptologists to downplay the role of his workers in the published account. Furthermore, despite professing a scientific approach, he was not immune to gilding his narrative when it suited him. The famous phrase \u201cwonderful things\u201d was a later embellishment; Carter\u2019s journal from the day of the discovery is more prosaic: \u201cWhen Lord Carnarvon said to me \u2018Can you see anything?\u2019 I replied to him, \u2018Yes, it is wonderful.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Writing in the year of the water boy\u2019s chance find, another British Egyptologist, Arthur Weigall, epitomised the condescending western attitude towards other peoples alongside a grudging acceptance of their right to self-determination that characterised colonial attitudes towards Egypt in the years that followed the First World War: \u201cIn Egypt, where scientific excavations are conducted entirely by Europeans and Americans, one has to consider\u2026 one\u2019s duty to the Egyptians, who care not one jot for their history, but who, nevertheless, as the living descendants of the pharaohs should be the nominal stewards of their ancient possessions.\u201d<\/p>\n It is hardly surprising that the discovery of Tutankhamun\u2019s tomb fed a growing sense of Egyptian nationalism: after 1922, the people of the Nile Valley wished to be masters of their future, as well as of their past. But now more than 100 years since the discovery, it is high time to acknowledge the significant contribution of Egyptians to the story of Egyptology, not least the boy who discovered the boy king.<\/p>\n 1. A toolbox for the afterlife <\/strong><\/p>\n Tutankhamun\u2019s burial equipment contained a range of ritual and practical tools to assist him in the afterlife. One toolbox contained 16 chisels, each of them made from a nugget or nuggets of meteoric iron weighing no more than four grams. The ancient Egyptians exploited their natural resources, but meteoric iron from the Libyan desert was a rare commodity: their word for \u201ciron\u201d was biayt<\/em>, which also meant \u201cmiracle\u201d or \u201cwonder\u201d.<\/p>\n 2. A bed inspired by a god<\/strong><\/p>\n The potency of the cult of Osiris, god of the underworld and fertility, is expressed in one of the oddest grave goods: a nearly 2-metre-long wooden frame shaped to resemble the mummified Osiris with his twin-plumed headdress. Before the king\u2019s burial, the frame was filled with moist Nile silt and scattered with grain. The seeds germinated in the tomb, symbolising the resurrection of god and king alike.<\/p>\n 3. A drill for starting fires<\/strong><\/p>\n As an alternative to a flintstone, the ancient Egyptians used a fire drill. Shaped like a bodkin, the drill was rotated by means of a bow; grooved sides aided traction and the fire stick was detachable. The accompanying fire stock is a rectangular piece of wood, 20cm long, with six circular notches along each side to hold the tinder. Friction from the drill produced the spark.<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0Boxes of preserved meat<\/strong><\/p>\n Among the first objects to be glimpsed by Carter were 48 two-piece boxes. Most of them were roughly egg-shaped, giving little clue as to their contents. They were found to contain joints of meat \u2013 mostly from oxen, but also a goose. The sycamore-wood boxes had been waterproofed and sealed on the inside with hot resin, and the meat showed a remarkable degree of preservation.<\/p>\n 5.\u00a0Loincloths of the finest linen<\/strong><\/p>\n Ancient Egyptians had a limited range of garments to choose from. Most fundamental was a triangular loincloth, worn by people of every rank. Although the Egyptians used other fibres, including sheep\u2019s wool and palm leaf, linen was the most common. It could be made in a range of grades, from coarse to fine, and Tutankhamun\u2019s loincloths are of the finest type of linen, almost akin to silk.<\/p>\n 6.\u00a0An anti-termite camp bed<\/strong><\/p>\n Tutankhamun\u2019s tomb contained the only camp bed to survive from ancient Egypt. Made of lightweight wood and 179cm long, it folds twice for ease of transport and storage. The legs are shaped like lions\u2019 feet, and the footboard is panelled. It was originally painted with limewash to deter termites.<\/p>\n 7. A toy chest<\/strong><\/p>\n Tutankhamun was around nine years old when he came to the throne and little more than 18 when he died, so it seems appropriate that one of the artefacts buried with him was his toy chest. It contained a random selection of objects, including a game board and a pair of slings. In his toys, we perhaps come closest to the real-life Tutankhamun. Even a boy king had time for play.<\/p>\n 8. A first-aid kit<\/strong><\/p>\n Faced with a barrage of debilitating and deadly diseases, the ancient Egyptians had recourse to prayers, magic spells and protective amulets, but also practical medicine. Somewhere along this spectrum is Tutankhamun\u2019s first-aid kit. A rounded box of ebony and cedar, it contained different sized bandages, a finger stall (like a thimble), a protective linen gauntlet and a crystalline limestone armlet. This odd assortment of items would have been good for preventing and treating cuts and bruises, but not much more.<\/p>\nWho discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun?<\/h2>\n
Hussein Abdel Rassul<\/h2>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Eight surprising treasures of Tut\u2019s tomb<\/h4>\n