Howard Carter chipped a small hole in a smooth plaster wall. His hands shook as he made the initial dent with his chisel, and the metalling clang rang in his ears long after he put down his tools. A boy carrying a pail of water had tripped over a rock lodged in the sand scarcely a few weeks ago. Only it wasn’t a rock. He alterted Carter, and when the archaeologist and his crew rushed to scoop away the sand, they found a set of stairs leading down to that smooth plaster wall.
It was the middle of the night and every sound he made seemed to echo across the valley. Carter had not received permission from the Egyptian Council of Antiquities to break into what, at the time he only believed, was the tomb of Tutankhamun, which is why he was working by candlelight. His only witnesses were his patron, Lord Carnarvon, who had caught the first boat from Southampton after receiving Carter’s telegram about the discovery, and his 21-year-old daughter, Lady Evelyn. They held their breath as Carter stuck a candle through the small hole he had made. Carnarvon pestered him, “Well, what do you see?” The speechless Carter regained his bearings after a moment and replied, “Wonderful things.” He didn’t know it yet, but it would be the greatest discovery of the twentieth century.
The Chance of a Lifetime
What’s not so widely known is how Carter’s fate became so inextricably intertwined with the boy king’s in the first place. The eleventh child of a penniless artist, Carter followed in his father’s footsteps and became a painter. His father was a pastoral idealist, but young Howard was a talented watercolourist. He grew up near Diddlington Hall in Swaffham, and over the years he developed a keen interest in Lord Amherst’s sizeable collection of Egyptian antiquities. Amherst recognized Howard’s talent with a paintbrush and charcoal stick and put him up for a job. That’s how, aged just 17, Howard Carter went to Egypt to trace the temples and tombs being unearthed there.
Carter spent his first few years in Egypt sketching reliefs at Amarna—the Heretic’s capital city—which is likely where he came to be familiar with Tutankhamun. He bounced around from site to site for a while. Despite his lonesome and intolerant nature, he quickly rose to a position of prominence with the Antiquities Service. One of his patrons was the American millionaire, Theodore Davis. Davis commissioned him to paint Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple, Deir el Bahari, in the Valley of the Kings and later gave him many other commissions. At the time, the complex was in a state of ruin. It looked nothing like the shining limestone emblem of Ancient Egyptian culture it is today.
An Earl and a Painter Form an Unlikely Friendship
Carter’s explosive temper finally got the better of him in 1905 and he found himself out of a job. In an event known as the Saqqara Affair, he may or may not have boxed an intoxicated Frenchman on the nose, but at the very least he allowed his workers to defend themselves against aggressive tourists.
After losing his post with the Antiquities Service, Carter stayed on in Egypt and returned to his watercolours. Davis took pity on him and commissioned him again and again. Nevertheless, he longed to return to digging. His luck finally turned when Lord Carnarvon arrived on the scene.
Carnarvon’s doctor sent him to Egypt to recuperate his health after he rolled his car into a ditch in Germany. But the aristocrat was bored stiff spending his days with his gammy leg up. To pass the time he took up archaeology as a hobby. The only problem was that he had no idea where to start, and those who did were all too keen to point him in the wrong direction. Carter was his diamond in the rough, and the two formed an unlikely pairing that would last the rest of the Lord’s life.
An Ancient Curse Comes to Pass
Finding the boy king was no easy feat. Davis held the concession for the Valley of the Kings, and as long as he did, no one else was allowed to dig there. But Davis was getting on in years, and no doubt Carter and Carnarvon were waiting for the American millionaire to give up and let them take a crack. There was just one other problem. Davis was also looking for Tutankhamun.
In 1907, Davis and his crew found a faience cup bearing Tutankhamun’s cartouche under a boulder in the Valley. Most archaeologists believed Tutankhamun was buried in Amarna with his family. Carter thought it was a sign that Tutankhamun must be buried in the Valley and Davis picked up on his enthusiasm. In his last year in the Valley, Davis found a cache containing several items belonging to Tutankhamun. He declared that there was nothing else to be found. Shortly thereafter he went back to America, toasted his own success and passed away the following year. Carter disagreed, and he followed that hunch until Carnarvon’s fortune was all but squirrelled away.
Mere months after opening the tomb, Lord Carnarvon tragically died. The international press tore at the story like a pack of starving jackals.
Dedicated Archaeologist or Rogue Treasure Hunter?
Howard Carter broke through the plaster wall separating Tutankhamun’s burial chamber from the outside world in November 1922. A century after opening the tomb, he now faces renewed scrutiny. Mind you, not for disturbing the dead and unleashing an ancient curse. Rather, a letter dated 1934 and opened earlier this year revealed that he had siphoned some of the Pharaoh’s treasure for himself.
Egypt was a protectorate of the British Empire when Carter stepped off the gangplank in Alexandria with his sketchpad tucked under one arm. That all changed after the First World War. Before Carter made that initial dent in the plaster wall and saw what lay on the other side, the Antiquities Service was poised to claim everything inside. But Lord Carnarvon poured his entire family fortune into the decade-long hunt. What do you think? Did Lord Carnarvon deserve to claim anything from the tomb? And what about the archaeologist who devoted his life to searching for it?
This is Part One of a two-part special about Howard Carter and Tutankhamun.