At the Tomb of Tunankhamen: 1923
Maynard O. Williams
PROBABLY no great graveyard occupies so unusual a site as the Tombs of the Egyptian Kings at Thebes.
Across the Nile from the Temple of Karnak the western skyline is broken by rough limestone cliffs whose color varies from hour to hour. Nature here changes her complexion with the passing of the day, now softly seductive under a filmy veil before the footlights of the sun’s first level rays, now savagely sharp under the fierce floodlight of noonday, now darkly mysterious beneath the glowing evening sky. The monotony of rich fields so familiar in the flat delta of Lower Egypt here gives way to the variety of barren waste where tomb robbers and scientists have sought so long the hiding places of the Pharaohs.
LOOKING UP THE WESTERN VALLEY OF THE TOMBS OF THE KINGS
Ten thousand tourists have tramped above the spot where the latest find has just been made. Other archaeologists, looking for the needle entrance to the royal tomb of Tutankhamen in the limestone haystack of el Qorn, came within a few feet of where, after sixteen years of labor, the late Lord Carnarvon and Mr. Howard Carter found their reward.
It is unlikely that the comparatively small tomb itself will have more than a passing interest; but the rich store of rare and valuable funeral furniture with which the hiding place of Tutankhamen was packed almost surely contains such wonders from the distant past as have never before been seen by modern man.
One of the most pleasant ways to travel on the Nile is by the steam dahabiyehs or the sailing dahabiyeh.
DAY ONE
On February 17th I arrived in Luxor, crossed the river and started on foot for the Tombs of the Kings. It is nearly eleven years since I last visited them, but my memory of the event is vivid. I still feel that September sun which beat upon us as we climbed the ridge on the way to Deir-el-Bahri and collapsed in the shade of an ancient temple to gulp down great goolahs of Nile water after the water in our bottles was gone. I still remember the fake curios we bought, the hagglings we had, the smell of the hot donkeys’ sweat under the saddles.
This time I did not hasten toward my goal. I wanted to plod along on foot, to exchange Arabic salutations with the white-toothed village girls, to feel the African sun on my back, and to watch the camels stalk by on their way to the cane fields.
APPROACHING THE VALLEY OF THE TOMBS ON FOOT
THE MORNING freshness was still in the air. Beyond green fields which I had last passed over in a boat, I saw the Colossi of Memnon and I made for them. I wanted to pass the many lesser gaping tomb-mouths before I finally came to the royal tombs behind the limestone ridge.
As I passed through a mud-walled village, with its narrow alleys almost black under that hot light which lacks reflective power, a girl of ten or so stopped stripping sugar cane with her gleaming teeth to wish that my day be blessed and to offer to share her store.
WAITING AT THE TOMB
The noonday sun was hot and getting hotter. I shouldered my heavy camera and started up the steep path. Thus should one approach that hell-hole in the hills where the greatest Pharaohs hid themselves and where not more than two or three still lie undisturbed by modern man.
As I passed the tomb of Seti I and turned toward the lower entrance of the valley, I saw below me a small white tent, a wooden shelter for the armed guard, the clutter of lumber which archaeologists use, and the new wall of irregular stones which hid the entrance to Tutankhamen's mausoleum.
DR. J. MORTON HOWELL AND OTHER NOTABLES AT THE TOMB
Two correspondents sat there and another roamed about waiting for news. For weeks they had waited under the glare of the sun, compelled by the force of circumstances to be detectives rather than scribes. Suddenly and without warning some wondrous treasure would be brought forth in its rough but easy-riding ambulance, to be rushed to another tomb which was used as storehouse and preserving laboratory.
Now and then some rumor would escape the portals, to be weighed and considered before it was put upon the telegraph wire or in the discard.
A press photographer was there, wearing a tarboosh to render himself less conspicuous among Moslem crowds. If it had not been so bright he could have used his nose for a red light in the dark room, and on his cheeks he was raising skin as the farmers of Szechuan raise crops, with new growth showing between the older ones, which were ready to harvest.
These were the men who were trying to give the news of this great discovery to the world.
THE BOY WHO SUPPLIED WATER FOR THE GUARDS AT THE TOMB
AN AIR OF MYSTERY EVEN IN BROAD DAYLIGHT
This superheated graveyard, which was to become a picnic ground and levee for royalty on the morrow, was a silent place. The correspondents spoke in whispers, as though the secrets of the spot would be violated by loud talk. Mystery hung as heavy on the place as mystery ever can in the full light of day.
GAIETY AND TENSION ON THE EVE OF THE OFFICIAL OPENING
After dinner I sat in the lobby of the big tourist hotel at Luxor and watched the serio-comedy on the eve of the official opening, where the gaiety of Brussels on the eve of Waterloo was combined with a tenseness that was evident to all.
This tenseness was not all on the side of the anxious reporters who had for so long put up a nerve-racking fight to get the news; for they had beaten the diggers themselves in telling the world that the wall into the inner chamber had been pierced the day before and that the hoped-for sarcophagus had been seen.
DAY TWO
PREPARATIONS FOR ROYAL VISITORS TO THE TOMB
EARLY SUNDAY morning I rode out to the scene of the official opening. There were only a few visitors as yet, but the stage was all set for the big event of the day. To the left was the tomb of Rameses IX, in whose shady corridor the Sultana and the Egyptian officials would later await the coming of the Belgian Queen. As the day grew hot, small companies of visitors arrived; but there had been no attempt to make this a popular holiday and the crowd could never have numbered more than 200. About noon there arrived a squad of camels laden with food and drink for the distinguished guests. The last of them seemed to be sweating from the heat, an unusual phenomenon, made plain when one noticed that his load was ice in gunny sacks. None of this feast was eaten by the guests, for the train which brought Her Majesty and Lord and Lady Allenby to Luxor was so late that lunching out there in the graveyard of royalty was not to be thought of.
ALL MODERN COMFORTS FOR NOTABLES AT THE TOMB
This camel bore across the hot sands a rapidly shrinking load of ice.
THE QUEEN ENTERS THE TOMB
A motor rolled up; a white-clad figure alighted; there were numerous introductions, especially to those Egyptian officials present, and the Queen went down the incline that leads to the tomb mouth. Within a moment Her Majesty had entered the shadowy portal behind which Tutankhamen, if indeed his mummy actually be under that huge gilt canopy, silently awaited her coming.
ROYALTY PAYS TRIBUTE TO ROYALTY
Queen Elizabeth of the Belgians entering King Tutankhamen’s tomb with Lord Carnarvon.
DAY THREE
VIEW OF THE INNER TOMB
ON MONDAY, the day after the official opening, I entered the tomb, together with the first small group of correspondents.
NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENTS AT THE TOMB
A battery of motion-picture photographers was stationed on the heights rising to the rear.
It was a stamp-collector in Beirut who made me understand the precautions taken by the excavators on the first day when the inner opening was revealed to the correspondents. I started to pick up one of his treasures in my bare hand and he almost cried with pain. He quickly passed me some delicate tweezers with which I could examine the stamp at leisure. He realized that I could not understand his care, but he forced me to be careful.
There were those among us who were able to understand much from what we observed; but my study of Egyptian treasures had been made hurriedly more than ten years before.
This is what I saw:
A VIEW OF THE INNER TOMB
STEEP steps led down to an incline which ended at a new iron gate, beyond which there was a strong light. In these days the Valley of the Kings’ Tombs could almost advertise, “All modern improvements,” as several of the tombs have long been lighted for the convenience of visitors, and Mr. Burton had, for the benefit of his official photographic work, a high-power electric bulb which made the first chamber we entered as light as day.
Just behind the light, which was shielded by a rough board, there was one of the nearly life-size figures of the king, stricken stiff by the artist and standing helpless in its vain attempt to guard the royal tomb, a gilt mace in one hand, a long gilt staff in the other, with a palm-leaf guard below the hand.
The official photographs of this statue and its twin on the other side of the doorway, at the right end of the transverse chamber, make description of these guardian figures futile.
WONDERFUL DECORATIONS ON THE SARCOPHAGUS
Between these two statues was the entrance to the inner chamber, blocked by new timbers, so that one could not pass into the chamber itself.
The distance between the huge sarcophagus and the rough walls is so small that one would have to pass with care. New boards separated from the sarcophagus by soft buffers protected this corner of the huge case in which it is hoped Tutankhamen reposes.
Words cannot give any impression of the decorations of this great box, of which only a corner could be seen. The secret eyes looked out reproachfully at one from half-way down the right-hand edge and a serpent helplessly vibrated his coils at convenient folds up near the top.
The great mass of treasure which had packed this chamber had been removed, leaving it almost bare. At the right, the two guardian statues of the king, which could not protect his withered form; at the left, a few treasures, including two alabaster vases, which appeared to me more beautiful than the marvelous specimens which had been removed and which I knew through photographs.
REPARTEE IN THE TOMB
“It’s awfully nouvel art,” said the news writer.
“Yes, quite Louis Quatorze,” replied the superintendent.
“I suppose, if the mummy is in there, he will be wearing some fine jewelry,” said a lady present.
“If he’s intact, he’ll be ragged out like a bloomin’ Maharaja,” was the reply. And as I went out into the blinding sunlight someone said something about sharing the Christmas goose if the press photographer would furnish the lard.
THE GEOGRAPHIC’S STAFF CORRESPONDENT EMERGING FROM TUTANKHAMEN'S TOMB
A VISIT TO AMENOPHIS II’S RESTING PLACE
LATER I visited the tomb of Amenophis II, who ruled only about 70 years before Tutankhamen’s seven years of power but whose sad-faced mummy has been flooded by electric light for many years and whose faded garlands seem so pitiful, even out there amid the barren hills. In a side chamber are three mummies, hollow-bodied and gruesome, like propaganda pictures for famine relief. Perhaps that is what Tutankhamen has ahead of him. How many “It’s awful interesting”s will be pronounced over his body!
Carrying a candle which dripped hot wax upon my hands, I followed my guide into the dark depths of the tomb of Amenophis III. The floors are cluttered with sharp stones. Many of the mural decorations have been chipped away by vandals. The top of the violated sarcophagus lies broken in its sanctuary. The name of the excavator who opened this tomb is known by few.
We stepped aside into the empty chamber, with its broken floor and ruined walls, and I blew out my candle, so that I could stay for a moment in the dark, and feel, rather than see, what a tomb is like.
The bats had stopped their squeaking. There was not a sound in that formless chamber crowded with darkness. For a minute or two I stayed, telling myself that the cavern in which I was hiding was a tomb, that the whole great mass of limestone above my head was a vast burial place.
My guide might as well have been a mile away. I seemed alone there in that massive mausoleum of the hills.
BACK IN LUXOR
Back I rode toward Luxor. The ghaffirs, who yesterday stood so straight when the Queen went by, now squatted in the dust. The camel corps, whose picturesque forms had so fittingly guarded that ribbon of road through this Khyber Pass of Egypt, were no longer to be seen. A train of sugar cane whistled its departure for Armant; and the very girl who two days ago offered to share her sugar cane with a wanderer on foot now came out to beg baksheesh of me, mounted on “Marconi,” whose wave-length was short and irregular.
Up the Nile there swept an ugly hull with butterfly sails of purest white. The bougainvilleas across the water, a vivid mass of purple against the yellow walls of the big hotel, contrasted with the dusty colonnades of the Temple of Luxor across the river. As I came to the boat landing, I could smell the coffee which the donkey-drivers were making in their rude reed shelters.
We crossed the Nile in that slanting fashion which sets the distant hills in motion around each point upon its bank, and came in the glory of late afternoon to the gray bund of Luxor, alive with tourists from the big hotels and from three steamers which had just arrived.
I stepped into a shop to leave my films and realized that the sway of Tutankhamen still grips the world, for a woman in white was speaking:
“I do hope that we can get a pass, because I’m just crazy over mummies, and they say this one will be the best of all.”
But the mummy of Tutankhamen, if it be waiting there, staring with sightless eyes at the lid which will soon be removed, has not yet been released from the bondage of the tomb to which he was carried by his friends for the preservation of his body and for protection from the world.
