Message #136317

[Bianca]

Which is probably true. But not, according to Thomas Hoving, for the reasons Carter gave. "Their lack of sleep had nothing to do with these questions, for they had already obtained the answer to most of them. Carter's published account of his first examination of the antechamber and its contents is highly deceiving - it is a lie."


If they "slept but little... that night," alleges Hoving, it was because they "... spent practically the whole of it physically inside the tomb, penetrating even into the Burial Chamber, moving objects around, and disguising their entry..." Quoting unpublished materials in the Egyptian Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Hoving says that rather than re-sealing the peephole, Carter enlarged it so that first Lady Evelyn, the smallest in the party, then Lord Carnarvon and Carter, and finally Carter's American assistant, Pecky Callender, could squeeze through.


The four intruders, says Hoving, "darted from one treasure to the next like scavengers... dimly realizing how close to the feeling of the ancient thieves were their emotions," and "feeling that they should keep looking over their shoulders, lest they be caught." Carter, Hoving goes on, was dismayed to discover that the third sealed door had also been penetrated, and was consumed by the desire to find out if the burial chamber, which he assumed lay beyond, had been plundered. Prying loose some of the stone blocks that had been used to re-seal the doorway, Carter, followed by Lord Carnarvon and Lady Evelyn, squeezed through. Before them stood the doors of a great blue-and-gold shrine, bolted but not sealed.


Carter drew back the two ebony bolts and the great doors swung open, revealing the doors of yet another shrine. To Carter's great relief, the seals of the inner shrine were not broken, indicating that at this stage the cemetery guards had discovered the tomb robbers and the king had not been disturbed. Their curiosity satisfied, the intruders withdrew, re-closing their entry holes behind them. They took with them, says Hoving, a magnificent perfume box Carter found between the first and second shrines, and a beautiful alabaster chalice from the antechamber.