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AKHENATEN/TUTANKHAMUN

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« Reply #1080 on: February 25, 2009, 10:05:01 pm »









Their reign was brief. Akhinaten ruled just 17 years, and within a few years after his death in 1336 B.C., Neferititi too died, apparently murdered, struck from behind at an unguarded moment. Tut ruled for about ten years before he died in 1322 B.C. The Egyptian vizier Aye was perhaps the de facto ruler initially using King Tut as the figurehead on the throne. As Tut grew up it is likely that he, like his father, was starting to have ideas of his own. His mentors particularly Aye, could not tolerate another heretic and may have organized his murder by poisoning or another device. Aye is portrayed as a person who acted in a fatherly manner to Nefertiti but this may have been just a cunning front that Aye maintained to retain his foothold in the palace. Aye proclaimed himself Pharaoh after the death of Tut since no other heirs were left. He is the shadowy figure who may have organized the end of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty in order to gain power. He too died within three years in 1319. A commoner Horemheb followed Aye to the throne and ruled for 27 years, obliterating every record of Nefertiti and Akhenaten that he could. The old orthodoxy was restored. Akhenaten's enemies soon smashed his statues, dismantled his temples, and set out to expunge all memory of him and Nefertiti from Egypt's historical record. The eighteenth Egyptian dynasty ended with King Tut. Two other outside rulers – Aye and Horemheb are shown grouped with the eighteenth dynasty because of a lack of a better placement.

Archives found in the Hittite capital of Hattusa in Anatolia indicate that Nefrititi wrote a desperate letter to the Hittite king saying her husband had died and begging him to send her one of his sons so that she would not have to wed a "servant." and one who would rule over Egypt as the king. The letter indicated that Neferititi maintained the reigns of power as long as she lived. An Egyptian princess was more likely to seek an alliance closer at hand. It is also a written proof that the eighteenth dynasty regarded themselves as a class apart from other Egyptians regarding the latter as a servant class and believed in marrying within royalty rather than outside of it. If Nefertiti was indeed of common Egyptian origin than such a statement is unlikely from her. The Hittite king obliged by sending his son, however the son was way laid and killed at the border leading to a bloody war. This indicates the intrigue that was taking place in the palace at that time. There were few, other than Aye who could be privy to the communication. Only a Mittani princess could have dared to write to a Hittite king with a proposal for marriage and only an insider like Aye would know.
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« Reply #1081 on: February 25, 2009, 10:06:40 pm »









Nefertiti did not behave as a commoner or a person from anything less than a royal family right from the start. She ruled by the side of Akhinaten as long as he lived and after his death added the suffix Aten to her name, adorned a male dress and took charge of the kingdom as a Pharaoh true to the tradition of Vedic Aryans. The royal heirs Smenkhare and Tutankhamen were too young to become kings right away, but were possibly regarded by the orthodoxy as the real Pharaohs. Historians are unsure as to whether Tutankhamen was the son of Nefertiti or queen Kiya but it was probably the latter because one of Nefertiti’s daughter’s was married to King Tut and that would seem more reasonable if they were half brother and sister. Both Smenkhare and Tutankhamen possessed the royal skull. Tut was both a son and son-in-law of Nefertiti.

There is no evidence whatsoever in historical records to suggest that Nefertiti was not the Mittani princess, and while she lived she ruled like a warrior queen true to the race of warriors she had descended from. The pharaohs of Egypt added a divine suffix to their names. The suffix declared them as the divine representatives of the god that became a part of their name. As a queen princess Tadukhipa adopted the name Nefertiti and Nefretari, “the beautiful one has arrived”. As a Pharaoh she changed the name to NeferNeferaten – the beautiful, beautiful one from the Sun God”. In recent years her hidden tomb and injured mummy has been discovered in the Valley of the Kings, restoring the recognition she deserved. The present study restores the recognition of her origins that ancient Egyptian scribes tried so hard to delete from Egyptian memories. Their attempts were understandable. She was a foreigner and an equal partner with her young husband in attempting to destroy the ancient religion of Egypt and replace it with a new one. It is hoped that the present study will contribute towards restoring her rightful place in the history of human civilizations.





The author Dr. Ashok Malhotra holds a doctorate in engineering from UBC Canada.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ashok_Malhotra
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« Reply #1082 on: March 13, 2009, 09:38:40 am »







                                                  The Indic Kings of the West






We mentioned in the Introduction that the Mahabharata mentions that of the five descendents of Yayati, two became Yavanas and the Mlecchas. This seems to remember a westward emigration. This particular migration may have occurred in a very early period in the Vedic world that spanned Jambudvipa and the trans-Himalayan region of Uttara Kuru. We have a later evidence for another westward movement to the lands ranging from Babylonia to Turkey.

The Mitanni, who worshiped Vedic gods, were an Indic kingdom that had bonds of marriage across several generations with the Egyptian 18th dynasty to which Akhenaten belonged. The Mitanni were known to the Egyptians as the Naharin, connected to the river (nahar), very probably referring to the Euphrates. At its peak, the Mitanni empire stretched from Kirkuk (ancient Arrapkha) and the Zagros mountains in western Iran in

the east, through Assyria to the Mediterranean sea in the west. Its center was in the region of the Khabur River, where its capital, Wassukkani (Vasukhani, “a mine of wealth”) was probably located.10

The first Mitanni king was Sutarna I (good sun). He was followed by Baratarna I (Paratarna, great sun), Parasuksatra (ruler with axe), Saustatar (Sauksatra, son of Suksatra, the good ruler), Paratarna II, Artadama (Rtadhaman, abiding in cosmic law), Sutarna II, Tushratta (Dasaratha), and finally Matiwazza (Mativaja, whose wealth is thought) during whose lifetime the Mitanni state appears to have become a vassal to Assyria.

The early years of the Mitanni empire were occupied in the struggle with Egypt for control of Syria. The greatest Mitanni king was Sauksatra who reigned during the time of Tuthmose III. He was said to have looted the Assyrian palace at Ashur. Under the reign of Tuthmose IV, more friendly relations were established between the Egyptians and the Mitanni.

The daughter of King Artadama was married to Tuthmose IV, Akhenaten's grandfather, and the daughter of Sutarna II (Gilukhipa) was married to his father, Amenhotep III, the great builder of temples who ruled during 1390-1352 BC (``khipa" of these names is the Sanskrit ksipa, night). In his old age, Amenhotep wrote to Tushratta many times wishing to marry his daughter, Tadukhipa. It appears that by the time she arrived Amenhotep III was dead. Tadukhipa was now married to the new king Akhenaten, becoming famous as the queen Kiya (short for Khipa).

The Egyptian kings had other wives as well. Akhenaten's mother, Tiye, was the daughter of Yuya, who was a Mitanni married to a Nubian. It appears that Nefertiti was the daughter of Tiye's brother Ay, who was to become king himself. The 18th dynasty had a liberal dose of Indic blood.



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« Reply #1083 on: March 22, 2009, 07:20:13 pm »




               









                                                         T H E   L A S T   S U R V I V O R







Written by John Lawton

If you want my opinion," said Patricia West, a nurse at the home for disabled servicemen, "you're both nuts." By "both" she meant Richard Adamson - last survivor of the expedition that discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamen 59 years ago - and myself.


Mrs. West had a point. For Adamson and I intended to return together to Egypt's Valley of the Kings to defy - and thereby prove - the legendary "curse" of the exhumed Pharaoh, which has allegedly claimed the lives of 40 people.


As the only survivor of the famous edition, Richard Adamson would obviously be tempting fate by returning to the tomb. But there were real hazards to be considered too; Adamson, 80 years old and
a diabetic, had recently lost both legs. To go to Luxor he would have to go in a wheelchair.


In addition to defying the "curse," I also hoped that in returning to the tomb after nearly 60 years Adamson might possibly recall some forgotten evidence in the current controversy surrounding the greatest archeological discovery in modern history. Did British archeologist Howard Carter wait for the official opening to enter the burial chamber
of Tutankhamen? Or did he, as is now claimed, break in secretly to satisfy his curiosity? And, on the way out, help himself to one or two of the tomb's treasures?


And finally - since 1981 was the United Nations' International Year of Disabled Persons - we hoped to prove that disability did not automatically bar the determined from making even the most difficult of journeys.

The return of the last survivor was the result of a short item in a weekly newspaper in Richmond, England, casually identifying Adamson as the last living survivor of the expedition that found Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922.


I was astounded - and skeptical. Particularly when a perusal of several King Tutankhamen books - including Carter's definitive work - showed no trace of any "Adamson?" He was not mentioned in any index. There was not a single photograph.
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« Reply #1084 on: March 22, 2009, 07:21:12 pm »











On the other hand, it was too tempting an item to pass up, so I went to see Adamson - and was
quickly persuaded. For one thing, Adamson has given 1,500 lectures on the subject throughout
England - and had been the guest of Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace twice - in 1968 and again
in 1971 - and once discussed the discovery with the Prince, he says, "from eight in the evening to
three a.m." Then there was the fact that one author, Barry Wynne, said that Lady Evelyn - one of those present at the opening of the tomb - had confirmed that she had known Adamson at Luxor.
Not to mention his trunkful of clippings, letters and photographs about King Tut.


Mostly though, it was Richard Adamson himself. Though he cheerfully admits that he doesn't seem to exist in any records of the expedition, he insists that he was there. "I was only a policeman after all. But I did guard that tomb for seven years"


So, as soon as we could get an okay from the Royal Star and Garter, the home for disabled servicemen, Richard Adamson, for the second time in his life set off for Egypt with me and Mary Lally, an Irish nurse who, we hoped, would counter the "Curse of Tutankhamen" with the "luck of the Irish."


The son of a Yorkshire tailor, Adamson saw action as an infantryman with the Duke of Wellington's regiment at the Somme, one of the bloodiest battles in the First World War, and later was transferred
to Istanbul where the British Empire was supervising what was left of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. There, Lance Corporal Adamson played a small role in history; he arrested Kemal Ataturk, the Turkish army officer who organized the defeat of Allied forces at Gallipoli, and who became the father of
modern Turkey.


At the time, Ataturk was simply under suspicion; the British thought he might be fomenting a revolt. When Adamson and his squad spotted him in a car on his way to Istanbul, therefore, they decided to question him. "We stopped his car as he was approaching Istanbul and I asked him to accompany us
to headquarters," recalls Adamson. "He was very polite and ordered his followers to hand over their guns. I don't know what happened at headquarters, but they eventually let him go."


By then, however, the British were also facing serious trouble in Egypt and Adamson found himself "volunteering" to join the ranks of the Military Police in Cairo. Three weeks later, wearing the distinctive red capband of the police regiment - and the stripes of a full corporal—he boarded a
crowded troop ship and set sail for Port Said.
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« Reply #1085 on: March 22, 2009, 07:27:14 pm »










Adamson's second trip to Egypt could not have been more different: a non-stop, five-hour, British Airways club class London-Cairo flight, on which he was tended to by Mrs. Lally, pampered by smiling airline hostesses, and, in Cairo given the red-carpet treatment by the Hilton hotel: rooms complete with fruit, flowers and a view of the Nile.


Driving into Cairo from the airport, Adamson said it seemed like only yesterday that he had patrolled the city's streets. He easily picked out landmarks, even in the dark, reeled off street names like a Cairo taxi driver, and regaled us with his exploits as a young military policeman 60 years before.


On his first, lone patrol in Cairo, he said, he got lost, and a search party had to be sent out from Bab al-Hadid Barracks to find him. Friday nights, he recalled, were the worst, when British and Indian troops went on a ritual pay-day spree and the entire military police force had to be turned out to control them.


As such rough-and-tumble duties did not appeal to him, Corporal Adamson was more than happy to be transferred to the more sedate atmosphere of the British High Commission, where he met, for the first time, George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, the fifth Earl of Carnarvon and the wealthy patron of Carter's so-far-fruitless search for the tomb of Tutankhamen—and where he became involved in dangerous "special duties," which eventually led to his assignment with Carnarvon's expedition.


One of these duties was to escort a young Egyptian student named Hassan 'Ali, who was on trial - and later convicted and hanged - for hurling a hand grenade at the prime minister, Nessim Pasha. Later he also served as a bodyguard for Court President General Lawson during the so-called "Cairo Conspiracy Trial" of leaders of the nationalist opposition Wafd Party. That assignment, Adamson recalled, led to his transfer. "Your face is too familiar for your own good," General Lawson said when the trial ended. "I think it would be better if you were posted away from Cairo."


Two days later his name appeared on Regimental Orders to the effect that Corporal Adamson is promoted to the rank of acting sergeant and is to proceed immediately to Luxor and report to Mr. Howard Carter, c/o Lord Carnarvon's expedition, Winter Palace Hotel.
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« Reply #1086 on: March 22, 2009, 07:28:17 pm »










Back then, the trip to Luxor, 400 miles south of Cairo on the east bank of the Nile, was a long train
ride. For us it was a fast flight and an uneventful trip except when four helpful Egyptian passers-by spontaneously whisked Adamson, wheelchair and all, right over the hood of a parked car blocking our path. "That wouldn't have happened in England," gasped a surprised Adamson.


Adamson soon got used to such spontaneity. Although Egypt has none of the special facilities that disabled persons enjoy in the West, there were always plenty of willing hands to hoist Richard up and down steps, through revolving doors, in and out of taxis, on and off planes and boats and, had he wanted it, onto the back of a camel at the Pyramids.


Now and then there were problems. On the Nile ferry there was trouble with the owner when over-
eager helpers dismantled a door on the boat to squeeze Adamson's wheelchair through. And we made
a less-than-graceful entrance to the Old Winter Palace Hotel at Luxor; we took the freight elevator rather than try the sweeping stone stairs. But to Adamson this was nothing new. When he arrived at the Winter Palace the first time, at the end of October, 1922, his travel-stained soldier's uniform and battered holdall raised so many eyebrows among the wealthy guests that the management quickly hustled him to a "room at the back."


In 1981, however, it was Adamson who was the celebrity and the rest of the guests package tourists, so he got a large suite overlooking the Nile, and that night, sitting in the time-worn bar, he again began to reminisce. "There was a fight in here one night involving Lawrence [of Arabia]. An Egyptian was stabbed, but it was all hushed up. Lawrence was always getting into fights. He couldn't stand losing. Used to cheat at everything. He even cheated Lord Carnarvon at billiards," Adamson said disgustedly.


The billiard table has long since disappeared, the manager said, and the whirling roof fans have been replaced by modern air conditioning, but the rest of the hotel, with its high ceilings, marble corridors
and floors strewn with oriental carpets, remains basically the same as it was when, the next morning, Sergeant Adamson first met Howard Carter. 
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« Reply #1087 on: March 22, 2009, 07:29:10 pm »









Carter was in a somber mood. In six years of searching, the British archeologist had laboriously turned over almost every square meter of the sun-scorched canyon by hand - an estimated 200,000 tons of rubble - and it had been for nothing. "Six full seasons we had excavated there, and season after season had drawn a blank," wrote Carter bitterly in his three-volume account of the discovery. "We had worked for months at a stretch and found nothing, and only an excavator knows how desperately depressing that can be; we had almost made up our minds we were beaten and were preparing to leave."


In fact, Carter said, the reason Sergeant Adamson had been sent to Luxor was to collect and take back to Cairo some surveying equipment the expedition had borrowed from the army. The bulk of their supplies had already been removed; the labor force - bar a six-man clearing up party - had been paid off; and Lord Carnarvon had returned to Highclere Castle, in England, leaving Carter to pack up and, if he had the time, explore one more area.


That area - the only spot in the valley that Carter had not yet investigated - included the foundations of a small group of workmen's huts near the entrance of the tomb of Ramses VI - and Carter, a systematic man, had decided to spend his last days probing beneath the huts. Adamson, he said, must stay until this was completed, and together that morning. they left the Winter Palace to go to the valley.


They must have looked an odd pair: a tall young man in military police uniform, and the stocky middle-aged archeologist, who, making no concession to the climate, wore a three-piece suit, a bow-tie and
a Homburg hat. They crossed the road to the river bank and descended a rickety wooden catwalk to the quay. Here they boarded a ferry boat and crossed to the west bank of the Nile, where a team of donkeys was waiting at the top of a long flight of stone steps to take them to the Valley of the Kings.
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« Reply #1088 on: March 22, 2009, 07:30:09 pm »









Today, the method of reaching the valley from Luxor remains basically the same - with a few variations for a man in a wheelchair. We avoided the wooden catwalk, for example, by sliding Adamson down the steep sandy bank to the water's edge, myself and two others acting as human brakes. After much argument with the boatman, who wanted to put Richard on the open bow, we managed to get him safely inside. Unfortunately, getting out the other side of the ferry on the west bank of the river proved impossible—until someone wrenched the sliding cabin door right off its rollers, giving us just enough room to squeeze Adamson and his wheelchair through.


The tremendous crash brought an irate boatman running and we had to pay for the door to calm him. Then we carried Adamson up the steps from the quay and, at the top, ran a gauntlet of taxi drivers, each trying to pull the wheelchair towards his own taxi. I resolved the contest by selecting a minibus, and we drove away leaving the drivers scuffling while a policeman tried to restore order.


Soon we left the narrow strip of lush green farmland bordering the Nile, plunging abruptly into barren, bone-dry hills. The still air grew hotter and hotter as we wound our way up a rock-strewn gully that suddenly opened up into a sort of amphitheater hemmed in by towering sandstone cliffs. Here, with the highest peak in the Theban hills standing sentinel - like a natural pyramid above them - 30 pharaohs were buried.


The Valley of the Kings today is neat and orderly, with signposted pathways leading to the different tombs, and an air-conditioned rest house, where visitors can escape the oven-like heat, but when Sergeant Adamson first arrived in 1922 it was quite different. It was, Adamson said a scene of desolation, littered with piles of excavated debris and with no shelter from the scorching sun save two small tents and a larger marquee.


"You will sleep here," Carter had told Adamson, ducking under the rolled-up flaps of the marquee. There were rush mats on the floor, two stretcher-like cots and a trestle table. "What about food?" gasped the astonished young sergeant, who had assumed he would be staying in Luxor. "I'll have some sent up to you," was Carter's curt reply, leaving Adamson wondering whether he wouldn't prefer the risks of Cairo. His first impulse, he said, was to start walking back to Cairo.
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« Reply #1089 on: March 22, 2009, 07:31:24 pm »









Later, though, he relaxed and began to question Carter about his search of the valley. "Have you worked here long, sir?" Adamson asked. "On and off for 20 years," was the matter-of-fact reply.


He had come to Egypt, Carter went on, when he was 17, the most junior member of the Egyptian Exploration Fund, a private organization linked to the British Museum. A water-colorist, his job was to record the paintings, reliefs and inscriptions in the funerary temple of Queen Hatshepsut. Despite his lack of formal schooling, Carter learned archeology and Egyptology quickly, and at the age of 25 was appointed inspector of the monuments in Upper Egypt, with headquarters in Luxor.


Ever since his arrival in Egypt in 1890, it had been Carter's ambition to dig in the Valley of the Kings. But it was not until 1914 that Lord Carnarvon, for whom he was then working, received the long-awaited authorization from the Egyptian Antiquities Department. Though previous expeditions, including one sent by Napoleon, had already combed the valley, Carter was not convinced that it had given up all its secrets; no one, he pointed out, had yet found the tomb of Tutankhamen, the boy king, who reigned from approximately 1334 to 1325 B.C. and died at the age of 18 under mysterious circumstances.


This was not blind faith, Carter said. Three pieces of evidence - all unearthed at' the beginning of the century by American archeologist Theodore Davis - indicated that the tomb was somewhere in the valley. One was a faience cup bearing the name of Tutankhamen that Davis found under a rock; another was a cache of large jars containing what Davis dismissed as "rubbish," but which later proved to be remnants of the Pharaoh's funeral feast; and the third was a small pit tomb containing fragments of gold foil bearing the name of Tutankhamen. On that basis, Davis claimed he had actually found the missing Pharaoh's tomb, but Carter, considering the pit tomb "ludicrously inadequate" for a king's burial, stubbornly insisted that Tut's tomb was still to be found.


"Like to see inside one of the tombs?" Carter asked his unwilling guest as they finished off their packed lunch. "Very well, sir," was the grudging reply. Taking the torch that the archeologist handed him, Sergeant Adamson followed Carter down a long, straight passage into the bowels of the earth. It was, Carter said, the tomb of Ramses VI.
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« Reply #1090 on: March 22, 2009, 07:32:39 pm »










To the ancient Egyptian, Carter explained, it was a matter of vital importance that his body should rest inviolate in the place constructed for it. It was also essential to a mummy's well-being that it should be fully provisioned for every need. But the very magnificence of the monuments and outfits with which the kings provided themselves for their "after life" were their undoing, and within a few generations at most the mummies were disturbed and their treasures stolen.


The early pharaohs tried hard to thwart tomb robbers; they built huge mountains of stone over their tombs to protect them, plugged the entrances with huge granite monoliths, constructed false passages and contrived secret doors. But in every case the tomb robbers surmounted the difficulties set to baffle them, and by the beginning of the 18th dynasty there was hardly a pharaoh's tomb in the whole of Egypt that had not been rifled.


The pharaohs then decided to place all royal tombs within a very restricted area where maximum security could be provided; 30 kings of the 18th and 19th dynasties were buried in a desolate, steep-sided canyon on the west bank of the Nile opposite Luxor, once the ancient pharaonic capital of Thebes.


For a time the mummies remained relatively secure, but then under the feeble monarchs of the 20th dynasty, cemetery guardians became lax and corrupt, and again wholesale looting of the tombs took place.


Throughout those troubled times, however, there was no mention of Tutankhamen and his tomb - which was why Carter believed that not only was it still there, but, more important, was still intact. "Strange sights The Valley must have seen, and desperate the ventures that took place in it," wrote Carter. "One can image the plotting for days beforehand, the secret rendezvous on the cliff by night, the bribing or drugging of the cemetery guards, and then the desperate burrowing in the dark, the scramble through a small hole into the burial-chamber, the hectic search by a glimmering light for treasure that was portable, and the return home at dawn laden with booty"
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« Reply #1091 on: March 22, 2009, 07:33:32 pm »










Ironically, that scene is a scene strangely similar to the one that Carter, long considered the most reputable of archeologists, now stands accused of taking part in himself - in another book on the famous discovery: Tutankhamen: The Untold Story by Thomas Hoving, former head of the Metropolitan Museum in New York.


Hoving's book adds still another version to a long list of King Tut accounts. According to Sergeant Adamson, for example, the King Tut drama began to unfold during the afternoon of November 3,1922. Having resigned himself to his enforced stay in the valley, and inspired, somewhat, by Carter's stories of tomb robbers and treasure, the young sergeant decided to explore his new surroundings. He was making his way along a narrow path 30 feet above where Carter's Egyptian workmen were clearing away the foundations of the laborers' huts, when suddenly he heard a shout.


Attracted by the buzz of excitement, Adamson picked his way down the steep slope to where the Egyptians had unearthed several large boulders. But seeing no reason to get excited over a few boulders, the young soldier went back to his tent and the workmen covered them up.


The next morning, though, when Carter arrived and found his men not working, he asked Adamson what had happened. "Nothing, sir," replied the sergeant, "They did find some boulders but then they covered them up." On hearing this, Carter ordered them to uncover the boulders again and found, beside one of them, a large stone step. Looking back, Adamson now says: "The workmen knew they had found something. They also knew Carter was leaving and that they could come back and claim the credit themselves."
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« Reply #1092 on: March 22, 2009, 07:34:29 pm »










Carter's own record makes no mention of this. "Hardly had I arrived next morning (November 4)," he wrote, "than the unusual silence, due to the stoppage of the work, made me realize 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 underneath the very first hut to be attacked. The manner of cutting was that of the sunken stairway entrance so common in The Valley, and I almost dared hope that we had found our tomb at last."


Yet another version is given by Hoving in Tutankhamen: The Untold Story. Quoting Lee Keedick, who organized Carter's subsequent lecture tour of the United States, Hoving says a small boy, whose job it was to carry water for the workmen, discovered the step while playing in the sand, covered it up again so the others would not see it and ran, as fast as his legs would carry him, to tell Carter what he had found.


All the versions, however, agree that from that moment on, excavation proceeded at a feverish pace, and that, as basket after basket of rubble poured out of the pit, more steps were disclosed. Even Sergeant Adamson found himself picking up a shovel to prevent sand from falling back into the hole, and that night, on Carter's instructions, he did his first guard duty over the tomb. Little did he know as he sat out the night on the steps that it was to be his job for the next seven years.


Work progressed even more rapidly next day, and towards sunset, at the level of the 12th step, the top of a sealed doorway was revealed. At this point Carter ordered his workmen to refill the stairway and roll the flint boulders back into place, until he could recall Lord Carnarvon to Luxor. "Had he dug a little further," says Adamson, "Carter would have saved himself three weeks of uncertainty, for a few inches below where he had stopped digging was a perfect impression of the seal of Tutankhamen" - the king he most wanted to find.
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« Reply #1093 on: March 22, 2009, 07:35:39 pm »










On November 6 Carter sent Lord Carnarvon the following telegram: "At last have made wonderful discovery in The Valley; a magnificent tomb...; re-covered same for your arrival; congratulations."


In England, Carter's cable was opened by Lord Carnarvon's daughter, Lady Evelyn Herbert, who, later, was to tell Adamson of her serious misgivings over her father's return to Egypt. According to Adamson's recollection, Lady Evelyn said that Lord Carnarvon, a believer in spiritualism, was with a medium when Carter's telegram arrived and, when he returned home, went straight to his bedroom, without reading the cable or even saying goodnight. Anxious to discover the cause of his unusual behavior, Lady Evelyn spoke to the medium, who told her that "the spirits" had warned Carnarvon never to return to Egypt.


Despite this warning, Lord Carnarvon - when he read Carter's cable next day - insisted on returning as soon as possible to Luxor. Lady Evelyn in turn, insisted on going with him and on November 23 they arrived in the valley and excavation of the tomb was immediately resumed.


By the afternoon of the 24th, the entire staircase, 16 steps in all, had been cleared, allowing them to examine the sealed doorway. They were elated at finding the seal of Tutankhamen, but their hopes were quickly dampened by the discovery that the door had been penetrated twice - apparently by tomb robbers - and re-sealed.


Finally, though, on the morning of the 25th, they removed the door, and saw before them a narrow passageway filled with rubble and, more evidence that the tomb had been plundered, broken jars and vases and numerous fragments of smaller articles. That in itself was exciting, but on the afternoon of the 26th, at the end of the 30-foot passage, they found a second doorway - once again with clear signs of opening and re-closing - and Lord Carnarvon, says Adamson, could not contain his excitement.
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« Reply #1094 on: March 22, 2009, 07:38:28 pm »










Lord Carnarvon had taken up "digging" during enforced winters in Egypt - prescribed by his doctor following a serious motoring accident - and had later become addicted to archeology; eventually he spent the equivalent of $500,000 on the search for Tutankhamen. He was not, however, a professional like I Howard Carter, who outwardly, at least, stayed calm and meticulously collected and recorded each of the delicate fragments found in the passage. Instead, Adamson said, he became increasingly excited, as, at last, they were ready to breach the second door.


It was, of course, a highly dramatic moment; behind that door lay the answer to all their questions. Slowly and carefully Carter made a hole in the upper left hand corner of the door and peered through.


"At first," says Carter, "I could see nothing, but presently, as my eyes became accustomed to the light, details of the room emerged slowly from the mists, strange animals, statues, and gold - everywhere the glint of gold. 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'." Probing the chamber again with his flashlight, Carter picked out yet another sealed doorway on the right hand wall flanked by two sentinel statues. "The explanation," wrote Carter, "slowly dawned upon us. What we saw was merely an antechamber. Behind the guarded door were other chambers. We were but on the threshold of our discovery."


Finally, their minds reeling from what they had seen, they re-closed the hole, locked the wooden grille that had been placed over the first doorway, and rode back to Luxor - leaving Sergeant Adamson to guard what we now know were priceless treasures, and wondering what was behind the third door. Had the tomb robbers succeeded in opening the third door too? If so, what were their chances of finding the king's mummy intact? "I think," wrote Carter later, "we slept but little, all of us, that night."
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