Tutankharmun 01

[Music] [Music] in autumn 1922 archaeologist Howard Carter broke through the outer seal of the tomb of a little-known boy Pharaoh [Music] inside were fabulous treasures that had lain untouched for over 3,000 years [Music] this is the story of how a self-taught man against all the odds unearthed the greatest archaeological discovery of all time [Music] [Music] [Music] the world was quite literally amazed by Howard Carter's discovery in November 1922 of the almost intact tomb of a young pharaoh of New Kingdom Egypt who died in about 1323 BC the press competed for the latest exciting news of the discovery tourists flocked to the Valley of the Kings in the Theban Hills to catch a glimpse of strange treasures which had lain undisturbed for well over 3,000 years in Europe and America the new mass media created a new craze tap mania which seemed to be everywhere in 1922 this was the most powerful peacetime craze the world had ever seen [Music] today stimulated by a series of multi-million dollar exhibitions of the contents of Tutankhamun's tomb which toured the globe in the 1960s and 70s millions of visitors come to the tomb itself and to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo where the original discoveries unearthed by Howard Carter and his team the jewelry the funerary equipment in short the gold are displayed complete and intact [Music] he talked about me for years away was he more than anything else they come to stare at the famous face of Tutankhamun but few would recognize the face of the man whose name was all over the headlines in the 1920s but who died lonely and embittered in 1939 what sort of a person was Howard Carter the man who found and dug up the priceless treasures of Tutankhamen his life story and the story of the buried treasure in the Valley of the Kings contains some of the fiercest contradictions in modern archaeology as well as some of the weirdest myths and legends only now with the rediscovery of Carter's papers and Diaries and pictures with our own digging in the archive only now can all this be cut away so that we can understand his complex personality appreciate the significance of his discoveries and marvel at the real legacy of the boy King Tutankhamun the Egypt of the 1890s when Carter first started working there was a vast treasure house of antiquities to be visited almost at will by Western archaeologists travelers fascinated by the romance and fantasy of the East and administrators and soldiers supporting the veiled Protectorate exercised by the British egyptologists could now understand the written language of the ancients and archeology was in the process of becoming more organized as Western science encountered Eastern splendor this was the atmosphere and the world to which the young Howard Carter would be drawn Howard Carter was born in London off the old Brompton Road Kensington on the 9th of May 1874 but it was here in the small market town of SWA firm in Northwest Norfolk that he spent his childhood his father Samuel Carter earned his living as a painter of animals wild domestic and agricultural and as an illustrator also of animal subjects for the Illustrated London News in fact cars a family tradition has it that Samuel did the original drawings for the great Lancia lion sculptures at the foot of Nelson's column in Trafalgar Square but then again can't a family tradition tended to romanticize the hard facts Howard was the youngest of eleven children eight of whom survived infancy and because he was a weak sickly child he was sent away from London to be raised on his own in a farming community by two unmarried aunts his education here was minimal I was he said unable to go through a regular school training it began later than usual and ended at the early age of 15 he grew up in this house a solitary boy with something of a chip on his shoulder which would last for the rest of his life but some things he did inherit in abundance a good eye a love of Natural History and a Norfolk accent [Music] did Lincoln Hall home of the celebrated Amherst family was a 10-mile walk from Swapan and the young Howard Carter spent a lot of time here drawing in the garden and listening to stories about ancient Egypt and it's archeology for the Amherst's who took Howard under their wing were early and influential members of the Egypt exploration fund did Lincoln Hall housed the greatest private collection of Egyptian objects in Britain - Howard Carter this was all pure magic and as he put it it gave him a premature longing for that particular country and his first experience of drawing Egyptian objects [Music] it was his artistic talents which secured for him at the age of 17 a job in Egypt as a draftsman and tracer [Music] stiff and dirty after a long journey we crossed over the river to the east bank in an antiquated native ferry bomber [Music] there we climbed up to the rock terrace of the escarpment where the ancient tombs are situated his first posting for the exploration fund was 150 miles up the Nile from Cairo to the Middle Kingdom rock tombs of Beni Assam [Music] the tombs contained magnificent paintings memorials and inscriptions which covered about 12,000 square feet of wall space Carter was the youngest member of a survey team whose function it was accurately to trace and record the wall decorations also to make watercolor drawings of the most important details [Music] he was deeply impressed by the quality of the art especially its line and color but he felt that the tracings tended to lacked life and imagination he preferred doing watercolour versions such as these above all it was the romance of the place which got to him [Music] as Twilight fell silently upon the rock cliffs there was a look of bloom an aspect of dreary isolation which gave rise to disturbed phantoms which sometimes haunt the mind on the eve of adventure most nights I watched the brilliant starry heavens and an imagination called up strange spirits from the past until the first gleam of dawn when from sheer fatigue I fell into a deep sleep after half a season working as a tracer in middle Egypt Howard Carter moved south across the desert to join the new excavations at the remote site of el-amarna the ancient ruin city of the Pharaoh Akhenaton a camel's hump is said to vary in size according to the condition of the animal wild beasts must have been an excellent condition he appeared to have a lump everywhere I rolled in destroyed sometimes sideways but no ways could I get used to his rolling side-to-side walk Flinders Petrie the gifted and eccentric father of modern archaeology had recently started excavations at el-amarna a city which had been ransacked and deserted after the death of its Pharaoh Petrie gave the 17 year old artist a brisk on-site apprenticeship in the sheer hard slog of archaeology Carter was given his first chance to practice a little independent excavation on his own so he learned his craft as he put it from the very best and sternest of taskmasters Carter's next move in October 1893 as an artist and draftsman was up the Nile again to Thebes the traditional capital of ancient Egypt and the city of the living with its nearby city of the Dead just across the river my recreation from the drudgery of this everyday work was to watch and paint the wildlife my wild friends were fairly abundant the diverse and character mostly with feathers the birds which delight in eking out a precarious existence desolate solitude [Music] [Music] Carter's new posting was with the Egypt exploration fund at Deir el-bahri the fantastic mortuary temple of the woman pharaoh Hatshepsut ancient egypt's most powerful queen his role was to record the beautiful reliefs which were emerging in the course of excavations of the walls and pillars of the temple although the next six years were hard work I learned much more of the Egyptians art than in any other place or time Carter also learned how to apply his artistic training what he called the profession my father taught me to the copying in watercolor of paintings and reliefs and wall sculptures and inscriptions now the traditional approach to copying involved sticking some tracing paper to the wall and tracing the outlines before sending the outlines off to a draftsman off-site who'd fill them in in silhouette Carter preferred an approach which involved much more skill and imagination and intelligence as he put it a freehand some good pencils and brushes some suitable paper and honest work in fact he didn't like to call this copying at all he much preferred the phrase drawing work which sounded a lot less clerical and menial but there's no doubt it resulted in far better reproductions than the old tracing method reproductions which drew attention to Carter's abilities for the first time in 1899 at the age of 25 to the great surprise of his associates Carter was offered the post of chief inspector of antiquities for the whole of southern Egypt by the French administered Egyptian antiquities service this senior post required him to be policemen diplomat and archaeologist and his sphere of operations now included the Valley of the Kings at Thebes [Music] the valley of the kings of all Egypt's wonders there is none I suppose that makes more instant appeal to the imagination here in this lonely Valley head remote from every sound of life with the horn the highest peak in the Theban hills standing Sentinel like a natural pyramid above them they many of Egypt's kings but as Chief Inspector Carter didn't have the funds to excavate for that he'd need a wealthy backer Theodore Davis retired American Lawyer millionaire and archaeology enthusiast amplified the bill and the two men began working together dr. Donald Ryan an American archaeologist of today has specialized in retracing Howard Carter's footsteps of this period in the Valley of the Kings including the rediscovery of tombs which had surprisingly been lost again in the meantime one of the tombs which Don Ryan has recently rediscovered and studied is the anonymous tomb number 60 in a tributary valley on the eastern edge of the Valley of the Kings Howard Carter first unearthed this tomb in 1903 but was disappointed that in his view its treasures had as in so many cases been thoroughly looted and destroyed in ancient times okay it's my feeling that the tomb was commissioned at the death of somebody important act out short period of time the ceiling here is very low so you're gonna have to watch your head so despite the fact the tomb contained the denuded mummies of two elderly women carter closed it down again and didn't even bother to leave a map of its exact location and Howard Carter dashed into this too looked around saw their new inscription of the wall apparently was not impressed some of these boxes are the various materials that be collected from the different parts that you encounter amidst all of this well he wasn't interested in this type of - he was into something bigger and better in his big wooden box contains the mummy we found lining approximately this very very place on the farm but there was a second mummy in here and on its coffin it said royal nurse of queen hatshepsut as far as this mummy which remains inside this box we don't know exactly who it might be so when you have an undecorated tomb it can be quite an archeological puzzle this tubes a little different gonna like it a lot another tomb in the valley the nearby tomb 20 was cleared of debris by Howard Carter in the 1903 four season where he dug through two two quartzite sarcophagi within it it's one of the deepest steepest and most treacherous tombs in Egypt and then and now full of air which is foul with the stench of tomb dust and bat dung it was one of the most irksome pieces of work I ever supervised there was serious danger of the rock fallen in upon us and to add to her trouble the air was also very bad candles will not give sufficient light and I was obliged to introduce an air pump even then the workmen could only work three hours at a time [Applause] well how'd you be able to get out after you my spell Howard Carter spent his years as chief inspector refining his technique as an excavator getting to know every inch of the theban necropolis and developing a feel for reading the signs with the tomb of took Moses the fourth which he began excavating in January 1903 Carter found exactly the kind of tomb he was looking for and incidentally Theodore Davis was paying for he too would have left his hat outside to show passers-by that he was at work within hey this is more like it this is just the kind of tomb howard carter was hoping to find it's a beautifully painted royal tomb of the 18th dynasty all the little tombs he found prior to this really pale in comparison counter said about this that at last he drawn a prize in the lottery of excavation his moment of triumph we can see right here there's some ancient evidence of tumor Aubrey this is an ancient tomb robbers rope that was tied around the pillar here you can see it's knotted so that the tomb robbers could climb up and down incredible locked as an excavator do in the moment of triumph when he feels he has drawn a large prize he were all the proofs that I had found the tomb of pharaoh Thomas the force which as you may conceive gave me a considerable degree of satisfaction this is a bit of a violent graffiti written in cursive form of hieroglyphs and it says your eighth third month of summer day one in the reign of King Horemheb that be about thirteen eleven BC Kingdom Horemheb commanded maíam which was one of his officials restore the burial of King Tut Moses the fourth restore the burial what does that mean it means that within 80 years of the burial of King Tut Moses the fourth his tomb had been robbed it looks like someone's trying to cut out that goddess his head do you think that might have happened in antiquity as well probably not the robbers in antiquity were more interested in precious metals and jewels and gold and such whereas more modern robbers would be more interested in artistic things that they could sell on the art market within this burial chamber everything have been broken to bits and thrown helter-skelter by those ruthless vandals the tune plunderers who in their thirst for gold had spared nothing and this is a great quartzite sarcophagus of Tuthmosis the fourth although his mummy would never be found in this tomb cotta I think so that there are all sorts of bits of linen and ceramic lying around the sarcophagus here so the scene resemble an orgy rather than a hallowed place and I believe he thought that the robbers of antiquity had done it by 1904 Howard Carter's work as inspector of Antiquities and as archaeologists had earned him a great deal of respect if not always affection among the communities in which he mixed above all the local villagers of gornak on the way to the Valley of the Kings he'd learned to speak their language he even on occasion dressed like them and he sometimes preferred their company to that of his European colleagues to while away the dark nights I indulge in the diversions of the guesthouse I must admit however that this practice was liable to serious criticism by colleagues in the government service they thought it degrading in late 1904 Carter was moved from the Inspectorate of upper to lower egypt which included in its sphere of influence the great necropolis around the Step Pyramid of Saqqara after five years it was time for a change but unfortunately the new post was to go disastrously wrong a week into the new year of 1905 and a party of some 15 French people having had a jolly good lunch over in the palm groves of Memphis and having had several bottles of wine to wash it down arrived here at the Sakura and Acropolis by donkey and asking a semi coherent way to see the monuments the local ticket inspector naturally enough ask them for their money and several of them refused to pay the hung around had a few more drinks and made their way down to the Serapeum the Sara pium is an underground complex of tombs where the sacred Bulls of APIs were buried there the French visitors not all of whom had tickets found that without candles they couldn't see a thing so they demanded their money back at which point the tomb guard had his taboo Sh knocked off his head it was time for Chief Inspector Howard Carter to be summoned to confront the French he asked for everyone's name and address and requested the group to leave the site immediately they refused and in the course of further exchanges one of the tomb guards was hit in the face and Carter himself was threatened with a punch on the nose the phrase dirty French was heard by several witnesses to soil Howard Carter's lips as he ordered his men to defend themselves as best they could a couple of tomb guards were quite seriously hurt an interior decorator got hit on the head an accountant from a French gas company was felled to the ground with a truncheon any compromise on Carter's part would have settled things to set natives against Europeans he was told was not proper but he simply wouldn't see it that way in the next few days Howard Carter demanded that legal action be taken against the French who had started the affray in the first place while on the French side a formal complaint was lodged with Mysterio gasps Thomas pepper the director of Antiquities this made Carter even more stubborn and he began to ask for a public apology as well he the gaff ears under his command the profession of archaeologists and the British Empire probably in that order had all been slighted and he wanted satisfaction the fragile auntaunt cordial between the British and French communities was getting less cordial by the minute mass Bevo felt a token expression of regret to the French Consul General was in order Theodore Davis advised him to give in for the sake of peace and harmony that he added was the gentlemanly thing to do but Carter wouldn't budge so at the age of 31 he'd done serious damage to an exemplary career and subsequently resigned he returned south to Luxor and lived in self-imposed isolation amongst the locals in the foothills of the city of the Dead for the next three years he guided wealthy visitors around the sites of Upper Egypt and sought commissions for his watercolor paintings he was short of money and it was a hand-to-mouth sort of existence a far greater trial lies in the monotonous life that one is obliged to lead the wearisome sameness day after day the person of months without companionship a loneliness that can at times become almost intolerable without some mental occupation it would I believe become suicidal [Music] in summer 1907 Carter returned to England where he learned that Lord and Lady Amherst who'd encouraged him to go to Egypt in the first place had hit hard times did Lincoln Hall was up for sale and the great Egyptian collection was to be dispersed his world seemed to be collapsing all around him did Linton is in brown-paper parcels lady Amherst is saving odd bits of string but his love of Egypt and the fact he had nowhere else to go took him back where he added a new occupation to his makeshift career as a part-time dealer in antiquities a job for which he was well qualified he knew what he was doing and was well known to those who regularly sold their discoveries and acquisitions in the bazaars and side streets it was a case of gamekeeper turned poacher and are these popular these younger things and your feeling now that really is old if Carter was to return from this unhappy interlude to the work he most wanted the work of the excavator he'd need another wealthy patron to support him George Herbert 5th Earl of Carnarvon was a sporting gentleman in the early years of the century it had a spectacular motoring accident which led him to spend time away from the family home at Highclere Castle Wiltshire on doctor's orders in a place where the climate was said to be better for him and also to his search for another absorbing pastime the excavation and collection of Egyptian antiquities I would much rather he said find an unrivaled tomb than win the Derby and he was in the enviable position to do both [Music] at first conovan was granted a permit to excavate here in a part of the theban necropolis where even an amateur could do little damage it had been rummaged over many times before and all he had to show for his investment was a mummified cat but he was absolutely thrilled with it and determined to secure a better concession for this he would need a professional advisor and assistant someone with more credibility gasps Thomas bevel suggested his ex colleague Howard Carter it was the start of a most unlikely friendship between the grandi who admired Carter's skills and the craftsman who returned the compliment by modeling himself on his patron neither of them could imagine where the partnership would eventually take them as a sign of Carters newfound security he decided to design and build his own castle a permanent home at the entrance to the Valley of the Kings which he called Castle Carter what he yearned for was a concession in the valley itself what he got was permission to work around its margins [Music] [Music] remote and difficult areas such as the mountain is 1,800 feet above the valley which involved several hours trek by donkey and on foot across the hot desert sometimes concealed secret tubes the most dramatic discovery occurred a while later when Howard Carter heard down the grapevine that a rock tomb in a sheer cliff face had been revealed by a flash flood and that tomb robbers were already at work dr. Don Ryan took me on a hair-raising trip in temperatures which reached 55 degrees centigrade to retrace Howard Carter's steps towards the scene of the crime little ways further but from here it's all on foot how long will it take 20 minutes half hour to something like that that's your pace its your pace think about three hours there it is kidding me so where's the tumor is it also it's opening up in the cliff that one that half we're done right honest you get what how'd you get down there I think it looks lethal piece of cake honey that's pretty inaccessible they said they hid it so you have to come down from the top right you've ever done this before once or twice I have him Donald it's not a problem I say there isn't and wasn't a path up this mountain just a field of boulders with a sheer drop on either side of it which has seldom been disturbed since Carter's day [Music] we're right on top of the cliff right now it's all getting a bit much over me great let's do it when we arrived above the tomb I found that the plunderin Arabs had crapped down a crack extended halfway down the cleft to a narrow ledge in the rock for anyone who suffers from vertigo and certainly was not pleasant returned coming wait I put my leg well done well done oh my goodness just a sheer drop well this is where we set up the ropes right the wind Don I don't think that I'm gonna go any further I've made it to the plateau I think Carter calls it not for people with vertigo and I'll drink to that I think I'll leave it to the professional from here on I all parted Lee concur well I'm glad to hear it okay I'm deeply impressed with the range of skills that archaeologists show but no idea Carter probably used e and knotted rope with some sort it would be pretty scary and he didn't have all this modern mountaineering equipment solid that's reassuring all right I'm gonna give this a toss rope the guide pointed out to me the end of a rope which dangled sheer down the face of a cliff listenin we could hear the robbers actually at work so I first severed their rope cutting off their means of escape and then make it secure a good stout rope of my own i lo myself down the cliff and ready chalk the way okay oh yeah no problem it's been popping [Music] Chinon down the rope into a nest full of industrious tomb robbers as a pastime which at least does not lack excitement there were eight at work and I gave him the alternative of clearing out by means of my rope or else of stayin where they were without a rope at all eventually they saw reason Carter wasn't sure what he'd find inside this cunningly concealed tomb 130 feet down from the top of the cliff it had a half-finished unoccupied look to it it seemed that the tomb was originally intended for the young hatshepsut who'd had an inscribed quartzite sarcophagus place there in readiness but that after she seized the throne she abandoned it for a grandeur memorial and a mortuary temple that same temple on which Howard Carter had worked for six years oh this is very strange this little room here is it's full of water not going in there this is water that probably entered this tomb sometimes during the winter the rains that occurred build this tomb so after the incredible labor and imagination involved in preparing it this cliff tomb was never used in this secret spot her mummy would have had a reasonable chance of avoiding disturbance in the valley it had none a king she would be Kings fate she shared [Music] how was it done then damaged excessively by by flooding see when Howard Carter was working on this tomb over a period of 20 days he came up and down this little bit here in a net let down by someone from above or from below he'll probably with a pulley of some sort you know sounds a most civilized way to travel to me there you go thank you old chap well done in spring 1914 Theodore Davis publicly announced that the valley of the tombs is now exhausted and he pulled out but Carter was convinced there was still at least one more tomb to be found and he had good reason every day hundreds of tourists walk past this spot which is unmarked without even noticing it and yet it played a key part in the research which led to Howard Carter's great discovery the research involved a series of finds made between 1905 and 1909 under the patronage of Theodore Davis in particular the discovery of some objects which proved to bear the name Tutankhamun the discovery was from this so-called tomb which is less of a tomb really more of a box cut into the rock and it took the form of twelve storage jars the remains of a funerary feast some embalming fluid and some seal impressions Theodore Davis was convinced he'd stumbled on the badly plundered tomb of Tutankhamun and he said as much at a public gathering where he also showed what happened to papyrus when it had been buried for over 3,000 years by tearing a large piece of it to pieces in front of the assembled company Howard Carter was less convinced he came to believe that the objects which were removed from this so-called tomb had been taken from another royal tomb which must be located nearby the true significance of these discoveries wasn't appreciated until later by which time Carter had planned a sister matic search of the valley beyond but his plans came abruptly to a halt at the age of 40 Carter wasn't expected to see active service in the First World War but at the beginning of 1915 he was recruited into the shadowy world of the intelligence department of the War Office in Cairo where his knowledge of Arabic was useful for official communications and where he became a kind of Kings messenger but it wasn't until the end of the war that he could return to archaeology in earnest work resumed in the valley in December 1917 with Howard Carter still digging on behalf of Lord Carnarvon but now planning what he called a systematic and exhaustive approach to the whole business of finding an undiscovered tomb it was an approach which involved taking a two and a half acre area of ground defined by the triangle the tomb of ramses the sixth the tomb of Mineta and the tomb of ramses ii a triangle rather like this ramses vi menephta ramses ii then dividing it up on a grid system derived from plans for artillery barrages in the First World War and then systematically digging away all the loose chippings and debris right down to the bedrock as Carter commented in 1917 our real campaign in the valley commenced Caernarfon employed up to 100 men to shift thousands of tons of stone chippings thrown up by previous excavations as five seasons went by Carnarvon was all for abandoning a search which seemed to be getting nowhere slowly but Carter argued for one last season which he even offered to fund himself and can Arvind eventually agreed the season would begin on the 1st of november 1922 with the clearance of the remains of some ancient workmen's huts built for the laborers who dug the tomb of Ramses the 6th it was his last chance three days later a slab of limestone was uncovered here probably by the water boy the most junior member of the workforce it turned out to be a step cut into the bedrock by late afternoon the outlines of 12 steps had been cleared leading down to the upper part of a door which was plastered and sealed but the seal impressions on the door were indistinct with enormous self-control Carter ordered the steps to be filled in and sent a telegram in code to Lord Carnarvon at last have made wonderful discovery in Valley a magnificent tomb with seals intact recovered same for your arrival congratulations two and a half weeks later Lord Carnarvon and his daughter Lady Evelyn Herbert arrived in Egypt and by the afternoon of the 24th of November the stairwell had been cleared digging down a few inches below the seal impressions he'd already looked at they unearth some much clearer ones Carter could even make out a name on one of them the name of Tutankhamun but their excitement became anxiety when they saw that the door had been opened by force at least once before and then replastered and resealed in antiquity the door was carefully removed revealing a 30-foot sloping passageway filled with limestone chippings through which a tunnel had already been dug and again refilled in the top left-hand corner by four o'clock in the afternoon of Sunday 26th of November the passageway had been cleared there was a second sealed door his hands shaking his throat dry Carter cut a small hole through the door he lit a candle and peered into the darkness but first I could see nothing the heart a air escaping from the chamber caused 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 everywhere the glint of gold you

Channel: George Pollen

Views: 12,739

Keywords: Tutankhamun 01

Id: wORIiqCYyE4

Length: 47min 20sec (2840 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 04 2018