THE OPENING OF TUTANKHAMEN’S TOMB
Daily Express, Wednesday, 7th February 1923
PHARAOH READY FOR THE STYX.
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BOAT FOR VOYAGES IN THE UNDERWORLD.
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BY H.V. MORTON.
“Daily Express” Special Correspondent.
LUXOR, Tuesday, Feb.6.
The Egyptian Director-General of Antiquities to-day authorised me to enter the tomb of Tutankhamen. Very little remains in the first chamber. One hard day’s work would clear it, leaving the way open to the enigmatic door behind which Pharaoh may lie still surrounded by evidence of his earthly splendour.
The first chamber is well pro-portioned. The walls are covered with a pink wash like distemper. Electric lights shone on the last of the three chariots, on the beautiful gold couch, its front shaped of the heads of lions in solid gold, the back formed of the raised tails of the beasts, gracefully arched.
CRAMMED ROOM.
Most interesting of all was a peep into the second chamber of the tomb, which is crammed with objects not to be touched until after the opening of the mummy chamber.
I saw a dim confused jumble of objects among which was something that looked like a new moon in a dark sky. This was really a model boat about six feet long put there so that the soul of Pharaoh could take a voyage and travel about in the underworld.
On coming out I noticed a brown object like a bunch of brown frayed ropes. On looking closer I recognised a bouquet of flowers which had bloomed in Egypt over three thousand years ago, and which had been put there by some forgotten mourner.
Lord Carnarvon goes to Cairo to-night with Mr Carter. Interesting developments are expected from their visit.
Daily Express, Friday, 9 February 1923
TUTANKHAMEN THE CHATTEL.
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STRONG PROTEST AGAINST A MONOPOLY OF NEWS FROM LUXOR.
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PRIVATE PROPERTY.
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TOMBS OF DEAD PHARAOHS A NATIONAL POSSESSION.
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Luxor has become a battle-ground, where the right of Lord Carnarvon to turn the bones of a Pharaoh into private property is now to be fought out.
Before he left for Luxor Lord Carnarvon sold to one English newspaper exclusive rights in the news of discoveries in the inner chamber of King Tutankhamen’s tomb, which he returned to open.
In other words, all the great newspapers of the world were compelled to choose between accepting the offer of part of this one newspaper’s news service, on a strict commercial basis, and risking the loss of the news.
OFFER REFUSED.
The majority refused the offer and despatched their own special correspondents.
Many of the most influential of these other newspapers, including the “Daily Express,” have now protested to Lord Allenby, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, against a monopoly which deprives the outside world of news of interest and importance to science and erudition in all lands.
It is felt that the tomb of a Pharaoh in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes should not become the chattel of one person, and that Lord Carnarvon’s services in excavation, however painstaking they may be, cannot entitle him thus to dispose of a monument of Egyptian archaeology in the land of Egypt.
MONOPOLY AT THE TOMB.
By H.V. MORTON.
“Daily Express” Special Correspondent.
LUXOR, Thursday, Feb. 8
The whole of Luxor has during the past few weeks been talking of little else than arrangements for the opening of Tutankhamen’s mummy chamber and the attempt to keep the news from thousands of newspaper readers in England, France and America.
No previous discovery in the history of archaeology has been treated in this manner.
When Lord Carnarvon returned to England before Christmas he arranged for exclusive publicity rights in his great discovery.
The greatest newspapers in Britain and America declined to acquire the information second hand in this manner, and have sent special correspondents to Egypt.
Lord Carnarvon has been requested, in the interests of the public, to issue a bulletin of the bare facts of the tomb opening on the day it happens, but he declines.
A strong protest against this muzzling of the newspapers has already been sent to the Egyptian Government, and repeated to Lord Allenby. No reply has yet been received.
It almost seems as though Tutankhamen has cast an evil spell over Luxor, breeding secrecy and suspicion. Even distinguished archaeologists are sworn to secrecy.
KEYS.
This attitude nearly caused a diplomatic incident the day Mr. Carter went to Cairo to meet Lord Carnarvon on his return from England. A party of Egyptians, armed with Government permits to see the tomb, were refused admittance, and Mr. Carter only gave up the keys reluctantly at the last moment on the station. In fact, his climb down was only due to the intervention of the highest authority in the land.
Daily Express, Tuesday, 13 February 1923
SCENT 3,000 YEARS OLD.
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LITTLE POTS FULL OF PHARAOH’S FACE CREAM.
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STILL FRAGRANT.
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DISCOVERED BY AN ACCIDENT.
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By H.V. MORTON.
“Daily Express” Special Correspondent.
LUXOR, Monday, Feb. 12.
Tutankhamen’s face cream and per-fumes have been found. By an accident they were discovered the other day in the tomb at the bottom of a box covered with linen. In each of several little pots was a hard substance which, when placed in the sun, melted, giving off a very faint aromatic odour.
After a lapse of thirty centuries men smelt the cosmetics which must have scented the royal palace of Thebes, now merely a mound on the edge of a desert haunted by jackals.
It is strange to think that a modern girl could use perfumes which delighted the heart of Pharaoh or Queen Ankhenpsaten 3,000 years ago. It is hoped that these liquids can be analysed in order that modern chemists may manufacture the scent for which ancient Egypt was famous. No one yet has any idea of what the Egyptian scent is like. We know from monuments that a tremendous market for scent was established in Egypt in the eighteenth dynasty, when luxury attained a climax.
SCENTED WIGS.
At banquets in those days a spike was placed on the top of the wig on which a cone of sweet smelling unguent was fixed. When the banquet hall became hotter the unguent melted, sending a pleasant stream of perfumed coolness through the wig to the shaven head of the wearer.
Whether these perfumes from the ancient world would be popular with the women of London to-day, it is impossible to say. It is certain that modern African tribes consider castor oil the sweetest scent in the world. On the other hand, there are wall paintings by hundreds in Egypt showing maidens smelling lotus buds, which suggests that their sense of smell was cultivated along modern lines.
QUEEN HATSHEPSUT.
Just for curiosity I rode back from the Valley of the Tombs via Der El Bahari to look up the wall pictures in the temple of Queen Hatshepsut recording her famous perfume expedition to Punt, the world’s first great trading centre. Queen Hatshepsut, who reigned in 1500 b.c. and there-fore several hundred years before Tutankhamen, was the world’s first emancipated woman.
Although she represents herself in monuments as a man, wearing a false beard tied under her chin, with narrow hips and a flat bosom, and with the short waist cloth of the Pharaoh, this remark-able woman had a strong feminine passion for perfume.
Her expedition to “the ports of incense” in modern Somaliland set Egypt’s fashion in perfume, and the walls of her temple are covered with a minute record of her venture.
They show the setting-out of the fleet, the expedition’s adventures among the natives of Punt, and their return in a triumphal procession, in which the queen, dressed as a king, holds a festival as the mariners pass by carrying incense, trees, oils and gums necessary for the priestly sacrifices in Thebes.
The most precious of all to Hatshepsut was the vast quantity of raw material form perfume, and one hieroglyphic tablet state that “her Majesty made an aromatic essence with her own hands with which to anoint her person. She exhaled the odour of the divine dew. Its perfume penetrated everywhere, her skin shone like gold, and her face was like the stars.”
It is too much to hope that the per-fumes discovered in the tomb of Tutankhamen are those made fashionable by his ancestor, Queen Hatshepsut. If so, and if, in the words of the world’s first scent advertisement, they can make woman’s skin like gold and her face like the stars, it is fairly obvious that a large fortune is awaiting the man to rediscover this recipe for the benefit of Bond-street.
Daily Express, Saturday, 17th February 1923
PHARAOH’S COFFIN FOUND.
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WONDERFUL TREASURES IN THE SECRET CHAMBER AT LUXOR.
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GOLDEN SARCOPHAGUS.
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DEAD KING GUARDED BY A GIANT CAT.
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The romantic secret of the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings at Luxor was revealed yesterday when, for the first time in three thousand years, the inner chamber of the tomb was entered.
Every expectation was surpassed. Within the chamber stood an immense sarcophagus of glittering gold, which is almost certain to contain the mummy of the king. Wonderful paintings, including that of a giant cat, covered the walls. A second chamber was crowded with priceless treasures.
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AWE-INSPIRING SIGHT.
By H.V. MORTON.
“Daily Express” Special Correspondent.
LUXOR, Friday, Feb. 16.
One of the most wonderful sights ever witnessed by Egyptologists was seen by the excavators of Tutankhamen’s tomb to-day when the inner chamber was opened and they peered into the darkness.
Around an immense sarcophagus lay a mass of precious objects – vases, urns, statuettes, and boxes with the dust of thirty centuries on them. The light of three powerful electric torches flickered like white moons in the pitch darkness, illuminating sections of the painted walls, where the weird gods of Egypt were pictured tending the soul of the king on its journey to the shades.
SILENCE.
Although twenty persons were present there was not a sound in the dim tomb when the lights were focussed on the break in the wall leading to the death chamber. Hearts beat faster as the excavator-in-chief was bidden to look at that which no human eyes had seen for 3,000 years.
No matter how little superstitious a man may be, the act of breaking the rest so carefully guarded through the centuries must cause an emotion which time can never efface. Lord Carnarvon was pale as he stepped slowly into the darkness and was lost in the shadows of Ancient Egypt.
The chamber is high, and measures fourteen feet by fourteen feet. In addition to magnificently painted gods of the underworld, bands of hieroglyphic inscriptions cover the walls. The paint is as bright as when it was new.
It was impossible to move at once the great lid of the sarcophagus. Inside there is probably another coffin, and inside this a third, in which it is believed the body of Tutankhamen lies decorated with his jewels.
GIANT CAT.
The only people to enter the chamber were Lord Carnarvon, Mr Howard Carter, whose twenty years’ work has now been crowned with success; M. Laceau, Director General of Egyptian Antiquities; Soliman Pasha, Under Secretary for Public Works; and Lady Evelyn Herbert, Lord Carnarvon’s daughter. The others stood looking through the broken wall.
As the lights flashed on the sarcophagus it was seen to be all gold, glistening and sparkling. The little band of five, treading softly on the dust of ages, stood awestruck before the image of a giant cat, beautifully painted, which has kept vigil over the coffin of the king all these years.
Near the sarcophagus was a canopic jar containing part of the mummified body of the king.
When the party had recovered from the wonder of the first room, another surprise was in store for them. On the right hand was an opening leading to another room stacked with funeral furniture in indescribable confusion. Among the most remarkable objects were three more war chariots standing upright, decorated and gilded, just as when they were placed there by the burial party thirteen hundred and fifty years before the Christian era.
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A box of ivory and ebony may hold manuscripts which will throw light on this period of ancient history, or may contain Ushabti figures placed there in accordance with the ancient Egyptian belief in their magic power to work for the dead king in the underworld. It is not possible to walk in this room owing to the mass of valuable objects which it contains.
These facts now definitely establish the discovery of the tomb as the most important ever made in Egypt. It appears that the tomb robbers of a later dynasty did little harm, and robbed the tomb with great discretion.
Will the body of King Tutankhamen be found untouched when the third coffin is opened? If so, it will be the first time that an unrifled royal body has been found in Egypt, and it will be possible to know for the first time how a king of the eighteenth dynasty was wrapped after death and the exact disposition of the magical amulets placed to safeguard him in the other world.
In the first flush of the amazing discovery it is impossible to give any details regarding manuscripts. Archaeologists the world over will await them with eagerness. As Tutankhamen may have lived in the period of the Exodus, perhaps there is buried with him an account of Israel and Biblical times from the Egyptian standpoint.