There are several times that this 2022 the name of Howard Carter has appeared in the press. This year marks the centenary of the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, and the British was the archaeologist who found it in the Valley of the Kings. However, it is not only for this exclusive event that the newspapers quote him in recent days. And it is that everything indicates that the Egyptologist would have taken with him some valuable objects during his investigations.
This is pointed out by a mysterious letter from 1934 published this weekend by The Observer in which these facts would be evidenced. It is not a new accusation, since rumors have been swirling about it for years. However, this letter could be decisive in confirming suspicions.
The sender is Alan Gardiner, a member of Carter's team. His main role during the mission was to translate the hieroglyphics in the tomb, so the two worked side by side at the time. In the letter, Gardiner asks the Briton in writing to reward him with an object "undoubtedly stolen from the tomb." Carter accepted the request and presented him with an amulet used as an offering to the dead. Of course, he warned him that this did not come from the tomb. Something that was not very funny to Gardiner, who saw it rather as an offense. For this reason, he went to the then director of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Rex Engelbach, to show him the piece. When he saw her, he knew instantly that he was lying. He had no proof, but he believed that the piece was made from the same mold as others found in the tomb.
“I am deeply sorry that I have been put in such an uncomfortable position. Naturally, I did not tell Engelbach that I had obtained the amulet from you," reads the letter, part of a private collection, which will be published in its entirety along with other letters soon in the book Tutankhamun and the tomb that changed the world, by the American Egyptologist Bob Brier.
Howard Carter arrived in Egypt when he was just 17 years old. He did not do it as an archaeologist but as a copyist of the hieroglyphic inscriptions of Flinders Petrie, the most important Egyptologist of the day. And all thanks to his great ability to draw, inheritance from his father, which earned him a scholarship to travel to the country of the pyramids.
Unlike most of his peers, he was uneducated, so he tried his best to prove himself. His merits were such that in less than eight years he was promoted to inspector of antiquities. A career that pointed to meteoric but stalled after what is known as the Saqqara incident. There, Carter had a minor altercation with some French tourists who wanted to visit the Serapeum after closing time. The guard refused, and Carter came to his rescue after the anger of the outsiders. The problem is that the affair ended with fistfights and the tourists had diplomatic support. Therefore, his superiors asked the British to apologize, but he refused and resigned from him.
Lord George Herbert, Earl of Carnavon, changed course and prevented their descent. The illustrious knew of his skills as an archaeologist and the work he had done in previous excavations, so he ignored the rumors and Carter's recent bad reputation and hired him with one goal: to find the tomb of Tutankhamun. And he did it. What happened or did not happen later is something that he took with him.
