Howard Carter, the archaeologist who discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, was long suspected by the Egyptians of helping himself to treasure before the vault was officially opened. But while rumors have been around for generations, proof is hard to come by.
Now an allegation that Carter was handling property “undoubtedly stolen from the tomb” has emerged in a previously unpublished letter sent to him in 1934 by a prominent British scientist as part of his own excavation team.
It was written by Sir Alan Gardiner, a leading philologist. Carter had enlisted Gardiner to translate hieroglyphics found in the 3,300-year-old tomb and later gave him a “whm amulet” used for offerings to the dead, assuring him that it did not come from the tomb.
Gardiner showed the amulet to Rex Engelbach, then the British director of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and was horrified to be told that it did indeed come from the tomb, as it matched other examples – all made from the same mould.
Firing off a letter to Carter, he attached Engelbach’s damning sentence, which read: “The whm amulet you showed me was undoubtedly stolen from Tutankhamun’s tomb.”
Gardiner told Carter, “I deeply regret having been put in such an embarrassing position.”
But he added, “Of course I didn’t tell Engelbach that I got the amulet from you.”
The letters, now in a private collection, will be published in a forthcoming book from Oxford University Press, Tutankhamun and the Tomb that Changed the World
Its author, Bob Breyer, a leading Egyptologist at Long Island University, told the Observer that suspicions that Carter had helped himself to the treasures had been around for a long time: “But now there’s no doubt about it.”
This year marks 100 years since Carter and his financial backer, Lord Carnarvon, discovered the boy king’s tomb, filled with thrones, chariots and thousands of items needed in the next world. Over the next decade, Carter oversaw their removal and transport down the Nile to Cairo for display at the Egyptian Museum.
Howard Carter at the entrance to an Egyptian archaeological site in 1923 (Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Some Egyptologists have disputed Carter’s claim that the tomb’s treasures were looted in ancient times. In 1947, in an unknown scholarly journal in Cairo, Alfred Lucas, one of Carter’s employees, reported that Carter had secretly broken down the door of the burial chamber before appearing to reseal it and cover the opening.
Brier said: “They were suspected of breaking into the tomb before it was officially opened, removing artefacts including jewelery sold after their deaths. It is known that Carter somehow had items, and people suspect that he may have helped himself, but these letters are dead evidence.
“He certainly never admitted it. We have no official denial. But he was locked out of the tomb for a time by the Egyptian government. He had a very bad feeling and they thought he was stealing things.
In his book, he writes that the Egyptians were unable to prove their suspicions and were convinced, for example, that Carter planned to steal a wooden head of Tutankhamun found in his possession: “Egyptian authorities had entered and inspected tomb no. 4, which Carter and the team used to store antiquities, and discovered a beautiful, life-size wooden head of Tutankhamun as a youth.
“It was packed in a Fortnum & Mason chest, but was never mentioned in Carter’s record of the finds, nor in the volume describing the contents of the vestibule…Carter claimed that it was simply discovered in the rubble in the descending passage.
Brier said: “Later we find items in the Egyptian market for antiquities from his estate that clearly come from the tomb.”
Some entered museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which announced in 2010 that it would send back to Egypt 19 objects acquired between the 1920s and 1940s because they “certainly can be attributed to the tomb of Tutankhamun’.
In his 1992 book on Carter, the late Harry James used Carter’s letters at Oxford University’s Griffith Institute, which refer to a dispute with Gardiner that led to the amulet’s return to Cairo.
The significance of the previously unpublished correspondence is that the accusation comes from a leading expert who was actually involved in the first excavations.
Carter would struggle to challenge Engelbach, who had “too much authority and really knew his stuff,” Bryer said.
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