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The Discoverers, part 2 Salt's successes in building up these collections were helped considerably by the energetic pursuits of his most famous agent in the field, Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1778-1823). Born in Padua, the son of a barber, Belzoni eventually made his way to England where he became a weight-lifter at Sadler's Wells Theatre. During his subsequent travels around Europe, he met an agent of Mohammed Ali in Malta, who arranged for him to visit Egypt in 1815 to build a water-raising machine for the Pasha (he is reputed to have studied hydraulics in Rome earlier in his life). He spent a year in Egypt, working on the design and a model of the wheel, but in the end Mohammed Ali's advisers did not recommend it, and he had to look for other employment. Travellers such as the Swiss explorer John Lewis Burckhardt (1784-1817) were still able to make spectacular discoveries. He had studied Arabic at Cambridge and, using the name Sheikh Ibrahim and wearing Arab dress, he explored Arabia and Nubia. He found the remarkable ruins of Petra, and he also reported that he had found Abu Simbel in March 1813. From descriptions which he had heard, probably from local inhabitants, he was able to locate the smaller temple of Nefertari and to see parts of the great statues which flanked the entrance to Ramesses II's own temple, at that time still covered in great drifts of sand. It was his account which later inspired Belzoni to seek out the temple and attempt to enter it. Salt had become British Consul-General in Egypt, and he took Belzoni on to help him acquire antiquities for the British Museum. His first task was to obtain the colossal head of Ramesses II from the Ramesseum at Thebes. He had been told about this by Burckhardt, as well as about the temples at Abu Simbel. Burckhardt had come upon these monuments from above, descending down the great sand slope which filled the area between the two cliffs. His description captures something of the excitement of this first view:
Belzoni says of his discovery of the colossal head of Ramesses II - the inspiration for Shelley's sonnet on Ozymandias (a derivation of User-maat-re, one of the names of Ramesses II):
It was eventually moved to the river's edge, using a wooden platform, rollers and manpower, and when the Nile flood made it possible, the colossus was floated downstream and transported to London. Belzoni's travels took him on to Aswan and Nubia, where he planned to open the entrance to the temple at Abu Simbel, but he could not gather together sufficient manpower to do this. At Luxor he had more success: excavations at the Temple of Mut at Karnak revealed over twenty statues of the goddess Sekhmet; wandering through these temples, he remarked that 'It appeared to me like entering a city of giants who, after a long conflict, were all destroyed, leaving the ruins of their former temples as the only proof of their former existence.' On the west bank he explored the tombs at Qurna in search of funerary papyri, causing much damage to the mummies buried there. He recalls that, when he first entered the passageway of a tomb, 'Every step I took, I crushed a mummy in some part or other.' Penetrating further into the burial chambers, he says:
Sometimes, he sought rest, sitting down in the tombs:
He graphically describes one particular occasion when he sought a resting place, found one, and continued to sit; but when my weight bore on the body of an Egyptian, it crushed like a band-box. I naturally had recourse to my hands to sustain my weight, but they found no better support so that I sunk altogether among the broken mummies with a crash of bones, rags, and wooden cases, which raised such a dust as kept me motionless for a quarter of an hour, waiting till it subsided again. At Thebes, he discovered six royal tombs, including that of King Ay and - his most famous find - the deep rock-cut tomb of King Sethos I. Here, he lived in the tomb and took wax impressions of the wall scenes and hieroglyphs. When he returned to England in 1821, he held an exhibition in the Egyptian Hall at Piccadilly. This had large-scale model of the tomb and two full-scale reproductions of its chambers, with their coloured wall scenes, as well as many antiquities, including statues, mummies and papyri. The exhibition which lasted until 1822, was a great success and established his reputation as a traveller. Immediately prior to its opening, a spectacle had been mounted (popular at that time) at which a mummy was unwrapped before a medical audience. BeIzoni's other important activities in Egypt included the opening of the pyramid of Chephren at Giza and the discovery of the ancient port Berenice on the Red Sea. His publication, Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs, and Excavations in Egypt and Nubia (1820), further enhanced his reputation an together with the exhibition, was the culmination of his career. Despite his success, he was unable obtain funding for further enterprises in Egypt; he left on an expedition to search for the source of the River Niger in Africa, but after beginning his journey, he caught dysentery and died. As one of the most interesting characters of his time, Belzoni typifies the untrained, aggressive treasure seeker who had an overwhelming desire to seize the prizes for his employers and himself but little regard for the archaeological context the material. However, his methods were less disastrous than those of some of his rivals, and his spectacular successes and talent for publicizing his achievements back in England certainly raised the general awareness of Egypt's ancient civilization. While some archaeologists were pursuing the somewhat dubious ends, other travellers to Egypt were adopting more scholarly attitudes. William John Bankes, an English traveller, collector and antiquarian, had travelled in Egypt and Nubia and became very interested in the deciphermet of Hieroglyphs. A bilingual obelisk from Phila which was acquired by Belzoni for Salt and eventually came into the possession of Bankes, was transported to England and set up in his park at Kingston Lacy, Wimborne, where it still stands today. Using the key to the hieroglyphs produced by Thomas Young (Bankes disagreed with Champollion's work), and some other material including the Greek inscription on the pedestal of his obelisk, Bankes was able to read the name of Cleopatra in a cartouche. Mohammed Ali's encouragement of foreign visitors now also brought a number of serious scholars to Egypt to copy and study the inscriptions. These early epigraphers were not affected by the restrictions which the government was beginning to attempt to impose on excavators, and after Champollion's decipherment, there was an urgency to copy more monuments. For the first time, the copyists understood the hieroglyphic signs and their meaning. Champollion's own expedition had pioneered this work, and the results produced by these early scholars are of great importance, because many of the monuments, texts or details have since been destroyed. One of the most important copyists was Sir john Gardner Wilkinson (1797-1875), who has been described as the founder of Egyptology in Britain. With a small private income, Wilkinson took up the study of the Egyptian language, and arrived in Egypt in 1821, where he spent twelve years recording the archaeological sites and studying Arabic and Coptic to assist him in the decipherment of Hieroglyphs. With no government funding, he was obliged to work in a restricted area, and devoted much of his attention to the tombs at Thebes, where he excavated in 1824 and 1827-8. His travels also took him twice to the Second Cataract. Amongst his major achievements were the decipherment of dozens of inscriptions, the correct identification for the first time of many royal cartouches, and the first production of a working survey of all the main sites in Egypt and Nubia. He produced the first comprehensive plan of ancient Thebes and made one of the earliest identifications of the Labyrinth at Hawara. His work as a copyist - producing many drawings and coloured reproductions of wall scenes and other material - has probably never been surpassed. It is particularly remarkable that so much was achieved by one man whereas the other great epigraphic expeditions of Napoleon's Commission, and of Champollion and Lepsius had involved teams of experts. The information he amassed from the archaeological sites, paintings, papyri and inscriptions was used to write the most comprehensive account ever produced about the ancient Egyptian civilization, ranging over many aspects but emphasizing religion, culture and daily life rather than chronology and political history. This was the first serious study to utilize the actual Egyptian evidence rather than Classical accounts as the primary source material; the three volumes of The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (1835) remain a testimony to his unusual ability to produce an account based on original research which is nevertheless of interest to a general readership. His main ideas were drawn from the tomb scenes which illustrated daily life and these, rather than tomb contents, provided most of his material. Whereas the publications of the great French and German expeditions organized their material according to site, Wilkinson looked at the ancient Egyptians as living people, categorizing his information according to subject matter. Their social classes, buildings, furniture, arts and crafts, and activities such as hunting and fishing were all analysed, providing an extensive and unparalleled account of the civilization. Another antiquarian who visited Egypt in 1824 was Robert Hay (1799-1863), a Scot of independent means who was able to devote his life to making drawings, plans and copies of the inscriptions on the Egyptian monuments. Between 1828 and 1829, he travelled around the ruins in a systematic manner; an accurate copyist and draughtsman himself, he was also able to employ highly skilled staff, including the artist Joseph Bonomi. The invaluable collection of material he amassed is kept today in the British Museum and consists of some forty-nine volumes of his papers and drawings, as well as his diary and letters. His collection of antiquities was eventually acquired by the British Museum and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Another Scottish antiquarian, Alexander Henry Rhind (1833~63), established new advances in scientific excavation as distinct from treasure hunting. Trained as a lawyer, poor health forced him to abandon his career and travel to southern Europe and Egypt, where he spent two years excavating tombs at Thebes. Here, working on one undisturbed burial, he developed new systematic techniques of excavation, for the first time recording the exact location of each object that was found. This approach contrasted sharply with the techniques of Colonel Richard W. Howard-Vyse (1784~l853) who, with the Italian Caviglia, undertook excavations of the pyramids at Giza. With the assistance of the engineer J. S. Perring, a survey of a number ot pyramids at Giza and elsewhere was produced. The resulting publication was the most significant on the pyramid fields produced during the 19th century, providing descriptions and measurements of great value. It remains a standard work, but the techniques they used for opening the pyramid of Mycerinus have been described as 'gunpowder' archaeology. The last great epigraphic survey of the monuments and sites was undertaken by the Prussian expedition (1842-5) which reached Meroë in the Sudan. The best equipped until then, with skilled draughtsmen to survey the mouiments, it was led by Karl Lepsius (1810-84), generally regarded as the foremost Egyptologist after Champollion, who carried on the French scholar's pioneering language studies. His expedition to Tanis in 1866 resulted in the discovery of the Decree of Canopus with a biliugual inscription which enabled Champollion's clamls regarding the Rosetta Stone to be checked and verified. Lepsius was also mainly responsible for setting up the great Egyptian collection in the Berlin Museum, for which he acquired one of Drovetti's collections, and he also brought back antiquities and casts from the Prussian expedition to Egypt and Nubia. During his time in Egypt, Lepsius excavated the site of the Labyrinth in the Fayoum, where stratigraphic techniques were used well in advance of their employment elsewhere in the Near East. By 1859, the publication of the information gathered on this expedition was completed: the Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien (1849-59) filled twelve volumes with copies of inscriptions and wall scenes of every major site. Probably the largest Egyptological work ever produced, it included only folio plates but these achieved new levels of accuracy; the acconipanying text, published in five later volumes (1897-1913), was compiled from notes after Lepsius' death. This was the last of the great topographical, comprehensive surveys of the monuments; in future, more specialized accounts of one site or monument would provide the detailed information that was increasingly required. However, these great surveys compiled by the expeditions of Napoleoni, Champollion and Rosellini, and Lepsius had given contemporary scholars the basic material from which to study the historical and religious scenes and texts. Their importance to the development of the subject was crucial and even today they preserve some valuable information about the monuments which the intervening years have obliterated. Thus by the middle of the 19th century great advances had been made in Egyptology: in language studies, the work of Champollion, Lepsius and others now ensured a systematic approach, and scholars such as Heinrich Brugsch (1827-94) continued to build on the existing knowledge of Egyptian grammar hy producing a Demotic grammar and a hieroglyphic dictionary. Historical facts gained from literary texts were now based on a firm scientific foundation. The great publications of the monuments and the many accurate books on ancient Egypt, produced to meet a growing popular demand, ensured that in Europe and America there was an increasing awareness of this early civilization. Visits to the great museums also heightened people's interest in the antiquities, and increasing numbers of tourists travelled to Egypt and returned with accounts of the stupendous monuments. However, along with their enthusiasm, people also began to recognize an urgent need to preserve the monuments and antiquities; it was necessary to organize excavation along different lines, and to end the destruction of the sites and the random disposal of the antiquities. Excavation had remained haphazard: archaeologists sought for objects that would please museums and private collectors and for inscribed pieces that would help language studies. Following Champollion's plea to the Egyptian Government and Mohammed Ali's subsequent Ordinance of 1835, there had been some improvement: an individual could obtain permission from the Pasha to excavate, but there was now no guarantee that he would he allowed to retain the objects. The export of antiquities was prohibited by the Ordinance, and although this was still extremely difficult to enforce, it did have the effect of discouraging collectors from cutting large sections from the walls of monuments, since they would now be difficult to take out of the country. Other appeals and criticisms, including an unfavourable assessment of the consular role in the trade of antiquities, were also made and it was realized that two major developments were urgently required to protect Egypt's heritage. First, it was essential that a national museum to house the antiquities should be established in Cairo. Secondly, there was a crucial need to organize the excavations along scientific lines, introducing procedures to ensure that detailed records were kept, that finds were retained because of their archaeological or historical significance rather than their financial value, and that appropriate conservation measures were carried out in respect of the monuments and the excavated material. As early as 1821, the traveller Edward de Montule proposed in his Travels that a great museum should be established at Cairo or Alexandria. With the proposal for an Antiquities Service in 1835, the Egyptian government had begun to collect antiquities and house them in a small museum in the Ezbekia gardens in Cairo, but this did not long survive Mohammed Ali's rulership. The material was later transferred to another building in the Citadel of Saladin in Cairo, but Abbas Pasha, a later ruler of Egypt, presented the whole collection to the Austrian Archduke Maximilian when he visited Egypt in 1855. It was Ferdinand de Lesseps (1805-94), the originator of the Suez Canal, who used his considerable influence with Egypt's ruler, Said Pasha, to put into action a number of moves to halt the destruction of the ancient monuments, which included the development of the Antiquities Service and the provision of an appropriate national museum. These were to be the major achievements of the French archaeologist Auguste Mariette (1821-81). Mariette was born at Boulogne in France, and followed a number of careers, including designing models for ribbon manufacturers in Coventry, England, before he returned to France and continued his education, becoming Professor of French at Boulogne in 1843. The previous year, Mariette had been approached by a relative to organize the papers of his son, Nestor l'Hôte, who had been a member of Champollion's expedition to Egypt. These papers aroused Mariette's interest in Egyptology and he learnt the Egyptian alphabet and studied decipherment, and also pursued studies in Coptic. His first article, a catalogne of the Egyptian objects in the Boulogue Museum, led to his appointment to a minor post at the Louvre, where he assiduously transcribed all the inscriptions then in the collection, from which it was eventually possible to prepare a general inventory of the Egyptian monuments. Charles Lenorant at the Collège de France was impressed with Mariette's abilities, and in 1850 he instructed him to go to Egypt and collect rare Coptic, Ethiopic and Syriac manuscripts. In Cairo, Mariette contacted the Coptic patriarch, but had little success in his mission, and he turned his attention instead to Pharaonic antiquities. In October 1850, when he was searching the necropolis at Sakkara, he noticed the head of a sphinx protruding from the sands; he recalled the account by the Classical geographer Strabo, describing the avenue of sphinxes leading to the Serapeum where the sacred Apisbulls were buried. Although he had no official permission to excavate, and funds only to purchase the manuscripts, he followed his hunch and took on thirty workmen to dig for the Serapeum. The avenue of sphinxes was uncovered, and the tombs and two temples of the Apis-bulls were revealed; in one unplundered tomb, he found the intact burial of a bull, with a great granite sarcophagus, the mummified remains of the animal, and the associated jewellery and treasure. This divine animal had been interred during the reign of Ramesses II (c.1290 BC), and the footprints of an ancient workman still remained in the sand, undisturbed for over two and a half thousand years. His great discoveries at the Serapeum caused a sensation; further funds were made available by the Louvre and Mariette excavated there for another four years (1850-4). He was promoted to the post of Assistant Keeper at the Louvre, and his reputation as an archaeologist was established; in his Choix de monuments (1856), he published a series of plates showing selected objects from his discovery at the Serapeurn. Mariette's true ambition, however, was to develop a service in Egypt to protect the ancient monuments, and he had the opportunity to tell Ferdinand de Lesseps of his proposal. After the assassination of Abbas Fasha in 1854, Said Pasha had become Egypt's ruler and, anxious to please the influential de Lesseps, he agreed to the plan which de Lesseps put before him. It was decided that there should be an organization to look after the standing monuments in Egypt and that a new museum should be established in Cairo. Eventually, in 1858, again on de Lesseps' recommendation, Mariette was appointed as the first director of ancient monuments in Egypt and head of the new museum. The site chosen for the museum was the small Nile port of Boulaq just north-east of Cairo and although the accommodation was less than ideal, this was the first National Museum to be established in the Near East. Here, Mariette was able to try out new ideas, including an ambitious programme to photograph the treasures of the museum. The larger statuary was photographed inside the building, whereas displays of the smaller pieces were recorded outside. Unfortunately, a disastrous flood occurred in 1878, when many of the objects were washed away or stolen, and in 1890 the remaining collections were moved to an old palace belonging to Ismail Pasha at Giza. Eventually, they were transferred to the Cairo Museum which was built in 1902; designed by the French architect Marcel Dourguon, this followed the neo-classical style, with two main floors devoted to exhibition galleries. Here the world's largest collection of Egyptian material, totalling some 120,000 objects, is housed. Mariette's ambition was achieved and his foresight rewarded, but his plans were strongly opposed by the dealers, since their activities would be directly affected. Manette was also dependent upon the financial support of the ruler for the future development of the museum, but its international significance as the finest museum of ancient art and history persuaded the Pasha to continue his aid. When he died at Boulaq, Mariette was given a state funeral and was buried outside the museum there; later, his sarcophagus was moved to the forecourt of the new Cairo Museum, where it was surmounted by a bronze statue by Xavier Barthe, unveiled in 1904. In his other great ambition - the development of the world's first National Antiquities Service -Mariette was equally energetic. He inaugurated excavations at many sites, including Sakkara, Giza, Thebes, Abydos, Tuna, Esna, Sais, Mendes, Bubastis and Elephantine. Altogether, over thirty years, digs at thirty-five different locations stretching from the Delta to the First Cataract involved thousands of workmen. Many important discoveries were made, including the monuments of Tanis and the famous treasure of Queen Ah-hotep at Thebes, and Mariette started workshops at various sites where the objects could be dealt with appropriately. The sand and rubbish and modern dwellings were now cleared from some of the temple sites, such as Deir el-Bahri and Karnak at Thebes; at Edfia (the most complete temple), a modern village was removed from the roof enabling the temple to be fully visible for the first time. Newly exposed wall scenes and texts greatly added to knowledge of these buildings, which - even a short time before, as in the works of such artists as David Roberts (Egypt and Nubia, 1842-9) - had appeared partially submerged by desert sands. Nevertheless, although Mariette's discoveries were remarkable, he was later criticized for his secretiveness in keeping his schemes from others and for his attempts to forbid any excavations in Egypt other than his own. Most particularly, his excavation methods were censured by later archaeologists. It was essential that he retained the interest and support of the Pasha by continuing to make spectacular finds, and this was a major incentive in his work. However, because of the large number of sites being excavated simultaneously, there was no proper site supervision, and no adequate recording of finds. The urgency to find treasure even led to the use of dynamite as an excavation tool, but in general Mariette's attempts, if somewhat extrovert, still compared well with those of contemporary excavators. Mariette also played a useful diplomatic role between France and Egypt; in 1867 he was sent to Paris to oversee a major display at the International Exhibition which set out to reconstruct the life of ancient Egypt. The centrepiece was the famous jewellery of Queen Ah-hotep. When Mariette's workmen at Thebes found this queen's tomb and its elaborate sarcophagus, the local governor of Qena, in Mariette's absence, hurried to Thebes and possessed the treasure in the name of the government, proceeding to rip open the coffin and take out the jewellery. He then sent the coffin to Cairo as a gift to the ruler and retained the jewellery for himself. Hearing of this adventure, Mariette pursued the governor, gained access to his boat and forced him to hand over the treasure. Mariette then went to Cairo and related his actions to the Pasha, taking care to present him with a couple of pieces of the jewellery for one of his wives. Much impressed, the ruler commended his actions; this event also helped Said Pasha to decide that a national museum should be built. The Suez Canal was finally opened on 17 November 1869; to mark the event, Verdi composed the three-act opera Aida which was first perfomed in Cairo in 1871, and Mariette was asked to co-operate in writing the libretto for this. In his last ten years, Mariette saw his own life undergo some dramatic changes. In the flood at Boulaq, he lost most of his papers in his house which adjoined the museum. Cholera claimed his wife's life in 1865, and because of his own ill-health, the doctors in Paris recomended that he should not travel, but Mariette nevertheless returned to Cairo and died there in 1881. His achievements were considerable: a permanent museum and an established Antiquities Service ensured that the export of antiquities from Egypt was slowed down, and his excavations if lacking a proper methodology, at least terminated the treasure seeking that Salt, Drovetti and Belzoni had pursued. In addition, Mariette was the first to raise public awareness concerning the need to clean and conserve the monuments, and he promoted a worldwide interest in saving Egypt's heritage. In the year of his death, there was a military revolt in Egypt, which alarmed Britain and France because their major investments in the Suez Canal and in industrial development in Egypt would be threatened by political instability. The British sent a fleet and an expeditionary force to Egypt in 1882. with the result that order was restored under a nominal Egyptian ruler (the Khedive). A British agent and consul-general (who actually had no formal authority over the Khedive) was installed, and through the British officials who were now introduced into defence, the police force, foreign affairs, finance and public works, the British exerted considerable influence for many years. The French, however, continued to dominate the areas of education, archaeology and the arts, and their government was anxious to see another Frenchman succeed Mariette as head of the Museum and the Antiquities Service. Gaston Maspero (1846-1916) had first met Mariette in Paris in 1867, when he was still a young student. Although of Italian parentage, Maspero was born in Paris, and became interested in Egyptology while still a schoolboy. He was appointed Professor of Egyptian Philology and Archaeology at the Collège de France in 1874, and first went out to Egypt in 1880, to lead an archaeological mission. When Mariette died, he was ready to inherit his post; at the museum he continued Mariette's work, organizing and cataloguing the ever-increasing collections and rearranging the displays. As Director of the Antiquities Service, he regulated excavation throughout Egypt and with the support of the British Consul-General Lord Cromer, he developed the Service's work, so that it functioned under five regional inspectors. He continued Mariette's work in opening some of the smaller pyramids and copying the Pyramid Texts, and eventually produced the first edition of these very important inscriptions. His achievements were extensive and included a scheme to systematically clear and preserve the great temple complex at Karnak. Although he retained Mariette's general principles for authorizing excavations, he relaxed some of the restrictions so that a controlled, moderate flow of antiquities was now allowed to go to museums in Europe and America. He also initiated the important Archaeological Survey of Nubia which the American archaeologist George A. Reisner undertook in 1907-9. A prolific writer whose publications exceeded in number those of any other Egyptologist, Maspero not only edited the Catalogue of material in the Cairo Museum which then filled fifty volumes, but also produced popular works such as his Histoire ancienne des peuples de l'orient classique (1895-9). Perhaps, however, he is best remembered for his crucial role in rescuing the mummified remains of some of the kings and queens of the New Kingdom. Until 1870 the modern world remained unaware of the royal mummies, but in 1871 Ahmed Abd er-Rasul, who lived in the village of Qurna near the Theban necropolis, stumbled across the ancient communal burial place of a number of the rulers when he was searching for a goat. In antiquity, the kings of a later dynasty had ordered the reburial of these mummies in two caches, removing them from their original plundered tombs, so that they might achieve a second chance of eternity. This first cache at Deir el-Bahri supplied Abd er-Rasul and his relatives with a supply of small objects, including ushabtis (model figures of agricultural workers), canopic jars, papyri and scarabs, which could readily be sold to the many dealers and tourists who now visited the area. When material bearing the royal insignia gradually began to appear on the international market, the news reached Maspero who began an investigation at Luxor. Suspicion fell on the er-Rasul brothers and eventually, as the result of a family quarrel, the police were able to undertake enquiries. One brother - Mohammed - confessed and as a result apparently obtained immunity from punishment, received a reward, and was even appointed head workman over the excavations at Thebes. He led the archaeologist Brugsch, who was acting on behalf of the Antiquities Service, to the cache. Maspero inspected the find in January 1882, and eventually the mummies were transported by river to Cairo, where many of them were later unwrapped and autopsied, providing basic information for our knowledge of mummfication techniques in the New Kingdom. From the middle of the 19th century, tourism had become increasingly popular in Egypt. The publications of David Roberts with their magnificent lithographs of the drawings he had made of the monuments in the Holy Land, Egypt and Nubia had inspired widespread interest in visiting these sites, and photography now added another dimension. F. Frith's Egypt and Palestine (185843) captured something of the romance of the ancient buildings with his photographs and accompanying text, although, as in this description of the temple at Luxor, he noted their deterioration: 'Around many of the stupendous ruins of Old Egypt are now heaped mountains of the debris of deserted towns, or else modern Arab hovels of mud cluster round the columns. Many visitors came to Egypt from England, America, Germany, France and Belgium. Some wished to spend the winter in a country where the warm, dry climate was particularly beneficial to their health. With the construction of the Suez Canal, many people en route to India now stopped in Egypt and made a detour to Cairo, often staying at Shepheard's Hotel, so that they could visit the Giza pyramids. Some tourists made more extensive journeys: pioneering travel agencies such as Thomas Cook enabled groups of tourists to make the Nile journey, and some went overland, travelling by train to the major sites which could be viewed in a three-week visit. The most leisurely tour, however, was enjoyed by people who could afford to charter a dahabeah (sailing vessel) and travel from Cairo to the Second Cataract. This Nile journey took about three months, and combined the advantages of privacy and the company of friends with the delights of watching the timeless river scenery and stopping off at will to explore the archaeological sites and monuments, or the bazaars with their wealth of colour and frenzied activity. Amelia B. Edwards is a good example of a tourist whose visit to Egypt had a profound effect on the development of Egyptology. A successful popular novelist, she travelled to Syria and Egypt in 1873-4, and made the typical Nile journey to the Second Cataract in a dahabeah. This inspired her best-known book, an account of her travels entitled A Thousand Miles Up the Nile (1877); it provides a delightful view of the land and customs she saw and had a marked influence on her readership. Here she describes the delights of sailing along the Nile:
Some tourist made extensive tours in Egypt in the 19th and early 20th centuries, sailing from Cairo to the Second Cataract and visiting the ancient monuments en route. Here, a passenger on a Nile boat negotiates a purchase local vendors at Esna. The great monuments had a dramatic effect upon Amelia Edwards; of the pyramids at Giza she says:
When her party arrived at the island of Philae, she describes the delights of the scene before them:
Another highlight of the tour was the experience of the sunrise at Abu Simbel:
No one who has watched for the coming of that shaft of sunlight can doubt that it was a calculated effect, and that the excavation was directed it one especial angle in order to produce it. In this way Ra to whom the temple was dedicated, may be said to have entered in daily, and by a direct manifestation of his presence to have approved the sacrifices of his worshippers. Amelia Edwards' personal experience of Egypt profoundly affected the rest of her life. Aware of the rapid deterioration of the ancient monuments, she now set herself the task of raising public awareness in England and America of the need to establish scientific excavation in Egypt, together with systematic recording of the standing monuments. Through her writing, she sought to spread this message and to stem the destruction of Egypt's heritage; realizing the need for a society which could promote, encourage and act upon these ideas, she was instrumental in founding the Egypt Exploration Fund in London in 1882, with the help of the Orientalist Reginald Stuart Poole and the famous, surgeon Sir Erasmus Wilson who had supplied the finance to bring Cleopatra's Needle to London. Amelia Edwards became the society's Secretary and devoted her talents to promoting the work of the Fund and its excavators, giving talks and writing many popular articles for journals and newspapers. In 1889-90 she visited the USA to give a series of lectures and to inspire popular interest in the American section of the Egypt Exploration Fund. The Fund was one of the first organizations to apply for excavation permits in Egypt; its aims of undertaking scientific excavation and publishing its results, and of fostering interest in Egyptology amongst its largely lay membership still continue today(it is now known as the Egypt Exploration Society).
Amelia Edwards' other great service to Egyptology was to found, under the terms of her will, the first chair of Egyptology in Britain), at University College London, which also received her library and collection of Egyptan antiquities. It was her wish that William Flinders Petrie, who had excavated for the Fund, should be appointed to this post, and it was his methodology of scientific excavation in Egypt which would pioneer a whole new approach to archacology. Unlike earlier archaeologists, he did not seek large and impressive finds (although he made many of those), but he concentrated instead on the careful examination of each site and its contents, however mundane they might appear. He was rightly convinced that it was these insignificant objects that held the key to understanding the civilization of ancient Egypt, and his techniques were ultmitately adopted in many fields of archaeology. William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853-1942) received no formal education,
but gained a practical knowledge of surveying and geometry from his
father. When he was thirteen, Petrie read Charles Piazzi Smyth's book
Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid, which proposed that divine
prophecies were enshrined in the structure of Cheops' pyramid. This
inspired his interest in Egyptology, and he and his father planned an
expedition to Egypt in 1880-2, to make a detailed survey of the pyramids.
In later years, in his book Seventy Years in Archology, he
describes his early working methods:
However, his interest in small objects (as a boy he had collected coins) and all acute awareness of the destruction facing many monuments in Egypt led him to take up excavation. He criticized eirlier archaeological attempts, saying:
He obtained financial support from the Egypt Exploration Fund and excavated for them in 1884-6, but a quarrel with the Committee brought the funding to an end. However, through the good offices of Amelia Edwards, he obtained financial support from a Manchester businessman, Jesse Haworth, and from Martyn Kennard who had family interests in Egypt. This enabled him to excavate the sites of Illahum, Kahum and Gurob; recalling, his working days at Kahum, Petrie shows a marked sympathy with the site:
Haworth's support continued for several years, providing a firm foundation for future excavation at various sites. In return, Haworth received a substantial share of the antiquities found by Petrie, and these came to form the nucleus of the Manchester University Museum collection. To ensure his independence, Petrie founded his own archicological organization - the Egyptain Research Account - in 1894; Later this became the British School of Archaeology in Egypt, and had the important aim of raising funds from the public to Support Petrie's excavations. In 1892, he became the first Edwards Professor of Egyptology at University College London, a chair he held until 1933, and he excavated again for the Egypt Explorition Fund in 1896-1906. Eventually, he moved his ;activities to Palestine in 1926, wor1,aii,, there it Hyksos and other sites until 1938.
In over forty years of excavation, he dug as many sites as Mariette, and his major archaeological discoveries were more litil]ICROLIS that] those of any other Egyptologist. Amoiig the most significaiit was the discovery of Naticritis (in 1884-5), the city of C,rcck residents Ili Egypt. Here lie introduced the use of stratigrapliv for the first tmie, fixing the dates of the differeiit layers of the buildings by rcferrmg to the small otliects lie found there, such as coms or inscribed pieces which could be specifically dated. II) the Fayotmi he discovered remarkit)le royal treasure M a tojiib near the Laliui) pyramid, but lie also excavated the town sites of Kahun and Gurob (1889-90). These were very important because they provided evidence of everyday living conditions rather than funerary customs. Kahun - a purpose-built town which housed the familics of pyramid workers - was the first example of town planning ever uncovered ill Egypt. Foreign pottery at both sites led Iletrie to speculate it)oiit connections between Egypt and Grecce; because the inscriptional evidence at the Egyptian sites enabled them to be firmly dated, a chronological framework could be proposed for sites in Greece where similar pottery was found. Thus, the foreign imports found in Egypt helped Sir Arthur Evans to estiblish the basis of a chronology for the discoveries he made at the palace of Knossos in Crete a short time later. The presence of foreign material at the Egyptian sites enabled Petrie to demonstrate that there had been commercial connections between Egypt and her neighbours and that it was not an isolated civilization. At Amarna, his excavations (1891-2) revealed the famous Amarna letters
and new information about the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten; he surveyed
Sinai (1904-5) and discovered the first texts in the Sinaitic script;
at Tanis, he uncovered part of the temple; and in the Fayoum at Hawara,
he discovered the superb painted mummy portraits dating to the Graeco-Roman
Period.
At Kahun, a pyramid workmen's town excavated in
the 1890s, Petrie found a great variety of pottery made for domestic
use. Dishes of this type - oval, made of coarse red pottery, and
decorated with incised patterns and designs - were probably used
for serving food. Perhaps his greatest achievements focused on the earliest years of Egypt's history. At Abydos, the concession to excavate the royal tombs of the Archaic Period had been granted to Émile Amléineau (1850-1916), a French cleric who had studied under Maspero. In his excavations there (1894-8), he had searched only for decorated or inscribed pieces and had discarded the other material he uncovered. When, in 1899, Petrie obtained the concession from Maspero, he reworked the site, finding several royal and many non-royal tombs of Dynasty I and carefully mapping, recording and photographing the remains. The material that Amléineau had ordered to be broken up was now taken and studied, and with his painstaking approach, Petrie was able to throw new light on this early period. However, an even earlier phase - the so-called Predynastic Period - awaited discovery. Excavation of graves in southern Egypt had revealed material which was unusual and did not conform to the types and styles found elsewhere. This led to speculation that a New Race of outsiders had entered Egypt bringing this culture with them, although the French archaeologist De Morgan disagreed with this and claimed that the material was Egyptian but prehistoric. It was indeed difficult to understand why no evidence had until then appeared to show development prior to the establishment of the historical kingdom c.3100 BC, and this material was thus particularly important. In 1895, in the great cemetery near the modem town of Nagada, Petrie
discovered over two thousand graves. He was able to use the material
from these graves to test whether such items did indeed belong to a
New Race or whether a direct development could be traced between later
dynastic objects and these pieces. Since there were no inscriptions
to provide the basis for dating, Petrie developed his own system, known
as Sequence Dating. This used the stylistic changes seen in the extensive
supplies of pottery found in the graves as the basis for dating and
arranging sequentially all the other associated material, including
ivories, slate palettes, stone vessels, tools and weapons. Although
Sequence Dating had its limitations, it could be used to place material
which could not be dated otherwise, and it has evolved and been employed
to great effect by later Egyptologists. Together with Petrie's discovery
of the Predynastic and Early Dynastic Periods, it remains his greatest
single contribution.
He was able to use his excavated material and the evidence from the
systems he had devised to propose and test new theories. Unlike many
earlier excavators, he promptly published his results and opinions in
over a thousand books, articles and reviews, and in museums where his
excavated material came to be housed, his suggestions on the conservation
and display of the objects were of great influence. He said:
Petrie was also responsible for an innovative approach to his excavation
workforce: whereas Mariette had been able to provide only minimal personal
super-vision for his labourers, Petrie employed his men directly and
was frequently at the site himself They were housed, and paid a fixed
price for discovery of different categories of objects, so that their
loyalty could be ensured in the face of competition from the dealers.
The labourers were organized into groups, each undertaking specific
work, and in the excavations at Quft (Koptos), Petrie began to train
the diggers so that they could progress to become foremen at other sites
in later seasons. Today, the Quftis still provide the trained and experienced
overseers for many excavations in Egypt.
Petrie also trained many assistants in Egyptology, including Griffith, Newberry, Quibell, Carter, Mace, Davies, Engelbach, Brunton and Caton-Thompson; they carried on the principles of his scientific approach and made their own substantial contributions to the subject. There are various accounts of his camps; the published letters of the American Egyptologist Charles E. Wilbour describe his visit to Petrie's camp at Medum:
A controversial character, Petrie's one failing was perhaps his inability to change and develop his own methods, which had advanced the subject so much, and it was left to later excavators such as the American George Reisner to introduce new ideas and techniques. The end of the 19th century witnessed several major developments and discoveries, and intensification of archaeological work in Egypt. The century had been a time of virtually continual exploration, with great advances in methodology. The discovery of the first cache of royal mummies at Deir el-Bahri in the 1870s was followed by Victor Loret's excavation of the tomb of Amenophis II in the Valley of the Kings in 1898, where nine more royal mummies were found. An American businessman, Theodore M. Davis, financed several excavations, including further exploration of the Valley of the Kings (1903-12), and several Englishmen worked for him, including Carter, Weigall and Ayrton, since it was now a condition of the Egyptian government that excavation could only be carried out by an experienced archaeologist. Davis' expeditions produced spectacular results: the royal tombs of Hatshepsut, Horemheb, Siptah and Prince Montu-her-khepshef were found, as well as the tomb in the Valley of the Kings of Yuya and Thuya, the non-royal parents of Tiye, the wife of Amenophis III. Working for Davis, Howard Carter also found the tomb of Tuthmosis IV which still contained some goods, including a decorated chariot. The burial of Yuya and Thuya, with its golden treasure, was particularly fine, although it had been entered by robbers in antiquity. In 1907, Davis also discovered Tomb 55 in the Valley of the Kings, with its mysterious occupant who, at the time, was identified as Queen Tiye, although subsequent examinations of the mummy have led to suggestions that it was Akhenaten or, more recently, Smenkhkare. The tomb contents continue to arouse controversy. The most spectacular discovery in the Valley of the Kings (and indeed
in Egypt) was made by Howard Carter (1874-1939), when he uncovered the
tomb of Tutankhamun in November 1922. Despite fears that the area was
exhausted, Carter had persuaded his patron, Lord Carnarvon, to continue
the search for a royal tomb. Carter later recounted his emotions when
the passage beyond the entrance door to the tomb was first discovered:
On 26 November 1922, Carter finally peered into the antechamber and
saw the treasure; his excitement at this great discovery is evident
in his later account:
For a further ten years, Carter and his staff devoted themselves to the task of excavating the tomb, and cleaning, packing and transporting the treasure to Cairo. It was an enormous undertaking, carried out with great care and patience; here, Carter describes the opening of the sarcophagus in their second excavation season, over a year after the tomb was first discovered:
At first sight, the contents were disappointing, since the coffin inside was covered with linen shrouds, but once these were removed the archaeologists gazed on the outermost of the three golden coffins that enclosed the king's mummy: Upon the forehead of this recumbent figure of the young boy king were two emblems delicately worked in brilliant inlay - the Cobra and the Vulture - symbols of Upper and Lower Egypt, but perhaps the most touching by its human simplicity was the tiny wreath of flowers around these symbols, as it pleased us to think, the last farewell offering of the widowed girl queen to her husband, the youthful representative of the 'Two Kingdoms'. Although a definitive publication is still awaited, Carter left detailed records of the objects and his work. This discovery was only the most dramatic of a series of finds he made, including five other royal tombs, Hatshepsut's Valley Temple and many non-royal tombs. Also on the Theban west bank, Herbert Winlock (1884-1950), excavating at Deir el-Bahri for the metropolitan museum of New York made several important discoveries. At the temples of Mentuhotep (Dynasty 11) and Hatshepsut (Dynasty 18), he continued the work of Édouard Naville, one of the early excavators for the Egypt Exploration Fund. Clearing this area, he found two intact royal burials at Mentuhotep's temple, and a mass burial of sixty soldiers interred in the royal precinct. These were Mentuhotep's victorious soldiers who had died in battle and been brought to the king's own temple complex. In 1919-20, in the tomb of the chancellor Meket-Re, Winlock found the models of this man's house, estate, and workshops, providing a unique glimpse of life at that period. In the next season, the archive of family letters of Hekanakhte was discovered, again adding a wealth of information to existing knowledge of the First Intermediate Period. Winlock also excavated the Theban palace of Amenophis III at Malkata. Another American, George A. Reisner (1867-1942), who became Professor of Egyptology at Harvard, also made significant contributions, taking Petrie's regard for detailed recording to new lengths. Reisner aimed to provide records, including his diary, object register and photographs of each object, which would enable later scholars to reconstruct every detail of the conditions found by the excavator. His most important discovery was the tomb of Queen Hetepheres at Giza, complete with its furniture, but he also undertook other important work at Giza, particularly at the nobles' mastaba (bench-shaped) tombs, and the Valley Temple of Mycerinus. The construction of the Aswan Dam at the First Cataract in 1899-1902
and the subsequent raising of its height had made the archaeological
survey of Nubia, parts of which would now be inundated, a most urgent
task. Different techniques were needed for surveying a wide area rather
than excavating a single site, and Reisner developed a methodology which
has since continued to be used. For many years he also worked further
south in the Sudan, exploring the pyramids and sites at Kummeh, Kerma,
Napata (Gebel Barkal), el-Kurru, Nuri and Meroë. He provided evidence
for much of our understanding of this Kushite kingdom which reversed
the pattern and conquered Egypt in Dynasty 25. Another spectacular discovery which illuminated one of the less well-documented periods Dynasty 21 and 22 in this case - was the excavation of the royal tombs at Tanis by Pierre Montet (1887-1966) just before the Second World War. The treasure found there almost equalled that of Tutankhamun, but in this instance it came from the burials of several kings and princes. These are merely a selection of highlights from a succession of discoveries made in the 20th century. The royal workmen's village at Deir el-Medina, the human and animal cemeteries at Tuna el-Gebel, the funerary barque buried alongside the Great Pyramid, Emery's spectacular finds at Sakkara, and many other excavations have all contributed to a vastly expanded knowledge of Egyptian civilization. However, Egypt's unique heritage also offers the possibility of reading the thoughts and ideas of men and women who lived thousands of years ago, and the archaeological discoveries have been matched by advances in language studies and literary interpretation provided by many scholars. Amongst these should be mentioned the pioneering work of Francis Llewellyn Griffith whose publication of Demotic papyri and work on Meroitic writing was significant, and the contributions made to our understanding of the grammar of Hieroglyphs by Adolf Erman, Kurt Sethe and Alan Gardiner. Erman and Sethe were responsible for the overall compilation of material for the Worterbuch, the historical dictionary of the ancient Egyptian language based on all the inscriptions available at the time of its publication. Advances in understanding the language and literature have relied to a considerable extent on the copying and validating of inscriptions found on monuments. The recording and publishing of standing buildings has proceeded apace since around 1900, when production techniques became adequate. Although this work is less exciting than excavation, it is complementary and also essential, since so much of the detail on the monuments continues to be lost. In Nubia, because of the raising of the first Aswan Dam and the construction of the High Dam in the 1970s, there has been great urgency to record the monuments which would be entirely submerged as the result of this work. There have been a number of major epigraphic studies, starting with the attempts by Maxence de Rochemonteix (1849-91) and Johannes Dümichen (1833-94) to produce a complete record of Egypt's monuments. Under the editorship of Francis Llewellyn Griffith, the Egypt Exploration Fund long ago began an Archaeological Survey of Egypt, for which the artists Norman and Nina de Garis Davies produced many copies of tomb scenes, which were unequalled in excellence for many years. This survey produced more than twenty-five volumes on tombs at sites including Beni Hasan, el-Bersha, Deir el-Gebrawi, Amarna and Meir. In 1924, Chicago House was established in Luxor as the field-station of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. The Institute had been created by James H. Breasted, with the financial support of John D. Rockefeller. A major epigraphic survey of the temples of Medinet Habu (from 1930 to 1970) was launched by Chicago, and experiments were undertaken to produce an exact system to copy a large area of wall-surface at the temple, preserving as accurately as possible the detail of the scenes and texts. Rockefeller also funded another survey, that of the Temple of Sethos I at Abydos, where Amice Calverley recorded and published the magnificent wall scenes. These projects have set demanding standards in epigraphic work. By 1960, the governments of Egypt and the Sudan had decided to embark on a major engineering project. This entailed building a new dam at Aswan behind which a vast lake would be created. Despite the benefits this would give the modern populations of these countries, the increased area of land which would now become submerged included some three hundred miles containing major archaeological sites, particularly the famous temples at Philae and Abu Simbel. Through UNESCO, an appeal was made to the world to save the Nubian monuments, and money and expertise came from many sources so that, with international goodwill and co-operation, it was possible to relocate some of the most important monuments to safe sites in Egypt. In other cases, temples were donated to other countries where they now form spectacular features in museum settings.
Egypt became increasingly popular with European travellers in the 19th and 20th centuries. There journey often included a stay in Cario to visit nearby monuments. Here, a visitor poses in front of the Great Pyramid at Giza, emphasizing the magnitude of the stone blocks. Today, there is a constant battle to save the antiquities from deterioration; many nations are involved in excavating a variety of sites in Egypt, but there is also emphasis on the continuing need to conserve the monuments and antiquities, in the field and in museums, and to protect them from pollution and destruction. As well as high-profile projects such as saving the Nubian temples, restoring the tomb of Nefertari in the Valley of the Queens, and attempting to arrest the Great Sphinx's deterioration, there is also the low-key but essential continuous monitoring of buildings and wall scenes along the Nile and of objects in museum galleries and reserve collections. Egyptology is a young subject (it is usually defined as dating from Napoleon's expedition), and much undoubtedly remains to be discovered which will redefine some of our currently held opinions. Hopefully, new information will also be forthcoming about the least well-documented periods of the country's history. However, despite the search for new material, constant vigilance is also required to protect and preserve the monuments and artifacts we already possess. |
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