Howard Carter: The Path to Tutankhamun Book

Early 20th century adventurers, Howard Carter, and George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert will always be remembered for respectively finding and financing the search over three decades for the lost tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt's Valley of the Kings. These two highly important figures in treasure hunting were hailed as the discoverers of the vast, priceless tomb of the Boy King in 1922. Carter went on (after his patron's famous death) to work for Carnarvon's widow, the Dowager Countess, Almina to secure new digging rights (after the Egyptians withdrew the original concession of the Earl's) and eventually catalogued the Tomb and its contents over two more decades. Carter was the true leader of the pack of two up against Carnarvon, and a man who had many faces, public and private. James' book is the outpourings of heavily detailed "path" taken by Carter throughout his life as an expatriate artist and map maker, and archaeologist and of what shaped these pursuits. It's a long book and and often dry but it's enjoyable and although a close academic study - a path again really- it's sustainable reading and an approach that only James could have trod, as he was one time Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities at London's British Museum, and was blessed in having access to all the right material and people to compile the narrative.

This biography (and footnotes and good bibliography) will always be valuable to those interested in the Tutankhamun tale and as it is the first detailed life story made public on the enigmatic Howard Carter. It draws too very carefully on that man's own writings, his succession of books on the digging and cataloguing, his immensely significant, yet often tersely written diaries (now available online via the web site of The Griffith Institute, Oxford), the accumulated correspondence in the many Archives in Britain and US, especially the Metropolitan Museum in New York as well as at the time this book was first published (1993) those papers still in the hands of the Carter family.

Carter, like his patron George Herbert (5th Earl of Carnarvon) was an odd man, a shy man, a disagreeable man, and a man who was obsessed with Egypt's past. He fell out with people very easily, including the British and Egyptian authorities, the French Museum Heads in Cairo, and often with Lord Carnarvon, with the true reasons for the disputes with the latter being cosmetically treated by James. I would like to have seen more coverage given to this man-man relationship. But the 5th Earl of Carnarvon is irrelevant in the early Chapters on Carter's life and career, and he is marooned back stage in the main in the continuing account of the Tutankhamun timeline but one of the ploys used by James is to cull limitlessly from the comings and goings of his Lordship and Countess Almina, who is only mentioned here and there and with no depth, as well as the Carnarvons' daughter Lady Evelyn Herbert - who is also a key figure but is only skimmed over on their trips to Egypt each winter. James uses extracts from the local newspaper The Egyptian Gazette to do this as original correspondence in the Carnarvon family is hidden or lost. All of the participants huff and puff a lot about the heat., the flies, the lazy working conditions and the slowness of the entire quest. The elements of skulduggery in other books on Tutankhamun, that suggests that Carter and Carnarvon stole objects from the Tomb and papers of ancient antiquity value is inconclusively covered. Much of that tale is unclear even now and lies linger on the part of several commentators. But what is clear is that once the epic discovery was made Carter devoted his life to the task of the aftermath being his life achievement, with hard years of working painstakingly in Egypt and making a few public lectures about the work in between. But on his death is 1939, he was almost forgotten, and he was overlooked for any public recognition, which lesser men and woman have had acknowledged by the government and monarch. That is reprehensible at one level, but it also smacks of Establishment jitters about Carter's real character.

Facts still remain to reveal about Carter and Carnarvon. I have culled from this well meant book by James lately to guide my interpretation - and see what was deemed suitable to be said in 1993 for the public to consume - but does this book tells us frankly what made Carter really tick? The answer is NO. I will try to reflect again on this in a retrospective on him and in particular a reappraisal of George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, to be published at the time of the 90th anniversary of the discovery of Tutankhamun, in 2012. But James' book was a most remarkable and fitting way of celebrating, 70 years after the discovery, and of headlining the acts in the life of the stoic Howard Carter, whom Lord George Carnarvon was fortunate to have come to know.