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And yet he knew of no plans to carve a tomb for the queen.
That was odd.
What would become of Ankhesenpaaten?
Chapter 73
Valley of the Kings
November 4, 1922
CARTER WAS SMOKING a cigarette, already his fifth or sixth that day, and was again in a hopeful mood. He sat astride his brown and white mule as it sauntered into the valley, his feet resting in the stirrups of a fine leather saddle.
The dirt path wound between cliffs that climbed steeply, giving way to pale blue sky.
This was the same route Carter had traveled countless times in the past thirty years, and the day seemed like it would be just another day, fraught with expectation but tempered by despair. Before going home the night before he had ordered his foreman to finish clearing the soil down to the bedrock. Now he smoked and wondered how the work was progressing.
Thirty years-a long time for such unpleasant and unrewarding results. No wonder they laughed behind his back in Luxor.
He noticed the valley was quiet.
That could be a problem, for the valley was never quiet during dig season.
His curiosity aroused, and not in a good way, Carter dismounted and tied the animal in the shade. Reis, the foreman, found Carter almost immediately to tell him the news. “I was greeted by the a
Carter had seen this sort of staircase in many valley tombs, and, he mused, “I almost dared to hope we had found our tomb at last.”
Chapter 74
Valley of the Kings
November 4, 1922
HE ORDERED THE MEN to dig. The single step found by the water boy soon revealed more steps, leading deeper and deeper into the hard bedrock a dozen or so feet beneath the entrance to the tomb of Rameses VI.
Carter had worked the valley long enough to know that this was the sort of stairwell associated with tomb construction. The way the rock had been cut was a giveaway.
The men didn’t need to be told what to do. All other areas of the job site were abandoned.
As one group dug deeper, clearing away the hard-packed soil and limestone that covered the staircase, another worked up top. Their job was to hack away the soil around the opening to reveal the stairwell’s true shape and size.
Carter halted the work at nightfall.
But the frantic pace began again at dawn, with the men back to jabbering.
By the afternoon of November 5, it was clear that they had found some kind of great underground structure. They just needed to dig until an entrance was revealed.
Even with the clang of turias and dust choking the air, Carter’s pessimism had returned. He began to ponder the status of the underground chamber.
Was it empty? Had it ever been used? Was it just a storage chamber, or was it actually a burial tomb?
And if it was a tomb, how was it possible that it might have somehow eluded plunder?
The staircase was now a partially covered passageway, measuring ten feet high and six feet wide. Eight steps had been unearthed.
Then nine.
Ten.
Eleven steps.
At step twelve they found the uppermost portion of a door. In his journal, Carter described it as “blocked, plastered, and sealed.”
Sealed. That was a positive sign. Carter began to believe it was possible he had found an unopened tomb.
“Anything, literally anything, might lie beyond that passage,” wrote Carter. “It needed all my self-control to keep from breaking down the doorway and investigating then and there.”
But he was through investigating-at least for now. As the sun set on the Valley of the Kings on November 5, Carter ordered that there be no more excavation.
Instead, as much as he wanted to dig deeper, as much as he needed to, he ordered the men to fill in the stairwell.
Chapter 75
Luxor
November 23, 1922
AS THE TRAIN FROM CAIRO pulled into Luxor station, nearly three u
Not a bit of work had been done since the staircase had been filled in on November 5. Sentries guarded the site night and day. As added insurance, boulders had been rolled over the opening.
These safeguards were vital. Rumors about the find had already sent droves of tourists into the valley, leading Carter to note wryly in his journal that “news travels fast in the small town that is Egypt.”
Yet he refused to open the tomb.
“Lord Carnarvon was in England,” he explained. “In fairness to him I had to delay matters until he could come. Accordingly, on the morning of November 6th I sent him the following cable: ‘At last have made wonderful discovery in valley; a magnificent tomb with seals intact; recovered same for your arrival; congratulations.’”
Carnarvon had replied by telegram two days later, saying that he might not be able to come.
Before Carter could take that as a reason to resume digging, a second cable a
“We had thus nearly a fortnight’s grace, and we devoted it to making preparations of various kinds, so that when the time of reopening came, we should be able, with the least possible delay, to handle any situation that might arise,” Carter wrote.
Somewhat ominously that same week, a cobra had slithered into Carter’s home and eaten his pet canary. Otherwise, all went smoothly. A friend named Arthur Callender had been hired, tasked with mundane details Carter might be too busy or too distracted to handle. Lord Carnarvon’s favorite foods and drinks were purchased. Electrical wire and lamps were procured in Cairo.
But most of all, Carter spent those two weeks in a state of perpetual self-doubt and second-guessing. It was as if his entire life was tied up in this tomb.
“One thing puzzled me, and that was the smallness of the opening in comparison with the ordinary valley tombs,” he wrote. “Could it be the tomb of a noble buried here by royal consent? Was it a royal cache, a hiding place to which a mummy and its equipment had been removed for safety? Or was it actually the tomb of the king for whom I had spent so many years in search?”
As the days slowly passed and the news rapidly spread around the world, Howard Carter became a public figure.
This terrified him. Not that he minded the fame-after years of failure and struggle, it was nice to have his ego massaged. But if the tomb was empty he would be a laughingstock everywhere, and his reputation for failure would only grow.
Carter tried the best he could to go about his business, spending night after sleepless night waiting for Lord Carnarvon and his family to arrive.
At last they were here!
As the train settled to a stop, the dapper earl, wearing a scarf and wool coat on the cool November day, stepped down from his first-class compartment. His daughter Evelyn, a twenty-year-old beauty, was at his side. She and Carter had enjoyed a clandestine enchantment the season before, despite the nearly thirty-year difference in their ages. The two were “very thick” in the words of one chatty observer, though with Carnarvon spending night and day with Carter in Luxor, it was impossible for him to take the romance with Evelyn very far.
Lady Evelyn Herbert and Howard Carter. Their purported romance was one of the few sources of friction between Carter and Lord Carnarvon.