Five Years' Explorations at Thebes / A Record of Work Done 1907-1911 by The Earl of Carnarvon and Howard Carter

FIVE YEARS’ EXPLORATIONS AT THEBES OXFORD PLATES AND LETTERPRESS PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY HORACE HART



WITH CHAPTERS BY F. LL. GRIFFITH, GEORGE LEGRAIN, GEORGE MÖLLER PERCY E. NEWBERRY AND WILHELM SPIEGELBERG WITH SEVENTY-NINE PLATES AND FRONTISPIECE HENRY FROWDE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE 1912
The following volume contains a record of work done in the Theban Necropolis during the years 1907-11. In the editing of this report I have availed myself of the generous help of several scholars, whose names appear at the heads of the chapters they have contributed. To these gentlemen I wish to tender my sincere thanks for their co-operation.
Mr. Howard Carter has been in charge of all operations; and whatever successes have resulted from our labours are due to his unremitting watchfulness and care in systematically recording, drawing, and photographing everything as it came to light.
To Professor Sir Gaston Maspero, the Director-General of the Service des Antiquités, I wish to proffer my thanks for his most kind and valuable support; as also to Mr. Weigall, who, in the course of his official work, has given me his most willing assistance. To Dr. Budge I should also like to express my indebtedness for several valuable suggestions.
CARNARVON.
Highclere, August 1911 .

THE necropolis of Thebes—the great city which for so many centuries had been the capital of Egypt—lies on the western side of the Nile valley, on the margin of the desert opposite the modern village of Luxor. No ancient site has yielded a greater harvest of antiquities than this famous stretch of rocky land. From time immemorial it has been the profitable hunting-ground of the tomb robber; for more than a century a flourishing trade in its antiquities has been carried on by the natives of the district, and for nearly a hundred years archaeologists have been busy here with spade and pencil. The information that has been gleaned from its temple walls and tombs has enabled scholars to trace, point by point, the history of the city from at least 2500 B.C. to Ptolemaic times. The necropolis itself extends for some five miles along the desert edge, and evidences of the explorer and robber present themselves at every turn. Open or half-filled mummy pits, heaps of rubbish, great mounds of rock débris, with, here and there, fragments of coffins and shreds of linen mummy-wrappings protruding from the sand, show how active have been the tomb despoilers. Notwithstanding all the work that has been done here, very little can, in any sense, pretend to have been carried out in a systematic manner; and as few records of the various excavations have been kept, the work of the present-day explorer must necessarily be a heavy one. Often he will get no further in his excavations than the well-sorted-over dust of former explorers; and if he is fortunate enough to make a ‘find’, it is often only after clearing away a vast amount of rock débris and rubbish to the bed-rock below.