The glory of the Pharaohs

by Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall

But the curator generally has the insatiable appetite of the collector. The authorities of one museum bid vigorously against those of another at the auction which constantly goes on in the shops of the dealers in antiquities. They pay huge prices for original statues, reliefs, or sarcophagi; prices which would procure for them the finest series of casts or facsimiles or would give them valuable additions to their legitimate collection of papyri. And what is it all for? It is certainly not for the benefit of the general public. It is almost solely for the benefit of the student and scholar who cannot, or will not, go to Egypt. Soon it comes to be the curator’s pride to observe that savants are hastening to his museum to make their studies. His civic conceit is tickled by the spectacle of Egyptologists travelling long distances to take notes in his metropolitan museum.

All this is as wrong-headed as it can be. While he is filling his museum he does not seem to understand that he is denuding every necropolis in Egypt. I will give one or two instances of the destruction wrought by western museums. I take them at random from my memory.

In the year 1900 the then Inspector-General of Antiquities in Upper Egypt discovered a tomb at Thebes in which there was a beautiful relief sculptured on one of the walls, representing Queen Tiy. This he photographed, and the tomb was once more buried. In 1908 I chanced upon this monument, and proposed to open it up as a show place for visitors; but alas!—the relief of the queen had disappeared, and only a gaping hole in the wall remained. It appears that robbers had entered the tomb at about the time of the change of inspectors; and, realising that this relief would make a valuable exhibit for some western museum, they had cut out of the wall as much as they could conveniently carry away—namely, the head and upper part of the figure of Tiy. The hieroglyphic inscription which was sculptured near the head was carefully erased, in case it should contain some reference to the name of the tomb from which they were taking the fragment; and over the face some false inscriptions were scribbled in Greek characters, so as to give the stone an unrecognisable appearance. In this condition it was conveyed to a dealer’s shop, and it now forms one of the exhibits in the Royal Museum at Brussels.

In the same museum, and in others also, there are fragments of beautiful sculpture hacked out of the walls of the famous tomb of Khaemhet at Thebes. In the British Museum there are large pieces of wall-paintings broken out of Theban tombs. The famous inscription in the tomb of Anena at Thebes, which was one of the most important texts of the early Eighteenth Dynasty, was smashed to pieces several years ago to be sold in small sections to museums; and a certain scholar was instrumental in purchasing back for us eleven of the fragments, which have now been replaced in the tomb, and with certain fragments in Europe, form the sole remnant of the once imposing stela.

One of the most important scenes out of the famous reliefs of the Expedition to Pount, at Dêr el Bahri, found its way into the hands of the dealers, and was ultimately purchased by the museum in Cairo. The beautiful and important reliefs which decorated the tomb of Horemheb at Sakkâra, hacked out of the walls by robbers, are now exhibited in six different museums; London, Leyden, Vienna, Bologna, Alexandria, and Cairo. Of the two hundred tombs of the nobles now to be seen at Thebes, I cannot, at the moment, recall a single one which had not suffered in this manner at some time previous to the organisation of the present strict supervision which was instituted by Mr. Carter and myself.

The curators of western museums will argue that had they not purchased these fragments they would have fallen into the hands of less desirable owners. This is quite true, and, indeed, it forms the nearest approach to justification that can be discovered. Nevertheless, it has to be remembered that this purchasing of antiquities is the best stimulus to the robber, who is well aware that a market is always to be found for his stolen goods. It may seem difficult to censure the purchaser, for certainly the fragments were “stray” when the bargain was struck, and it is the business of the curator to collect stray antiquities. But why were they stray? Why were they ever cut from the walls of the Egyptian monuments? Assuredly because the robbers knew that museums would purchase them. If there had been no demand there would have been no supply.

To ask the curators to change their policy, and to purchase only those objects which are legitimately on sale, would, of course, be as futile as to ask the nations to disarm. The rivalry between museum and museum would alone prevent a cessation of this indiscriminate traffic. I can see only one way in which a more sane and moral attitude can be introduced, and that is by the development of the habit of visiting Egypt and of working upon archæological subjects in the shadow of the actual monuments. Only the person who is familiar with Egypt can know the cost of supplying the stay-at-home scholar with exhibits for his museums. Only one who has resided in Egypt can understand the fact that Egypt itself is the real place for Egyptian monuments. He alone can appreciate the work of the Egyptian Government in preserving the remains of ancient days.

The resident in Egypt, interested in archæology, comes to look with a kind of horror upon museums, and to feel extraordinary hostility to what may be called the museum spirit. He sees with his own eyes the half-destroyed tombs, which to the museum curator are things far off and not visualised. While the curator is blandly saying to his visitor: “See, I will now show you a beautiful fragment of sculpture from a distant and little-known Theban tomb,” the white resident in Egypt, with black murder in his heart, is saying: “See, I will show you a beautiful tomb of which the best part of one wall is utterly destroyed that a fragment might be hacked out for a distant and little-known European or American museum.”

To a resident in Europe, Egypt seems to be a strange and barbaric land, far, far away beyond the hills and seas; and her monuments are thought to be at the mercy of wild Bedouin Arabs. In the less recent travel books there is not a published drawing of a temple in the Nile Valley but has its complement of Arab figures grouped in picturesque attitudes. Here a fire is being lit at the base of a column, and the black smoke curls upwards to destroy the paintings thereon; here a group of children sport upon the lap of a colossal statue; and here an Arab tethers his camel at the steps of the high altar. It is felt, thus, that the objects exhibited in European museums have been rescued from Egypt and recovered from a distant land. This is not so. They have been snatched from Egypt and lost to the country of their origin.

He who is well acquainted with Egypt knows that hundreds of watchmen, and a small army of inspectors, engineers, draughtsmen, surveyors, and other officials now guard these monuments, that strong iron gates bar the doorways against unauthorised visitors, that hourly patrols pass from monument to monument, and that any damage done is punished by long terms of imprisonment; he knows that the Egyptian Government spends hundreds of thousands of pounds upon safeguarding the ancient remains; he is aware that the organisation of the Department of Antiquities is an extremely important branch of the Ministry of Public Works. He has seen the temples swept and garnished, the tombs lit by electric light and the sanctuaries carefully rebuilt. He has spun out to the Pyramids in the electric tramcar or in a taxi-cab; has strolled in evening dress through the halls of Karnak, after dinner at the hotel; and has rung up the Theban Necropolis on the telephone.