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Stage-Managed History and the Arab World

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 22nd March 2011

  John Romer's account of the excavation of the tomb of Tutanhamun raises all kinds of questions about the manipulation and stage-management of the written and recorded evidence that historians have used.
  
  His account is consistent with his view that archeology showed that prehistoric- homo sapiens and hominds- were not brutish less evolved beings in line with Darwinian evolution. In the same way this drama in the Valley of the Kings was actually improvised according to the "story line" worked out by the poor Egyptian farmers who had worked out the best way to reap a harvest from the ancient ruins.
  
  Egyptology had become all the rage in Western Europe- not only rich through industrialism but badly afflicted with TB, which dictated that those who could afford it should go to hot dry places for 'cures'. So Lord Caernarvon was only one of many rich people who were prepared to pay for a digging concession, and thus for another year of work and employment for a whole hierarchy of people, from the lowly diggers and professional archaelologists through to all those who then looked after the "court" that came to be entertained with the rich benefactor when a "climax" to the show had to be put on from time to time.
  
  Thus Romer's local workers, who sometimes claimed or were ascribed some kind of "sixth-sense" that detected hidden gold not far away, had actually explored much more beforehand than they let on. Romer's Egyptian tombs had largely been entered and pilfered within these decades by people who "knew their place" and knew that it was much better to just take small things that they could trade into the illegal tourist industry, without attracting "big guns" who would take it all- and leave them with only crumbs and no future.
  
  But Romer's achaeologists like Howard Carter milked this system too. Romer is convinced that Carter had already gone in through a small "robber hole" before the great and dramatic opening before the press and in the presence of his sponsor. And that moreover the world learned of the whole story through Carter's best-selling book that a novelist-friend helped him to write into a popular "Boys Own" adventure.
  
  All this prompts two reflections-
  (a) All of this is very much in line with the smoke and mirrors accounts of just what has been going on in Libya supplied by Colonel Gadaffi's spokesman, and also by London based people connected to the Libyan opposition.
  
  (b) Just how much of recorded witness evidence throughout history (given the fact that writing was largely a skill of and for the ruling classes) has also just given us an appearance of what happened- what people were supposed to see.
  
  Interestingly France- that land of "The Hall of Mirrors"- has often claimed a special ability to see through the Byzantine complexity of societies with thousands of years of life experience .
  
  Cass

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  Posted by Silver Jenny (U12795676) on Tuesday, 22nd March 2011

  Cass, if any event was prime fodder for being stage managed, it must be the excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb. A romantic story of a young Pharoah, tomb still unopened and with breath taking treasures for the world to wonder at, a rich patron, a curse with people dying almost to order, conspiracy theories, officlal squabbling, all a journalist's delight. In that story, how could anyone get back to a point where they could accept that a particular piece of evidence was the truth, even if anyone but Howard Carter and his diggers knew what that was.
  
  

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 22nd March 2011

  SilverJenny
  
  I quite agree..
  
  and I think that Lytton Strachey's "Eminent Victorians" features a number of events when he suggests or infers that History was shaped by "done deals" in small groups- even though protocol required that some kind of show had to be made to indicate that the actual decision was made later and in a more improvised way.. His friend J.M. Keynes also described one key interview in the 1918-19 Armistice Talks- with a bravura performance by the "Welsh Wizard", that featured some clerk coming in with an urgent telegram saying that women and children were starving to death in Germany- which indicates that sometimes the show is really put on to "make history" rather than merely endorse it.. On that occasion the whole point was to make the French ashamed of their resistance to giving food aid to Germany, because, though the Germans were prepared to pay for it, the French were looking at the possible "reparations" pot of gold... Lloyd George even glared at the French representative, who happened to be Jewish, and mimed a grasping avaricious Jew grasping his money-bags.
  
  Further back it was perhaps Royal Courts among other things that encouraged Shakespeare to reflect that "All the world's a stage"... Elizabeth I does seem to have been a pretty good actress. Her "Golden Speech" scene for example.
  
  What interested me more, however, was the implication of the long term management and manipulation of the heritage sites by the local working people- very much protecting their own interests.. Of course the Egyptian tourist industry surely owes a huge amount to the Tutankhamun story: and it was interesting to note that during the recent disturbances in favour of democracy and reform, the villages in the main tourist regions were not so happy at the impact of the "revolution" on what may be their peak "harvest" period of the year.
  
  And there were resonances in what Romer wrote with the story of "King Ramphsinitus and the Thief" that was already "ancient" when Herodotus wrote it down some centuries BC.
  
  Cass

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  Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Tuesday, 22nd March 2011

  
  A.C. Mace (from the Metropolitan Museum of Art) wrote the 2 volume "Tutankhamun's Tomb by Howard Carter and A C Mace" from the notebooks in which Carter wrote diaries of the excavation. In that, the official story is that having looked through the sealed door into the tomb, Carter, Lord Carnarvon and his daughter Evelyn resealed it and left it until the next day. Eventually, after the death of Carter, Mace changed his story and said that Carter and the Carnarvons entered the tomb, and helped themselves to several small objects, and that they also broke through into another room, concealing the hole with some rush baskets.
  Lord Carnarvon was a man of considerable wealth. His hobby had been motor racing until he had such a serious accident that his doctor advised him to take up a less dangerous interest and spend time in a warmer climate. His love of fine arts led him to archaeology and he became Howard Carter's patron. He must have been fairly tolerant as Carter was notoriously difficult.
  Had the tomb been discovered several years earlier, Carnarvon could have expected to acquire half of what was discovered, but by 1922 that practice had ceased.
  I'm not saying that tomb robbing, even when carried out by an Earl is to be condoned, but I can certainly understand why they would do it.

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 22nd March 2011

  raundsgirl
  
  Thanks for that-- re tomb-robbing John Romer makes an interesting point .. Apparently Egyptian law accepted the importance of any tomb that was totally in-tact. According to its law the entire contents of any tomb that had never been robbed would belong to the Egyptian state.. But the contents of any tomb that had been robbed would be divided 50/50. between the State and those who had sponsored the dig.. So there was every incentive to lift a few items and seal up the tomb again. It looks like a "win win" situation.
  
  Romer does mention Carter's meticulous dig-journal.. As for the question of of whether Tut had been robbed or not was apparently a very active matter of legal dispute. After Caernaarvon's death and a long court case, all rights to the treasures were conceded to the Cairo Museum..
  
  But this seems to have worked to Carter's advantage..I have no idea what UK death duties and the like would have done to Tut. But it seems to have given Carter a job for the rest of his life focussing on the conservation of the treasure. Romer quotes an obituary "Had Carter been to the right schoolhe would have made a first-class human being." Perhaps then the British Museum might have Tut next door to the Elgin Marbles..
  
  Cass

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  Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Tuesday, 22nd March 2011

  It took him ten years to get the tomb cleared and get the mummy out ,although he was banned from the VoK and the tomb padlocked for a while because he offended somebody official (he was good at that). The fragile items had to be treated with paraffin wax to stabilise them, and as things were carried out on stretchers and wrapped in bandages, it was said that it looked like a WW1 casualty clearing station.
  The 'Pharaoh's curse' myth came about because the whole thing took so long. In spite of intense public interest, there was actually very little to see during that long time, so some enterprising newshound invented the story. Howard Carter, who you would expect to be the first to be struck down if it were true actually lived for quite a long time afterwards. Lord Carnarvon (whose health was a bit fragile) was bitten on the cheek by a mosquito. He made the wound worse whilst shaving next day, and it became infected, that was the cause of his death.

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  Posted by OUNUPA (U2078829) on Wednesday, 23rd March 2011

  Cass, very interesting, but the idea of Lenin's embalment was inspired by the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922. Lenin's funeral was compared in Izvestia to those of 'the founders of the great states in ancient times'. So the 'body' of Tutankhamun was chosen by Stalin to prove that 'Leninism lives' and there had to be a body on display which was immune to corruption.

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• Message 8

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  Posted by Silver Jenny (U12795676) on Wednesday, 23rd March 2011

  rg, I have not realised it took so long to get the mummy out.

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