Sold – From Luxor: Howard Carter Prepares Cairo’s Egyptian Museum to Receive the Magnificent Shrines of Tutankhamun, Where the World Would See Them for the First Time

Carter developed an early interest in Egypt, and when he was 17 years old he set sail for Alexandria to work with the Egyptian Exploration Fund as a tracer (one who copied drawings and inscriptions on paper for later study). His first assignment involved recording and copying scenes from the walls of the tombs of the princes of Middle Egypt. It is said he worked diligently throughout the day, and slept with the bats in the tombs at night. Carter was fortunate enough to come under the direction of W. Flinders Petrie, one of the best field archaeologists of this time, who is noted as the discoverer of the Merneptah Stele (which contains the earliest non-Biblical mention of the nation of Israel). Carter blossomed, and made significant findings at the great Aten Temple of Akhenaten at Amarna. After this, Carter was appointed the first chief inspector of the Egyptian Antiquities Service. But he left that post a few years after, and in 1907 he was introduced to Lord Canarvon, who hired him to supervise his excavations. Thus Carter provided the expertise for their digs and Canarvon the funding, a pattern that would prove important in the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun.

On November 1, 1922, Carter began digging for his final season, and three days later unearthed the staircase to Tutankhamun's tomb. After excavating down to the plaster blocks of the tomb, at 4 PM on November 26, 1922, he broke through the tomb's seals and made his amazing discovery – by far the best preserved and most intact pharaonic tomb ever found. More than that, it was likely the most important archaeological find ever. He wired Carnarvon to come, and on November 26, 1922, with Carnarvon and others in attendance, Carter made the "tiny breach in the top left hand corner" of the doorway, and was able to peer in by the light of a candle and see that many of the gold and ebony treasures were still in place. He made the breach into the tomb with a chisel his grandmother had given him for his 17th birthday. He did not yet know at that point whether it was "a tomb or merely a cache", but he did see a promising sealed doorway between two sentinel statues. When Carnarvon asked "Can you see anything?", Carter replied with the famous words: "Yes, wonderful things." On February 16, 1923, Carter opened the sealed doorway, and found that it did indeed lead to a burial chamber, and he got his first glimpse of the beautiful shrines and sarcophagus of Tutankhamun. All of these discoveries were covered extensively by the world's press.

Reginald Engelbach was a British Egyptologist and author who lived in Cairo and spoke Coptic and Arabic. He is today best known for his discovery of the Unfinished Obelisk at Aswan in 1922 and for being, as Chief Inspector of Antiquities in Egypt, Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon's immediate official superior when they discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun.  In fact, it was he who gave Carter and Carnarvon permission to open that tomb. From 1928 to 1941 he was Keeper of the Cairo Museum; and, as well as holding this central position, issued many publications, including the highly regarded "Ancient Egyptian Masonry". On November 24, 1922 he was present and witnessed the freeing of rubbish from the first doorway. On the 26th, when the tomb was opened Carter's diary includes the entry, "Advised Engelbach."

The contents in the tomb of Tutankhamun were fabulous beyond previous archeaological experience. There were approximately 3,000 separate objects, many of which were pure gold. The antechamber was piled high, in disarray, with gold-covered furniture and dismantled chariots. The annex was full of more gold covered furniture, jars of precious oils and ointments and also food and wine. The burial chamber contained the magnificent gold covered shrines, which themselves contained the coffins of Tutankhamun: the solid gold coffin and the famous Death Mask. The Treasury was guarded by a the statue of the god Anubis and contained jewel chests with priceless jewelry, model boats and the golden shrine which contained the canopic jars that housed the Pharaoh's internal organs. Though some were in very good condition, while others required conservation and repair. It was a gargantuan job to clear, catalog and conserve them, and then to break down, wrap, pack and prepare them for shipment to their permanent home at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The process took Carter almost a decade. During this process artifacts were stored in areas of the tomb, in a nearby tomb, or at conservation labs.

The four large shrines encapsulated and protected the coffin.  Considered among the most important artifacts in the entire discovery, surrounding Tutankhamun's mummy, they were the last of the resplendent pieces of history remaining in the tomb. The reason is that making them fit for travel to the Egyptian Museum was complicated. They had to be dismantled with great care by skilled masons, wrapped, packed in paraffin wax (over half a ton was needed to stabilize the panels), and placed in large, specially made wooden boxes. In November 1930 that process was completed, and the shrines were awaiting shipment. Their arrival at the Egyptian Museum was eagerly anticipated, and preparations for receiving and displaying them were being made. In fact, Engelbach wrote Carter on the November 11 asking for information to enable unusually fine display cases to be put together. "Would you be really kind and do your best to get me out the external measurements of the shrines. Also, if possible, the average thickness of the wood – the latter to enable me to get some idea of their weight. My intention is to get, if I can, cases with whole panes not panels, but this is a specialist's job & we shall have to get experts from outside…I want to put things in motion…I know it's rather a difficult job in the present state of the shrines, but I would so much appreciate the information if it is possible for you to give it…I take it that Mrs. Tut's 'mishap-coffins' are not yet to be put on view."

Carter responded with this Typed Letter Signed, being his own retained heavy carbon paper copy, compete with his handwritten fill-ins, Luxor, December 9, 1930, to Engelbach, giving details for the permanent display of the shrines. The letter is headed "Dimensions Tutankhamen Shrines," and reads: "Even at the present stage of the work it is not possible to obtain the exact dimensions of the four shrines. As you may remember our only means of access to these shrines was by taking them to pieces, therefore the only means we now have of obtaining their dimensions is by computation of the measurements of their divers sections. Most of the smaller sections are still packed and stored (seven years ago) in the lab No. 15, and they cannot be dealt with until we have completed treating, packing and extricating the larger sections in the tomb – this I can say is fast nearing completion. You should also be advised that owing to the fragile condition of the gilding upon these shrines, their divers sections have to be packed with an outer coating of wax still upon them. To remove this outer coating of wax will take many weeks – in all many months – of careful and instructed work after they have arrived at the Museum. Below are the dimensions of the four shrines as far as it is at present possible to compute them…"

Carter then lists the shrines by their catalog numbers and names, and for each giving his estimated minimum and maximum lengths, widths and height. A few figures he fills in by hand, and also notes in holograph that the figures are all in centimeters. The Carter papers and journals are at Oxford University, and they confirm the names and numbering system in this letter, as well as providing a wealth of detail about the shrines. The outer shrine is No. 207, and it is the first shrine that Carter saw. With its walls and double-sloping roof, it bears a striking resemblance to the sed-festival pavilion in which the Pharaoh achieved rejuvenation and rebirth.

However, in Carter's view, the shape was chosen just as much for aesthetics as for ritual requirements. The second shrine is No. 237, and it was made of 16 heavy wooden sections. Most of the surfaces, both inside and out, were covered with a layer of gold leaf, and the roof was covered with thick black resin divided into squares by gilded bands of incised decoration. The exterior surface of each door was adorned with a superbly crafted depiction of the king before Osiris and Re-Horakhty. The right and left side panels of the shrine are decorated with sunk-relief vignettes illustrating the Book of the Dead. The third shrine is No. 238, and it was built using ten separate sections, and like the first shrine, it was gilded over its entire surface and decorated in sunk relief with vignettes and extracts from Egyptian funerary texts. The inner walls of the shrine were decorated with processions of various gods. The fourth shrine is No. 239, the innermost shrine. It is considered to be a reconstruction in miniature of the prehistoric "Palace of the North." The ceiling of this shrine is adorned with magnificent representations of the goddess Nut with outspread wings, flanked by the falcon-headed Horus. The gods Isis and Nephthys guard the doors, while the interior wall panels carry the text of spell 17 from the Book of the Dead. When unpacked, reassembled and displayed, all four shrines turned out to be just a bit smaller than Carter's estimates in this letter, in one case by only five centimeters.

Letters of Carter directly related to the tomb of Tutankhamun are very uncommon.