Yet, another European archaeologist takes credit for an African discovery!

BY SIMONE J. SMITH

Hussein was 12 years old, and his job was to bring water to the workmen. People would help him put the water in a jar and then put the jars on a donkey to bring to the workers. When he arrived at the site, he and the workmen would dig holes to hold the jars. One day while digging one of these jars, they found the tomb!

British archaeologist Howard Carter has often been credited with finding Tutankhamun’s tomb, but the names and identities of the Egyptians who did much of the work are largely unknown, and the stories either deny, or ignore the fact that it might have been Hussein who discovered the tomb.

Now, in the exhibition “Tutankhamun: Excavating the Archive, which opens at the University of Oxford’s Bodleian libraries, runs through February 5^th, 2023, and displays photos of the Egyptians who uncovered King Tutankhamun’s tomb in an attempt to recognize them. The photos in the exhibition show the Egyptians doing much of the excavation, as well as an Egyptian doctor participating in the autopsy of Tutankhamun’s mummy.

Daniela Rosenow (a project officer at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford), and one of the curators of the exhibition reported, “We don’t know the names of most of the Egyptians who excavated the tomb. We only know the names of the four foremen that Carter employed, as he names them and thanks them in his publication. They were: Ahmed Gerigar, Gad Hassan, Hussein Abu Awad, and Hussein Ahmed.” 

It seems like there was a lot of push back against Carter. A number of Egyptologists reported that Carter had a colonial mind-set and tended not to treat the Egyptians as equals. “I think he was generally arrogant … not only against Egyptian[s] but also against other nationalities,” Usama Gad, a tenured lecturer of papyrology and comparative literature at Ain Shams University in Cairo. “He abused most of his teams’ efforts and work.”

Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s former minister of antiquities also noted that Carter treated Egyptians poorly. “One of Carter’s biggest mistakes was how he treated Egyptians. He didn’t allow any Egyptian officials to visit the tomb but planned to open the burial chamber and sarcophagus with his team and their wives.”

Hawass noted that this incident increased tensions between Carter and Egypt’s then-minister of antiquities, Morcos Hanna. They eventually dismissed Carter in 1924.

Today, Egyptians lead and conduct major archaeological excavations, and their work and their excavations are admired by foreign teams.