reliefs, and enveloped in the sweet, woody smell of resin.
A few feet away, the anatomist Douglas Derry stood upright, smartly dressed in a white jacket and spotted bow tie, and looked steadily into the camera. Alongside him, most of his companions were smiling—in particular Howard Carter, eyes gleaming, had the air of gleeful schoolboy struggling to contain himself. But Derry showed no hint of excitement; instead he looked solemn to the point of sternness. Which perhaps isn’t surprising, seeing as he was about to cut open one of the world’s most famous historical figures.
Maybe he was thinking of the time the royal mummy found in the nearby Amarna cache largely disintegrated at American excavator Theodore Davis’s touch, with the loss of vital information about the identity of that king. Here the stakes were even higher. No one had ever seen an Egyptian pharaoh in his original burial trappings and finery. Probably no one ever would again. One wrong move from Derry and the only chance in history to study an intact royal mummy could be ruined.
The appointed day was November 11, 1925. At 9:45 A.M., the group had filed into this converted laboratory tomb, where Carter had laid out the mummy the day before, its coffins protected by a surgical-looking white sheet. This was a more modest affair than Carter’s previous grand openings of the tomb and burial chamber, which had been full to the brim with royals and other notables and besieged by journalists desperate for a glimpse of the action. On this day, Carter and Derry were joined only by the big-bearded antiquities chief Pierre Lacau, anatomist Saleh Bey Hamdi,* the chemist Alfred Lucas, and a handful of Egyptian officials in fezzes and dark suits. But the glare of world’s media was only a telegram away. And Harry Burton, hidden behind his bulky wooden camera, was capturing each important moment for posterity in black and white.
Once the first photo pose was over, the men gathered around the coffin. Derry removed his jacket and waistcoat—the powerful electric lights had pushed the temperature in the tomb well above 80°F—and hung them carefully over the back of a chair. He took out a blue school exercise book, and filled in the blanks on the front in neat pencil.
NAME: Tut Ankh Amon
CLASS: Royal
SUBJECT: Anatomy
SCHOOL YEAR: 1356 BC–1925 AD
The mummy was enclosed in an outer linen sheet, held in position by bandages passing round the shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles. But Derry saw immediately that he couldn’t simply peel them off. The fabric was so badly decomposed, it crumbled to the touch. At Carter’s suggestion he strengthened the wrappings by coating them in paraffin wax, and waited for it to cool.1 It was time to make the first cut.
Nerves might have got to most people at this point. But it’s unlikely that Derry allowed his hand to shake. During the First World War, he had served in the Royal Army Medical Corps; on the Western Front, in Belgium, he rescued wounded men under heavy shellfire with such gallantry and coolness that he was awarded the Military Cross. And when it came to studying mummies, Derry was a world expert. He had arrived in the anatomy department of Kasr Al Ainy Medical School (now part of University of Cairo) in 1905 under the professorship of Grafton Elliot Smith, a brilliant but eccentric Australian anatomist who was pioneering the study of ancient human remains. As well as finding that the mummy from the Amarna cache was male—despite Davis’s firm belief that it was Queen Tiye—Elliot Smith had carried out a tediously detailed but badly needed survey of all the royal mummies held in the Cairo Museum.2
One of Derry’s first postings was with the Archaeological Survey of Nubia, in a remote area on Egypt’s southern border, working with Elliot Smith and another young anatomist called Frederic Wood Jones. The project was a race against time to salvage as much archaeological information as possible about the ancient
A few feet away, the anatomist Douglas Derry stood upright, smartly dressed in a white jacket and spotted bow tie, and looked steadily into the camera. Alongside him, most of his companions were smiling—in particular Howard Carter, eyes gleaming, had the air of gleeful schoolboy struggling to contain himself. But Derry showed no hint of excitement; instead he looked solemn to the point of sternness. Which perhaps isn’t surprising, seeing as he was about to cut open one of the world’s most famous historical figures.
Maybe he was thinking of the time the royal mummy found in the nearby Amarna cache largely disintegrated at American excavator Theodore Davis’s touch, with the loss of vital information about the identity of that king. Here the stakes were even higher. No one had ever seen an Egyptian pharaoh in his original burial trappings and finery. Probably no one ever would again. One wrong move from Derry and the only chance in history to study an intact royal mummy could be ruined.
The appointed day was November 11, 1925. At 9:45 A.M., the group had filed into this converted laboratory tomb, where Carter had laid out the mummy the day before, its coffins protected by a surgical-looking white sheet. This was a more modest affair than Carter’s previous grand openings of the tomb and burial chamber, which had been full to the brim with royals and other notables and besieged by journalists desperate for a glimpse of the action. On this day, Carter and Derry were joined only by the big-bearded antiquities chief Pierre Lacau, anatomist Saleh Bey Hamdi,* the chemist Alfred Lucas, and a handful of Egyptian officials in fezzes and dark suits. But the glare of world’s media was only a telegram away. And Harry Burton, hidden behind his bulky wooden camera, was capturing each important moment for posterity in black and white.
Once the first photo pose was over, the men gathered around the coffin. Derry removed his jacket and waistcoat—the powerful electric lights had pushed the temperature in the tomb well above 80°F—and hung them carefully over the back of a chair. He took out a blue school exercise book, and filled in the blanks on the front in neat pencil.
NAME: Tut Ankh Amon
CLASS: Royal
SUBJECT: Anatomy
SCHOOL YEAR: 1356 BC–1925 AD
The mummy was enclosed in an outer linen sheet, held in position by bandages passing round the shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles. But Derry saw immediately that he couldn’t simply peel them off. The fabric was so badly decomposed, it crumbled to the touch. At Carter’s suggestion he strengthened the wrappings by coating them in paraffin wax, and waited for it to cool.1 It was time to make the first cut.
Nerves might have got to most people at this point. But it’s unlikely that Derry allowed his hand to shake. During the First World War, he had served in the Royal Army Medical Corps; on the Western Front, in Belgium, he rescued wounded men under heavy shellfire with such gallantry and coolness that he was awarded the Military Cross. And when it came to studying mummies, Derry was a world expert. He had arrived in the anatomy department of Kasr Al Ainy Medical School (now part of University of Cairo) in 1905 under the professorship of Grafton Elliot Smith, a brilliant but eccentric Australian anatomist who was pioneering the study of ancient human remains. As well as finding that the mummy from the Amarna cache was male—despite Davis’s firm belief that it was Queen Tiye—Elliot Smith had carried out a tediously detailed but badly needed survey of all the royal mummies held in the Cairo Museum.2
One of Derry’s first postings was with the Archaeological Survey of Nubia, in a remote area on Egypt’s southern border, working with Elliot Smith and another young anatomist called Frederic Wood Jones. The project was a race against time to salvage as much archaeological information as possible about the ancient
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