Ronald Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Katherine Griffis-Greenberg Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> > > I do not agree with this. Carter made a
> very detailed inventory of the tomb, it took
> him years.
> > > In this, he was on the contrary
> completely different from his predecessing,
> > contemporaneous and even, for some time, succeeding
> > colleagues.
> >
> > If you'll notice my second post in this
> thread, I gave an example where he noted an object, but
> then never actually followed up with recording it
> > properly (i.e., Aprons - 15 of them, to be
> exact).
> > One can list an item, as Carter did, but
> still not record it properly, insofar as to let one
> know what they were (a thorough description is
> what I mean here), what became of them, etc.
> >
> > I think O'Connor's quote puts the matter
> into perspective:
> >
> > Egypt is overflowing with antiquities, and
> the original finders of Tut's tomb may have
> thought some of the less spectacular objects were
> not worth taking to the Cairo museum, O'Connor
> said.
> > More surprising is that the boxes of seals in
> the tomb itself were somehow overlooked, he
> said.
> >
> > Philadelphia Inquirer, 1 September 2007
>
> > There's a good chance the jars of fruit were
> > listed in a Carter inventory, but their full
> > description and/or final disposition was
> never recorded by Carter - for that, it's just as
> likely that Carter did not record properly those
> "items of everyday life" because he placed no value
> upon them.
> >
> > I stand by my comments.

---

> Katherine,
>
>
> I am convinced that this does not discredit
> Carter's inventory-work, which was the very fist
> detailed and scientific founded in its sort.
> Carter was not one of the archaeologists who was
> only after gold, silver, and that sort of thing.
> His work was a revolution in those days.

I don't think I said that Carter was strictly"...only after the gold, silver and that sort of thing." He was a cut above that, to be sure, but he was not as thoroughly scientific as you seem to make him out to be, as many items were not properly recorded as we would consider de rigeur today. Obviously, he was the first to attempt to record as stringently as he did, but where there are omissions in his work, they are sometimes glaringly enormous lapses in judgment, as in the case of the Aprons I mentioned.

But when you, as Carter was, are faced with over 5000 objects in a tomb which was almost intact (two tomb robberies, after all), you have to make decisions as to what is "valuable" enough to be sent onto the Cairo Museum, and what can be discarded or left behind. This is what Carter did - and this is what any excavator is faced with, even today.

As Rick Baudé noted, you can't always put everything in the Cairo Museum, and as long as a tomb is either sealed or portions of the tomb are under lock and key (as was the case of the fruit pots), then leaving it in place when you, as the excavator, feel there was "no value" archaeologically (in the mindset of the time) in the items likely made perfect sense.

At the time, Alfred Lucas was the only person in Egyptology, to my knowledge, who made studies of non-valued objects insofar as technological use was concerned, and some of his work in Ancient Egyptian Materials (1926) relied heavily on certain items found in the Tutankhamun tomb, when he could access them. The later Tomb of Tutankhamun Series, produced by the Griffith Institute during the 1970's focused upon the larger objects and items of interest (musical instruments, boxes, games, bows, etc.), but not items of everyday life, such as food stuffs, etc.

Much of these items were thought lost or discarded by the Carter excavation team, and for that assumption, we must point to Carter's lack of proper recording of items he did not feel were worth mentioning (or often, keeping).

Louis Keimer did botanical studies in Egyptology about the time of the Tutankhamun tomb discovery, but, according to my review of his works, he never was given any opportunity to analyse the botanical items found in the tomb at the time. In fact, the first botanical study of plant items found in Tutankhamun's tomb, and mainly those plants in the hands of the Cairo Museum was not done until 1989, by Renate Germer in this work

Germer, R. 1989. Die Pflanzenmaterialien aus dem Grab des Tutanchamun. Hildesheimer Ägyptologische Beiträge 28. Hildesheim: Gerstenberg Verlag.

These items mainly included: garlands and wreaths on the sarcophagi and around the statues; the bouquets; corn Osiris figures and grains; vegetables; fruits containing oil, vegetable oils; garlic; fruits (i.a. dates, grapes, sycomore figs) and melon seeds; and aromatic products (i.a. juniper berries, coriander).

So, again, I maintain that Carter had to make decisions as to what was "valuable" enough to send onto the Cairo Museum. With as many items has he had, he made a value judgement as to what was necessary for study or what was rendundant (it's very possible, as O'Connor earlier noted, that the jars found in the sealed off sections of the Tutankhamun tomb were thought redundant, since other plant items had been sent on).

Katherine Griffis-Greenberg

Doctoral Candidate
Oriental Institute
Doctoral Programme in Oriental Studies [Egyptology]
Oxford University
Oxford, United Kingdom