Ancient Treasures: The Discovery of Lost Hoards, Sunken Ships, Buried Vaults, and Other Long-Forgotten Artifacts
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Ancient Treasures: The Discovery of Lost Hoards, Sunken Ships, Buried Vaults, and Other Long-Forgotten Artifacts
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Overview
- The Sevso Treasure, a hoard of large silver vessels from the late Roman Empire—estimated to be worth $200 million—looted in the 1970s and sold on the black market.
- The Amber Room, a chamber decoration of amber panels backed with gold leaf and mirrors, stolen by the Nazis in 1941 and brought to the castle at Königsberg in Russia, from which it disappeared.
- The fabulous wealth of Roman and Viking hoards buried in the ground for safekeeping, only to be unearthed centuries later by humble metal detectorists.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781601632494 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Red Wheel/Weiser |
| Publication date: | 07/22/2013 |
| Edition description: | First Edition |
| Pages: | 240 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Deir el-Bahri Mummy Cache
Between 1875 and 1881 a number of objects belonging to ancient pharaonic tombs, including figures bearing royal names from the 21st Dynasty and a papyrus belonging to Queen Nedjmet (Late 20th Dynasty, c1087–1080 BC), appeared for sale on the antiquities market in Egypt and also made their way into private collections abroad. Concerned about the origin of these artifacts, Gaston Maspero, director of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, decided to investigate. Maspero's inquiries eventually led him to the village of Qurnah on the West Bank of the River Nile opposite the modern city of Luxor. Here Maspero was taken to the Abdou el-Rassul family, who had some years previously discovered a royal tomb in the area and had been systematically looting it ever since. Information from the family led Maspero to the nearby temple and tomb complex of Deir el-Bahri, and the discovery and excavation of the tomb (known romantically as either Tomb DB320 or TT320) with spectacular results. The tomb revealed an incredible cache of more than 40 royal mummies, including those of Tuthmosis I and his son Ramses II. A few years later another cache, this time of 153 mummies of high priests, was found in another tomb at the site, and in March 1898, a further cache of royal mummies was discovered in the neighboring Valley of the Kings. Why had these mummies been removed from their individual tombs and gathered together in one place, and who had put them there?
Deir el-Bahri (Arabic for "the Northern Monastery") is a complex of mortuary temples and tombs located on the west bank of the Nile, opposite the city of Luxor, not too far from the entrance to the Valley of the Kings. The first monument constructed on the site was the mortuary complex of 11th Dynasty pharaoh Mentuhotep II, who ruled from 2008 to 1957 BC. Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh Amenhotep I (who reigned from 1526 to 1506 BC), the first king of Egypt to separate his mortuary temple from his tomb, built a temple at Deir el-Bahri that was later torn down by Queen Hatshepsut (1508–1458 BC), the fifth pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty. Over the ruins of Amenhotep's temple Hatshepsut built her own mortuary temple (partly based on that of Mentuhotep II) named Djeser-Djeseru ("Holy of Holies"), a magnificent colonnaded structure built into a cliff face, which is now the best preserved and most impressive temple at the site. It was in a tomb in a niche hidden in the cliffs behind these temples that the Deir el-Bahri cache of royal mummies was found.
Although Gaston Maspero was not alerted to the presence of the mummy cache until 1881, there is a possibility that two of three brothers from the Abdou el-Rassul family (Ahmed, Hussein, and Mohammed) had discovered the mummies as early as 1860. When questioned by the authorities, the brothers at first refused to admit to the thefts, but later, after the arrest and torture of his brothers, Mohammed el-Rassul, the eldest of the three, admitted the nature of their activities and led Emile Brugsch, Maspero's assistant, to the site of the mummy cache. Ahmed el-Rassul, who had been working as a guide and dealer, also told the story of how he had found the cache in 1871 (1875 in some versions of the tale) while searching for a lost goat among the cliffs around Deir el-Bahri. Ahmed apparently found that his goat had fallen down one of the numerous vertical tomb shafts that peppered the cliffs. Unwilling to lose the animal, Ahmed clambered down the dark shaft after it until he reached a corridor. There he lit a candle and was astounded to discover that he was surrounded by huge wooden coffins piled on top of one another, with various funerary articles such as shabtis (small funerary figurines), canopic jars, and funerary papyri scattered all around. Since this discovery, the Abdou el-Rassul family had been living well by looting artifacts from the tomb and selling them off a few at a time.
This story is strangely reminiscent of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 by Bedouin goat-herders while searching the cliffs along Wadi Qumran near the Dead Sea for a lost goat. It is also just as false. What actually happened was that in 1871 the el-Rassul brothers, who by that time were already involved in looting and selling artifacts, discovered the tomb shaft by accident. Having entered the tomb and realizing its vast wealth, the brothers decided on a method of keeping other tomb-robbers away from their find. Exploiting the Arabic myth of the afrit, an enormous winged fire-creature said to inhabit underground ruins, the brothers told other villagers that there was a terrible odor coming from the newly discovered tomb, proof that there was an afrit living inside it. Indeed, when villagers ventured near the shaft there was no mistaking the rank odor emanating from the tomb. Was this proof of the reality of the afrit? Not exactly. What the brothers had actually done was to kill a donkey and throw its corpse into the tomb, natural decay doing the rest.
When Mohammed el-Rassul led Emile Brugsch and officials from the Egyptian Antiquities Service to the tomb, they found that, although many of the funerary goods were long gone and the gold sarcophagi had been melted down, the royal mummies themselves appeared to be intact. With the threat of further looting by local villagers, a dangerous reality now that the location of the tomb was known, the Antiquities Service decided to act quickly. Within five days of its official discovery Brugsch had organized the excavation of the tomb and, with the help of 300 workers, had the remarkable mummies and more than 6,000 artifacts removed and shipped down the Nile to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Unfortunately, due to time limitations, Brugsch had not taken a single photograph of the mummies or funerary goods in situ, nor had he drawn up a precise plan of the tomb or made a list of the finds.
Primarily because of his inside knowledge of the local antiquities black market, Mohammed el-Rassul was subsequently given a job as foreman for the Egyptian Antiquities Society. This appointment was to pay off in a big way when in 1891 Mohammed led one of the Society's inspectors to another tomb at Deir el-Bahri (called Bab el Gasus), which contained the mummies of 160 high priests of Amun. However, the Society soon discovered that el-Rassul had known about this cache for some time before he revealed the location to the authorities, and he was subsequently fired from his job. A further cache of mummies was discovered in March 1898, this time in the nearby Valley of the Kings, by French archaeologist Victor Loret. Known as KV35, this tomb belonged to Amenhotep II (who reigned from 1427 to 1401 BC) but also contained a number of other corpses scattered around and a few interred in side chambers of the tomb. There were 13 mummies in all, most of them belonging to Egyptian royalty. Some of these were without coffins and had been stripped of their bandages. The mummies in the side chamber all had a large hole in their skulls, and their breasts had been split open, the result of the activities of tomb-robbers in a hurry to remove jewelry and amulets from the bandages.
On November 24, 1901, the night guards in the Valley of the Kings claimed that they were overpowered by more than a dozen attackers who then proceeded to rifle the contents of KV35. Amenhotep II's mummy was cut open and his amulets and jewels stolen, the body removed from the sarcophagus and damaged in the process. The attack was investigated by the chief inspector of Antiquities for Upper Egypt, Howard Carter (of future Tutankhamun fame), who believed that the robbery had been an "inside job" and, after examining footprints at the site, concluded that there had not been more than one or two people in the tomb. Carter's chief suspect in the looting of KV35 was none other than our old friend Mohamed el-Rassul, though the case against him was dropped due to insufficient evidence. Carter subsequently resigned from the Antiquities Service in 1903.
Of all the mummy caches, Tomb DB320 has probably the most remarkable collection of Egyptian royalty. Included in the cache were mummies of Ramses II and III; Amenhotep I; Tuthmosis I, II, and III; Seti I; Ahmose I; and Pinudjem I and II. It is believed that the tomb itself was the family vault of the Theban high priest Pinudjem II, though this is by no means certain. Examination of the corpses from the tomb by British-Australian anatomist and anthropologist Grafton Elliot Smith (the results of which he published in detail in his 1912 Catalogue of the Royal Mummies) provides some fascinating details about the Egyptian rulers. Smith's examination of the body of Tuthmosis II (who ruled 1518–1504 BC and who was married to his half-sister Hatshepsut) revealed that the ruler, like all the Tuthmosids, had a noticeable overbite and was just 5' 6" in height. Smith also noted that Tuthmosis II was virtually bald and that the skin of his face was wrinkled, suggesting that the king was over 30 when he died, though what he died of is a mystery, as no obvious cause of death could be found.
Smith's examination of the body of Seti I, who ruled 12911278 BC and was known for building the incredible 80-feet-high Hypostyle Hall at Karnak, revealed that it was the best preserved of all mummies from Tomb DB320, and that the ruler had died in his 60s, perhaps from complications resulting from a chronic ear infection.
The mummy cache from Tomb KV35 included the mummies of Thutmose IV; Amenhotep III; Ramses IV, V, and VI; and Seti II. There were also two female mummies, one of which is the so-called "Elder Lady," which, after DNA testing as part of the King Tutankhamun Family Project (September 2007 to October 2009), was revealed in 2010 to be that of Queen Tye (c1398–1338 BC). Queen Tye was the Great Royal Wife of the pharaoh Amenhotep III and was also Tutankhamun's grandmother. The other female mummy in the cache was given the title the "Younger Lady," and Grafton Elliot Smith's examinations revealed her to have been 5' 2" in height, and no older than 25 at the time of her death. Smith also noted significant damage to the mummy, which was thought to have been caused by ancient tomb-robbers. However, the large wound in the left side of the mummy's mouth and cheek is now believed to have been inflicted prior to death and to have been a lethal injury, indicating that the lady was in fact murdered. In 2003 British Egyptologist Dr. Joann Fletcher controversially claimed that the Younger Lady was none other than Nefertiti (c1370-c1330 BC) the Great Royal Wife of the pharaoh Akhenaten. However, this theory was rejected by most Egyptologists, including Dr. Zahi Hawass, Egyptologist and former Egyptian Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs, who initially believed that the mummy was that of a man. However, DNA testing of the Younger Lady during the King Tutankhamun Family Project revealed the mummy to be female, probably both the sister and wife of Akhenaten, and also the mother of Tutankhamun. Candidates for the identity of the Younger Lady include Akhenaten's second wife, Kiya; daughters of Amenhotep III, Nebetah or Beketaten; or Meritaten, daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti.
But why had large numbers of royal mummies been found collected together in these caches? Why were they not left in the splendor of their original private tombs? The story really begins with the decline of the New Kingdom after the assassination of Ramses III around 1156 BC. With the rise of new foreign powers, Egypt began losing its grip on its empire in Asia, then came droughts, famine, severe official corruption, and internal strife caused primarily by the increase in power of the priesthood of Amun at Thebes. Indeed the high priests wielded such political power and influence that they became essentially the rulers of Upper Egypt from 1080 to c943 BC. Two of these high priests were Pinedjem I and Pinedjem II. Pinedjem I controlled Middle and Upper Egypt from 1070 to 1032 BC, while at the same time Smendes, the founder of Egypt's 21st Dynasty, ruled over Lower Egypt. Pinedjem I's mummy was one of those found in the royal cache at Deir el-Bahri. Pinedjem II also ruled over the south of Egypt (from 990 to 976 BC), and his mummy along with those of his wives and a daughter were also discovered in Tomb DB320 at Deir el-Bahri.
During this chaotic time in Egypt's history the looting of royal tombs had increased to epidemic proportions. In an attempt to rescue the royal mummies from the sacrilege of tomb looting, it was the powerful high priests of Amun who organized the removal of the mummies from their original tombs in the Valley of the Kings to a more secure location in the cliffs around Deir el-Bahri. Before removing the mummies, both Pinudjem I and Pinudjem II identified and relabeled them, and also replaced some of the coffins that had grown weak with age. Text written in ink on some of the mummies and labels on a number of coffins show that the mummies were moved around more than once, traveling from tomb to tomb before arriving at their final resting places of tombs DB320 and KV35, and at Bab el Gasus. For example, text on the coffins of Ramses I, Seti I, and Ramses II shows that during the reign of Pinedjem I these coffins had been hidden in the tomb of the late-17th-Dynasty Queen Ahmose-Inhapi, daughter of the pharaoh Senakhtenre-Tao I (who reigned from around 1560 BC). Queen Ahmose-Inhapi's mummy was found near the entrance of one of the corridors in Tomb DB320, with a linen label inscribed "The King's daughter and king's wife, Inhapi, may she live!" With the numerous reburials in various tombs, many of the rich grave goods that had originally accompanied the Egyptian royal dead disappeared. Although Gaston Maspero believed that New Kingdom tomb-robbers were probably responsible for looting these artifacts, modern Egyptologists are of the opinion that it was the Theban high priests themselves who appropriated most of the valuable funerary equipment, either for their own personal use or, more likely, to help bolster an increasingly unstable economy. Whatever happened to these valuable grave goods, it is clear that if the high priests of Amun had not responded to the threat of tomb-robbing in the way they did, our knowledge of pharaonic Egypt would be much the poorer.
CHAPTER 2The Discovery of Tutankhamun's Treasure
The incredible discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings in 1922 captured the attention of the world and sparked an interest in ancient Egypt that still flourishes today. Not only did the 18-year-old Egyptian king become a household name, but the excavator of the tomb, Howard Carter, and his wealthy benefactor, Lord Carnarvon, achieved worldwide recognition for their discovery of Tutankhamun's rich treasures. The king's mummy and the astonishing finds from his tomb have provided us with vital information about how Egyptian pharaohs lived and died, as well as about religious beliefs in ancient Egypt. Carter's diaries, notes, and photographs, preserved at the Griffith Institute in Oxford, provide a fascinating and detailed insight into the 1922 excavations in the ancient Necropolis known as the Valley of the Kings, on the west bank of the Nile, opposite modern Luxor. Yet despite these records and the very public nature of the discovery, most of Carter's finds were never fully published, leaving unanswered questions about the tomb and its discovery. For example, how had Tutankhamun's tomb survived unplundered for more than 3,000 years when practically every other royal burial discovered from ancient times had been looted in some way? And what is the truth behind the so-called Curse of the Pharaohs, and why did it gain such currency?
Tutankhamun was born in 1341 BC, the son of 18th Dynasty pharaoh Akhenaten, and ascended the throne probably in 1332/3 BC at the age of 8 or 9 upon the death of his father. Tutankhamun ("Living Image of Amun") ruled from his capital at Memphis, to the south of modern Cairo, and married his half-sister, Ankhesenpaaten. They had two children but both were stillborn. As such a young king it is probable that Tutankhamun's rule depended heavily on the advice from powerful officials like the vizier Ay and the general Horemheb, both of whom were to become pharaohs after Tutankhamun's death. As pharaoh, Tutankhamun's father, Akhenaten, had broken with religious tradition, sanctioning the worship of only one god, Aten, and rejecting all other gods. Akhenaten, known as the Heretic King, had also moved the Egyptian capital from the traditional Thebes (where modern Luxor now stands) to a new city in mid-Egypt named after himself and today known as el-Amarna. During his reign of about nine years Tutankhamun restored Egypt's traditional gods and their temples, including Amun, and brought the worship of Aten to an end. He also re-established Thebes as the religious capital of Egypt. When he was around 17 or 18 years old Tutankhamun died unexpectedly, probably as a result of malaria and an infected broken leg after a fall from his chariot. A recent theory regarding the king's death suggested by Hutan Ashrafian, a surgeon at Imperial College London, is that he suffered from a form of temporal lobe epilepsy and that his broken leg was caused by a seizure, which led to the fall.
(Continues…)
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Copyright © 2013 Brian Haughton.
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Table of Contents
Introduction 11
Chapter 1 The Deir el-Bahri Mummy Cache 17
Chapter 2 The Discovery of Tutankhamun's Treasure 25
Chapter 3 The Gold of Troy: Priam's Treasure 37
Chapter 4 The Lydian Hoard (The Karun Treasure) 49
Chapter 5 The Treasure of Benghazi: Heist of the Century? 59
Chapter 6 The Morgantina Treasure and the Looting of Italy 69
Chapter 7 The Sevso Treasure 79
Chapter 8 Roman Treasures From England: The Hoxne Hoard and the Mildenhall Treasure 97
Chapter 9 The Treasures of Pompeii 115
Chapter 10 Lost Treasures of Afghanistan 123
Chapter 11 The Staffordshire Hoard 131
Chapter 12 Viking Hoards 141
Chapter 13 The Quedlinburg Hoard 153
Chapter 14 The Search for the Ancient Chinese Treasure Ships 161
Chapter 15 The Spanish Treasure Fleet 173
Chapter 16 The Amber Room 183
Chapter 17 Fake Ancient Treasures 197
Notes 215
Bibliography 217
Index 231
About the Author 237