Thoughtfully curated historical journalism
Thousands of Tourists Make the Egyptian Trip Since Howard Carter Discovered the Tomb of King Tut Ankh-Amon. Scene of the Carnarvon Expedition. Riches of the Tombs.
BY GIDEON A. LYON
Photographs by the Author.
It would be interesting,” said a fellow traveler to me at our hotel in Cairo on the evening of our arrival at the Egyptian capital, “to know how many thousands of tourists have been drawn to Egypt since 1922 as a result of the discovery of the tomb of King Tut Ankh-Amon by Howard Carter. It would be even more interesting to know how great a treasure has been brought to this country through tourist expenditures here in consequence of the finding of that tomb and its rich contents.”
That thought recurred to me a few mornings later when I stood in front of the tomb of Tut Ankh-Amon and saw Howard Carter descend the steps leading down to the entrance. The tomb was closed to visitors, for Mr. Carter was engaged in superintending the removal of the remaining treasures. So all I got of King Tut’s last resting place was this glimpse of the back of the man who restored him to fame. Yet it was with a lively sense of the service Mr. Carter has rendered to Egypt that I saw him go down into the depths to carry on the work begun by him eight years ago.
Unquestionably many thousands of people have been attracted to Egypt by the discovery of this tomb. And practically all of them make the journey up to Luxor and across the Nile to the west bank and through the rocky defiles of the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings to the scene of the work of the Carnarvon expedition. They have, with few exceptions, seen nothing of the tomb itself. But they have had the satisfaction of glimpsing the forbidding area chosen by the monarchs of many centuries ago for the reposal of their mummies and the riches of their burial equipment.
Mr. Stephens, Vice President of the “Confederate States” in his recent speech at Savannah, has a great deal to say about the great principle upon which the new revolutionary government is founded—which truth he slates to be this: “ That the negro is not equal to the white man. That slavery—subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral (normal?) condition.” He does not tell us what he means by equality, and rings the changes on the word, very much as we have heard it done nearer home. From what he says, however, we presume he means some physical inequality, as he speaks of this, “great physical and moral truth.” We presume that he does not mean to state that any man may be rightfully compelled under the lash, to work for any other who is physically his superior. And so also of inferiority in moral- character or Intelligence—he would hardly assert these as justifying enslavement. Either of these principles put in practice would lead to strange changes. Mr. Stephens himself is physically inferior to the average of men of his age. He must refer to difference of race. For, in speaking of the scientific aspect of his principle and the slowness of its recognition in the world, he says: “Many governments have been founded upon the principle of certain classes; but the classes thus enslaved were of the same race and (so enslaved) in violation of the laws of nature.”
Indeed! The enslavement of the same race then is “in violation of the laws of nature.” What say Dr. Van Dyke, Dr. Thornwell, and Dr. Raphall to this? What becomes of all their arguments from the Bible in favor of slavery? The slaves held by the Jews were white; and so, according to the Vice President of the “Confederate States,” held as such “in violation of the laws of nature.” Mr. Stephens must be immediately excommunicated from the Southern Church, or the sound doctrine of the D. D.s will be in danger of being corrupted. Perhaps, however, he will hasten to retract so dangerous a statement
The question now before the people of North Carolina and the other border slave States is not Union or Disunion, for every candid man admits that the Union of our fathers is broken up, disrupted, overthrown. The question then is not whether we are for Union or Disunion that has been decided and notwithstanding all the love for a Constitutional Union which has ever characterized our people, it has been decided against and without us. Seven States of the old Union possessing the bulk of the wealth of the Southern States have left the Union and established a Government of their own; but because they have thought proper to do this we do not urge it as a reason why this State should follow them, not by any means; we desire however that the people of North Carolina should calmly and maturely examine the advantages offered them an their property by the two Governments. Examine the Constitution, the laws, the practices and the rulers of the two and the protection offered you and yours under each, and then say under which you will live.
With the seven seceded States gone there can be no doubt but the old Government is thoroughly abolitionized for all time, and that if we consent to live under it we must submit to Black Republican Rule now, and finally the abolition of slavery and negro equality. Every act of Lincoln since he ascended the portico of the Capital at Washington to deliver his inaugural to the present time, his inaugural, his appointments and all, go to prove most conclusively that he means to administer the Government upon the principles enunciated in the Chicago platform and as expounded by Greeley, Beecher, Phillips and others of that radical school. It is clear that if we remain under him and his Republican successors that we must consent to remain as degraded inferiors, and not as equals. We appeal then, these things being so, to the people of the border slave States to ponder this matter, and act as becomes freemen and patriots.
London, July 7.
History is made hand over hand so rapidly in this year of grace and destruction that human energies are overtaxed in keeping up with it. The transition from one century to another has offered ironical contrasts between Christendom organized at The Hague in a diplomatic campaign for the reduction of armaments and for minimizing the evils of war, and Christendom harassed and perplexed by the battle between white races for supremacy in South Africa and by the conflict between civilisation and barbarism in the Far East. There is enough in the rapid march of events during these distracted and momentous crises in current history to sober and appal reflective minds; and one puts aside his newspaper every morning with the conviction that the world has grown too serious, and that too much has happened over night. History has not always gone with so precipitate a rush. Explorers from the great Libyan desert have found cumulative evidence of the slowness and deliberation with which the earliest stages of human progress have been approached and passed. Burrowing deep in the sands, they have sampled the crude arts and deciphered the records of bygone centuries buried in oblivion. So true Is it that, although the changes and evolution of decades or generations may now be compressed within the compass of a single week or month, a thousand years are but as yesterday, or a watch in the night.
It is with a feeling of relief over evidence that the world has not always been in so driving a hurry as it is now that a visitor loiters in the classrooms of University College, where Professor Flinders-Petrie has collected the antiquities excavated at Abydos during his recent season of work. One table is devoted to relics of the early kings in the first Egyptian dynasty, and three tables and a window seat are covered with prehistoric objects antedating 5000 B. C. Seven of the eight kings of the first dynasty are represented in the collection, and two of their predecessors of even earlier antiquity, whose names are not yet known. There are fragments of the royal drinking bowls, bits of slate and alabaster once used on kings’ tables; a piece of a crystal vase once handled by Mena, the founder of the Memphite monarchy; worked flints, stone vases, carnelian beads and arrow heads tipped with red: and examples of the carving and metal working of seven remote reigns. To these fragments from the first dynasty are added stout jars, clay sealings and other pottery from the prehistoric period which preceded the line of the mysterious Mena.
