Howard Carter and The EES
The information below is available in the form of two downloadable 'fact-sheets': Carter and The EES and Carter's Paintings.
Howard Carter is best known for the discovery in 1922 of the tomb of the boy-king Tutankhamun and all the ‘wonderful things’ it contained. By that time, however, he had already been working on ancient material in Egypt for over thirty years, having been given his first opportunity to work in the field by the Egypt Exploration Society (then the Egypt Exploration Fund) during the winter of 1891-2.
Percy Newberry and colleagues at Beni Hasan
At that time the Society was about to embark on the second season of its ambitious ‘Archaeological Survey of Egypt’ which had the aim of recording the architecture and decoration at all Egypt’s standing monuments, so as to preserve a lasting record of the ancient remains which at that time were still decaying at an alarming rate. After a first season during which a huge amount was accomplished but progress was slow, it was agreed that an additional artist should be taken on to help with the accurate recording of the extensive hieroglyphic inscriptions and figurative decoration in a group of Middle Kingdom tombs at the site of Beni Hasan, close to the town of Minya in Middle Egypt.
Howard Carter, though only 16 at the time, was trained as an artist and had developed an interest in ancient Egypt, with the assistant of Percy Newberry (above, with fez), director of the Archaeological Survey. Newberry invited Carter to join the team and the young artist was soon in Egypt making not only simple black and white tracings of the scenes painted on the walls of these ancient tombs (above) but also ‘careful coloured drawings’ in watercolour of the finer details. The Society’s principal aim in this was to record the ancient decoration and to distribute copies of the published drawings to scholars and the interested public throughout the world, for the advancement of knowledge. However, the paintings of Carter and his colleagues were objects of beauty in their own right; the originals were displayed at an exhibition in Manchester in 1893 but have barely seen the light of day since.
Thanks to a falling out during Carter’s first season, two of the team left a little early. It had previously been agreed that one of them, Marcus Blackden, would join Flinders Petrie as his apprentice on a dig at the 18th Dynasty capital city of El-Amarna at the close of the Survey work. However, his departure left Carter as the only remaining candidate for this post, and so the young artist gained his first training in archaeology by accident, but with the great master in what was then still a very young discipline.
Carter learned quickly and after spending a second season with the Survey was seconded by the EES to another of its projects, the excavation of the great temple of Hatshepsut at Deir El-Bahri in Thebes (above), a short distance from the Valley of the Kings. Where previously Carter had worked to a set formula for recording the decoration under the supervision of Newberry, at Deir El-Bahri he was given full charge of the epigraphy which allowed him to introduce different techniques and to make best use of his artist’s eye and superior ability in capturing all the subtleties of ancient Egypt artwork, which at Deir El-Bahri involved three dimensions - the figures and hieroglyphs being carved in fine raised relief before being painted. Here Carter produced some of his most iconic work most obviously in the sensitive rendering of the head and shoulders of Queen Ahmes, Hatshepsut’s mother (see below).
After the completion of his work on the temple decoration, the publication of which remains an indispensable reference work for anyone studying this monument, Carter (shown above supervising the moving of a massive fragment of sculpture) briefly worked for the Antiquities Service as Chief Inspector in Upper Egypt, and thereafter spent most of his time excavating a variety of sites in and around the Luxor area, most notably in the Valley of the Kings, where he would make his most famous discovery. Carter retained his connection with the Society, of which he had become a life member, until his death in 1939. The considerable legacy he has left Egyptology rests not only on Tutankhamun but on many years of lesser-known but equally important achievements in the field prior to 1922. Accurate record-keeping is a fundamentally important part of archaeology and in this, and especially in capturing the artistry of the Egyptian sculptors and painters of thousands of years ago, Carter was unmatched.
Carter's Paintings
Howard Carter
The Cat in the Marshes, 1891-3
Detail from the scene of Khnumhotep II hunting in the marshes (see above), from his tomb at Beni Hasan.
Howard Carter
Sacred Ibis, 1891-3
Detail from the scene of Khnumhotep II hunting (see above). The ibis appears above and to the right of the cat (see above) in the scene.
M. W. Blackden
Birds in Acacia, 1890-91
Detail of a scene of Khnumhotep catching birds in a net from the same wall as the hunting scene above the doorway to a shrine. Note the exquisite details with which the Egyptian artist rendered the various different species of bird.
Howard Carter
Greyhound, 1891-3
Part of a scene of hunting in the desert with nets from the tomb of Amenemhat at Beni Hasan.
Howard Carter
Queen Ahmes, 1896
Detail of a scene showing Queen Ahmes being led by the gods Khnum and Heqet to a chamber where she will give birth to Hatshepsut. This beautiful painting was autographed and dated by Carter; having originally painted the image for the purposes of scientific recording he subsequently sold images like this to tourists.
Rosalind Paget
Exotica from the Land of Punt, 1895-7
Detail from the series of scenes depicting Hatshepsut’s expedition to the land of Punt. Though apparently painted for the purpose of scientific recording this part of the scene was only ever published in the form of a small black and white pencil drawing, giving extra value to this coloured version.
Amelia Edwards
Untitled, 1873-4
Painted during Miss Edwards’ visit to Egypt which inspired her to write her 1,000 Miles Up The Nile and to found the Egypt Exploration Fund as a response to the destruction of sites she witnessed. Presented to the Society by Professor Kenneth Kitchen in 2009 (see here).
The images here are all kept in the Egypt Exploration Society’s Lucy Gura Archive.