The Millionaire and the Mummies by John M. Adams

Author:John M. Adams
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

“Ceremonial Wig Ornaments” (actually, earrings), painted by E. Harold Jones on the Beduin in 1908. From Davis, The Tomb of Siphtah: The Monkey Tomb and the Gold Tomb.

Five

TAWOSRET’S GOLDEN EARRINGS

Masterpieces of the ancient goldsmith’s art, the identical earrings1 are composed of two narrow tubes that fit inside each other and were passed through pierced earlobes, a hemispherical cap on one end and a convex rosette with eight petals on the other. Suspended from the tubes by two rings is a trapezoidal plaque inscribed with the cartouches of King Seti II of the Nineteenth Dynasty, and hanging from each plaque are seven pendants, four small and three large, possibly depicting pomegranates or poppy heads. The mummies of kings and queens have revealed ear piercings even larger than the pure gold tubes on these earrings, which together weigh 5.5 ounces. They likely were worn by Seti’s wife, Tawosret, who served as regent for King Siptah after her husband’s death; after Siptah’s own mysterious death in 1190 B.C., for two years Tawosret herself was pharaoh of Egypt.

* * *

In May 1907, Davis was interviewed by The Washington Post regarding his plans. “I calculate that it will take two more years to complete my excavations of the tombs of the kings in Thebes,” he predicted. “If the reward in the next two years is as great as in the last, I shall have no complaint.”2 In November, two days before he and Emma left for Egypt, he spoke at the National Geographic Society in Washington; despite the continuing controversy, he titled his lecture “The Discovery of the Tomb of Queen Tiye.”

In Luxor they met with Edward Russell Ayrton, serving one more year beyond his contract heading Davis’s excavations. Ayrton had accepted a job for the following year with the Egypt Exploration Fund, and working on his team during his last season would be a new Davis employee.

Ernest Harold Jones (always known as Harold) paused before stepping onto the gangplank to join Davis and Emma on the Beduin’s deck in late December, seized again by a fit of the racking cough that had bedeviled him since he was diagnosed with tuberculosis five years before. The son of the master of an art academy in Wales, Harold had inherited his father’s talent and attended the Royal College of Art in London. When his doctors prescribed a warmer climate for him in 1903, Percy Newberry had found him a job painting and taking photographs for archaeologist John Garstang in the tombs at Beni Hassan. The Egyptian sun improved his health, and soon Jones was Garstang’s number two man. He also painted watercolors to sell to tourists on the side. He had moved with Garstang to Esna in 1905, supervising a crew of one hundred men unearthing the ancient necropolis.

When Davis had needed another painter to copy in Siptah’s tomb he had hired Jones at Newberry’s recommendation; Jones also drew “Davis’s dog” in one of the animal tombs. He had become part of Davis’s circle, visiting the American at Shepheard’s and on the Beduin.

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