Issue No. 596
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25 - 31 July 2002 Issue No. 596 Travel |
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Music to mummies
Victor Loret was a naturalist, a musician, and a remarkable Egyptologist whose lively interest in Egyptian popular music led to unexpected rewards, writes Jill Kamil
Some travellers just can't help it. Instead of keeping to a schedule, they stray beyond the boundaries of their visit and find the areas other tourists don't reach. Victor Loret was just such a man.
Click to view captionVillage musicians such as these were Loret's friends Little Victor was only three years old when three leaves of Champollion's Grammar fell into his hands. Not many toddlers would have given them a second glance, but young Victor was fascinated. What were these strange signs that looked so different from the books his parents usually read?
Loret, who was born in France in 1859, appears to have inherited a musical talent from his father, an organist. However, his curiosity about Ancient Egypt and its strange pictorial language stayed with him, and as he grew so did his fascination. So it was perhaps pre-destined that, rather than going on to study music, he should study Egyptology under the famous Gaston Maspero at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes and the College de France. In 1881 he went with Maspero to Cairo as an original member of the French Institute of Archaeology.
Loret proved to be a dedicated and prolific scholar who worked tirelessly on transcribing ancient texts. He copied and published the reliefs and texts in many of the Theban tombs. But he also made time to pursue his interest in music.
Not many European scholars of his generation paid much heed to the people in the countryside, but Loret visited several of the villages around Luxor and was charmed to find that, like himself, Egyptians were fond of music. He enjoyed the songs and chants they played to relieve the dullness of their labours, and took note of the variety of their musical instruments: the kamangah, a bow instrument, the nay, a kind of flute, and the riqq, a small tambourine, as well as the darabukkeh, an earthen drum.
Given Loret's interest in botany, zoology and local music, it is not difficult to envision the trusting relationship that sprang up between the Frenchman and the Egyptians. His interest in their lives engendered a mutual trust, the result of which he could not possibly have foreseen.
In 1898, a local source secretly supplied him with information that led to one of the most remarkable discoveries of the 19th century: the tomb of Amenhotep II (Tomb KV 35). This was the first tomb ever opened in which the Pharaoh was found where he had been laid, in his burial chamber. His tomb had been plundered in antiquity and no funerary furniture remained. But the mummy of the Pharaoh was found resting in its sarcophagus, festooned and garlanded with flowers, and with him lay his famous bow, the one of which he boasted no member of his army nor any foreign prince could draw.
It was a remarkable discovery, but that was not all. When Loret entered one of the side chambers of the tomb, he encountered three corpses stripped of their treasures. At first he assumed that they were members of Amenhotep's family. But then he opened the second side chamber, and beheld a further nine bodies. After blowing away the dust on the nearest coffin, he identified the royal cartouche of Ramses IV. Then, one by one, he examined the others and every coffin he looked at bore the cartouches of other famous Pharaohs. There were eight royal mummies in all.
At last the truth dawned. He had been led to a royal cache. The villagers who had become his friends through their common interest in music had guided him to a treasure whose worth they could not know.
Royal tombs were systematically ravished during the 19th dynasty, and when the ancient priests on the necropolis found that Amenhotep II's tomb had been violated they probably reasoned that the robbers would not return to its ravaged corridors. So they placed there the bodies of other kings. Keeping Amenhotep II company were some of Egypt's greatest Pharaohs: Thutmosis IV and his son Amenhotep III "the Magnificent", as well as some of the weaker members of the Ramassid line: Ramses IV, V, and VI. The mummy of Ramses II's son Merenptah was among them, and when the discovery was made known this caused great excitement because, ever since the discovery of the Triumph Stele by Flinders Petrie back in 1896 in which "Israel" was mentioned for the first time, Merenptah was thought to be the "Pharaoh of the Exodus" who came to grief in the Red Sea.
It became known as "the Safety Tomb", and Loret supervised its clearance. The burial chamber was supported by six pillars, and with the sarcophagus of the Pharaoh in the crypt-like section to the rear. Loret must have been struck by the beauty and originality of the wall decorations. The figures on the columns (for the most part depicting Amenhotep and the gods of the underworld) were outlined in black with only the crown, jewellery, belt and the surrounding decorations in colour. The drawing was exquisitely fine. The walls were painted yellow ochre and inscribed with a complete and unspoiled set of mortuary texts, the so-called Book of the Dead. These were so drawn as to give the impression of papyrus texts having been pinned to the walls. There was not too much detail, and the use of the pigment was beneficially restrained.
At the time of the discovery, quite a controversy arose in the then Antiquities Service as to whether the mummy should be left on site or removed with the others to the Egyptian Museum. Loret felt that it would be appropriate to let the king rest in his sarcophagus, as found, under the blue gold-starred roof of his tomb. And so the royal mummy remained in situ. But nearly three years later, in 1901, the tomb was rifled when the backs of the guards were turned. Amenhotep's mummy tumbled out of his sarcophagus, and was found on the floor, in a much poorer condition as a result of the delving and prying hands in search of possible treasures in the folds of cloth. The mummy at once transferred to the museum.
Loret was appointed director-general of the Antiquities Service between 1897 and 1899, during which time he was able to add more tombs to the map of the royal valley at Thebes, a few of which were known by earlier explorers. His hunches on their whereabouts were inevitably right. Was it that he grasped the nature of the valley, and realised that 18th-dynasty Pharaohs tended to choose sites on low-lying land, and thus it was there he successfully excavated? Or did his Egyptian reis (supervisor of diggers) share more secrets with him?
Strangely enough, during Loret's stint as director he was not popular. He managed to antagonise foreigners and Egyptian archaeologists alike. His assistant Emile Brugsch likened him to "20 devils". He was not a man content to be tied to an office -- his interest lay in compiling a truly monumental work, the Dictionnaire Hieroglyphique, which he began in 1884 with the intention of providing definitive one-man work. He went through all the known Ptolemaic texts and had completed two volumes of this opus magnus, but that constituted only a fraction of the scheme and he soon realised he had bitten off more than he could chew.
Victor Loret's interests were wide and his accomplishments many. After he left Egypt he founded a school of Egyptology in Lyons, and was one of the most successful teachers in France. He died in 1946 at the grand age of 97.
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