History's Hidden Witnesses: The Untold Stories in the Room

the pickaxe struck white limestone with a dull clink not the hollow thud of packed river silt on this show we usually pull back the curtain on quiet rooms where history turned much like our last look at the uncredited voices lingering on the sidelines of monumental events but on 11/04/1922 there was no room yet there was only the valley of the kings 98 degrees of dry glare and the smell of boiled mutton sweating out of canvas field tents down in the trench you didn't think about eternity you thought about your ankles choked in cheap linen wraps wading through three thousand years of flint chips and flood debris howard carter stood up on the rim in his

three piece wool suit soaked dark at the armpits collar stiff with salt he held a parasol and checked his pocket watch every twenty minutes seven years he'd had lord carnevin's money pouring into this rocky cul de sac seven years of sifting dirt that other men had already sifted twice carnevin had told him this season was the absolute end then came that clink a boy carrying water jugs dropped an earthen jar the mud darkened the rock it wasn't bedrock it was a chiseled edge a step cut clean and square into the bedrock beneath the ruins of thirteenth century workman huts carter scrambled down the slope his boots sending miniature avalanches of shale into the trench he

didn't say a word he just waved the local crew back with an irritable flick of his leather cane dropped to his knees and began scraping the grid away with his bare hands by dusk the crew had cleared four steps by the next afternoon sixteen and there pressed into the gray lime plaster of a blocked doorway was the jackal seal of the royal necropolis but here is the detail the textbooks always leave out carter didn't smash through that door right away he was terrified of london terrified of carnarvon's lawyers and terrified of the french dominated antiquities department so he ordered the crew to shovel all the dirt back in every single basket they spent forty eight

hours covering their own miracle with camel dung and gravel so no tourist would notice while carter sent a cable to england discovered wonderful find in valley stop have refilled trench stop awaiting your arrival three weeks of waiting in the choking silence three weeks of guarding a pile of stones you knew hid a king when carnarvon finally arrived limping pale smelling of lavender water and train smoke the picks dug it out again november 26 carter chipped a tiny aperture through the upper left corner of the plaster doorway he lit a tallow candle the air that rushed out of that dark hole wasn't stale it was hot smelling faintly of dried thyme and old resin carnarvon leaned over carter's trembling shoulder and whispered can you see anything carter's published book says he answered yes wonderful things but the scribbled field diary says something far more human carter wrote simply yes it is

wonderful and what sat beyond wasn't just the famous gold masks that look out from modern museum postcards the quiet footnote was much more fragile in the shadows behind gilded animal beds sat more than a 100 walking sticks some were wrapped in gold leaf one made of a simple river reed labeled as cut by the king's own hand stacked alongside pots of dried medicinal leaves a frail teenager buried with the mundane tools he needed just to stay upright carter had his cameras his international syndicates and his earl but out on the rim the men who actually lifted the desert away washed the dust from their arms watched the foreigners stare into the dark and carried their

baskets back into the sun