Julian Barnett
Egypt, Part 3: Wonderful Things: The Discovery of Tutenkhamun’s Tomb
Summary
Quoting the reputed words of Howard Carter upon his opening of the tomb of Tutankhamen, Julian tells the colourful, fascinating and at times disturbing tale of how this sensational discovery came about. This lecture marks the centenary of that discovery, November 4, 1922. Illustrated using many suitably glorious gold laden photos.
Julian Barnett
Julian Barnett is a teacher, collector, tour guide, and writer with a specialist interest in ultra-orthodoxy within the various faiths. For the last 35 years, he has been investigating and documenting the most extreme sects of the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim worlds. His experiences and travels were serialized in the Jerusalem Report and also broadcast on BBC Radio Four Religion. Outside of his full-time history teaching post at Southbank International School, Portland Place, London, Julian lectures at numerous venues around the UK and beyond. In 2013 Julian was a joint winner of the National Teacher of the Year Award.
Excellent question. There was a lot of Nubian blood in ancient Egypt, but they were of their own gene pool, so we think that they were very, very dark, darker than Mediterranean, but not Black. They’re from a different ethnicity. But even to this day, if you travel down to Aswan, it feels like Africa. If you’re in Cairo, it feels like the Middle East. So the ancient Egyptians were a mixture of Nubian, which was heavily Black genes within them, but also other groups as well.
No, when the tomb was discovered in 1922, Carter and Carnarvon knew the immensity of this discovery was so great, the high drama discovery was so great that they had photographers there. They brought in really fine photographers that took black and white pictures, and then they then added colour to those black and white pictures later on down the line. So they employed the best of the best to get a record of this absolutely extraordinary discovery.
Oh yes, Shelly, loads of digs going on in Egypt right now at the moment. There was in fact quite an interesting discovery made about six weeks ago just outside of Cairo, some stone things. So yeah, digs going on all the time.