Tutankhamun Centenary 2022
Lord Carnarvon’s Famous Car Accident at Langenschwalbach, Germany
When it happened and its implications
Or How Will Cross Came, Saw And Conquered!
Motor Carnarvon
“Even today the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb offers potential for the creation of legends.
For years one legend has been trotted out, that of the car accident at the notorious “Heimbach bump (in the road)” near Langenschwalbach (1) as the starting point for the discovery of the tomb.
The claim has been passed down that it was not until after this accident that Lord Carnarvon was advised by his doctors to regularly visit Egypt on health grounds. There is hardly a publication on Tutankhamun that does not draw a connection between these events.
Generations of Egyptologists (2) have relied on various (pieces of) evidence which led to the assumption that the accident actually took place in 1901. (3)
(This was) a mistake as the British historian William Cross recognised years ago based on British press reports. (4)
These reports name 1909 as a much later time for the accident. Certainly, it is true that the spelling, by some sources, of the place where the accident took place as “Fehwel(l)bach “ and (the fact that) at least one report misplaces (the accident) in the vicinity of Stuttgart (5) has led people to mistakenly want to think of a second accident rather than the date being wrong for over a hundred years.
At the same time there have always been inconsistencies for thinking of the year 1901 which could have led to doubts. Thus there was no evidence of the Countess Lady Almina ( Carnarvon's wife) spending time at the spa in Langenschwalbach at the time which has previously been so long put forward, (i.e) late summer/early autumn of the year 1901, which would have been expected in the usual spa lists.
No German newspaper reported the accident and besides Lady Almina gave birth to her daughter Evelyn in England on the 15th of August, 1901. Evelyn’s baptism followed in the presence of her parents on the 21st of September 1901 in Burghclere church.
Although the window of opportunity for a possible stay of Lady Carnarvon’s in Langenschwalbach thus becomes rather small, the year 1901 was and continues to stubbornly be regarded as the year when the Earl who wanted to meet her there, had his car accident. (6)
On the basis of the dates compiled by William Cross, the author has now examined the relevant local newspaper archive for an accident report in August/September 1909. And, yes indeed, in the Monday edition of the Wiesbaden General-Anzeiger from 30.08.1909, page 4, under the heading “The district of Nassau, Kemel” we find the very same report that is missing from the year 1901 and which is reproduced here in full:
“A bad automobile accident took place on Thursday evening close to our town. An English lord who had driven in his motor car from Reims encountered two carts on the road about seven o’clock in the evening. An incline in the road made it difficult to see and thus the lord, who was himself driving, could not bring his car to a stop quickly enough. He steered the car towards the ditch running alongside the road. The car turned over and the chauffeur flew in a five to six metre arc into the wood but was not injured. The lord, however, suffered severe injuries to his head and, apparently, to his chest. It was fortunate that workmen were standing near the place where the accident occurred and immediately ran to help and fetched medical aid. The injured party was taken to Kemel where, during the night, a doctor from Langenschwalbach and a professor from Wiesbaden arrived. The condition of the injured party is said to be somewhat better. Towards evening his wife brought him to a hospital"
The discovery of the accident report in the Wiesbaden General-Anzeiger refutes the thesis that the car accident was the motive behind Lord Carnarvon’s stays in Egypt and, that he, whilst searching for a meaningful activity, had discovered archaeology. In fact it was quite different: when the accident happened in 1909 the Carnarvon/Carter co-operation had already been in existence for two years and the Earl had already visited Egypt frequently. (9) With the now verified date of the accident, the 26th August 1909, the mention of Lady Almina as “Countess of Carnarvon m. Bed., England” in the Spa list for “Bad Langen-Schwalbach” of the 15th August 1909 fits perfectly. There her stay is referred to as being at the Hotel Alleesaal. So we can be certain of one part of the original story: Lord Carnarvon was, in fact, on the way to his wife, who was at the spa in Langenschwalbach, when he was involved in the bad accident on the Bäderstraße (Bäder road). But, of course, as could be shown here —thanks to the intensive spade work of William Cross — eight years later than presumed.
FOOTNOTES:
1. The spelling of Langenschwalbach the spa in the west Taunus not far from Wiesbaden varies: Bad Langenschwalbach, Bad Langen-Schwalbach and Langenschwalbach refer to one and the same place: the predecessor of the chief town of the Rhine-Taunus- area in Hesse known as Bad Schwalbach which once belonged to Nassau..
2. C. Vogel, “You either find grand things, or nothing at all.” The Man behind Howard Carter: Life and Work of the Fifth Earl of Carnarvon, in Antike Welt 31/1, 2000, 95-98.
3. A considerable part in the dating of the car accident for 1901 probably belongs to a sister of Lord Carnarvon, Lady Winifred Burghclere. In L. Burghclere, Introduction: Biographical Sketch of the late Lord Carnarvon, in H. Carter & A. Mace, The Tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen: Discovered by the Late Earl of Carnarvon and Howard Carter, Cambridge, 1923, 1-40 she names the accident (without giving a date) as the trigger for Carnarvon‘s travels to Egypt from 1903 onwards. There is no space here to go into the errors and confusions of her original placing of the accident in the year 1901, that will take place elsewhere.
4. William Cross, "Carnarvon, Carter and Tutankhamun Revisited": The hidden truths and doomed relationships, Newport, Gwent, 2016/2019, pages111-113.
5. We find “Fehwellbach” for example as the site of the accident in The Sportsman, August 28th, 1909.
6. Even today the successors of the Fifth Earl of Carnarvon have touted 1901 as being the time of the accident. So, for example, the present Countess of Carnarvon gives the date as late September, 1901: The Countess of Carnarvon, Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey, London/New York 2011, 90ff.
7. Even if the report of the Wiesbaden General-Anzeiger does not name the Lord meeting with an accident, his identification with Lord Carnarvon — taken in conjunction with the contemporary reports in the British newspapers—is indisputable.
8. Wiesbaden General-Anzeiger, 30th August, 1909, P4 under “The Nassau Area”, Kemel section, 30th August.
9. William Cross was able to prove that Lord Carnarvon had already visited Egypt for the first time in 1889. W. Cross op.cit., 22.The Earl had already visited Egypt several times before September 1901 with Lady Almina whom he had married in 1895. Thus we have to maintain that the moment in August/September 1901, as the trigger for Carnarvon’s stays in Egypt, does not lend itself to building a legend, even without the efforts made here to depict the events of the accident.
SOURCE : GÖTTINGEN MISCELLANY ( slightly amended)
Dr Carola Vogel
Contributions to the discussion of Egyptology
Number 266 (2022) Pages 39-40
With special thanks to Alan Roderick for the translation of the article from German into English.
A number of publications issued for the Centenary have cited the year 1909.
If the motor accident in Germany was not the spark that led to Lord Carnarvon taking up digging in Egypt, What Was?
TO BE CONTINUED
If the motor accident in Germany was not the spark that led to Lord Carnarvon taking up digging in Egypt, What Was?
TO BE CONTINUED
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