Tutankhamun Centenary 2022 : What Was It That Led to Lord Carnarvon Taking Up Digging in Egypt?

 

Lord Carnarvon

The Catalyst That Led To Lord Carnarvon 

First Digging for Tombs in Egypt

With the motor car accident in Germany re-dated  1909, that event could not have been the trigger that led to Lord Carnarvon taking up exploring in tombs in Egypt. By 1909 Carnarvon and Howard Carter were already digging at Thebes.

The truth of what started the Earl's interest in Egyptology  can be found after a holiday taken by him to the USA in 1903.

Extract below from the book  "Lies, Damned Lies and the Carnarvons" (2022) by William Cross, FSA Scot.

Jeremiah Lynch of San Francisco 

 The Man who Inspired Lord Carnarvon 

During a trip to the USA  in 1903  Lord Carnarvon and his wife  Almina were invited to a dinner  hosted by a maverick Irish-American ex-senator named Jeremiah ‘Jere’ Lynch[i] at his Bohemian Club in San Francisco where a gathering of local people joined the Earl’s party.[ii]

Lynch enjoyed a busy life as a former senator and gold prospector in the rush to the Klondike of 1898. He also travelled in Egypt, lived for a long spell in Cairo and had written a book, “Egyptian Sketches” [iii], all about these experiences. 

Egyptian Sketches by Jeremiah Lynch

Lynch  even owned a female mummy, a figure wrapped in a shroud that stood at the foot of the Club’s inner staircase.

Lord Carnarvon was excited listening to Lynch’s convoluted tales about Ancient Egypt.

Lynch was a long-standing lover of Egypt and its tombs. This ancient world much  intrigued Carnarvon. The  tantalising tales of Egyptian tombs and mummies in the rocks at Deir-el-Bahari were especially attractive to hear when Lynch proclaimed that comparatively few notable Egyptian mummies of the wealthier kind had ever been recovered. 

It was Jeremiah Lynch who stirred dramatically Lord Carnarvon’s interest towards focusing on Egypt as a haven for antiquities; a quest-cum-passion that would lead to triumph but also to his demise before he could reap any benefit from the many years of high expense, (met by Almina[iv]) and of sweat, toil and falls-outs with Howard Carter.

Interestingly, Lynch went on to remove additional mummies from Egypt following the loss of his Bohemian Grove mummy in a fire,[v] and enlisted Carnarvon’s help in getting permission to do so from Lord Kitchener.[vi]

Always a close friend of Almina and Lord Carnarvon, Lynch died in 1917; he has since been forgotten and is still overlooked in the Carnarvon-Tutankhamun tale. Professor Brian Fagan renewed Lynch’s candidacy for mention in the Tutankhamun Timeline in his book “Lord and Pharaoh: Carnarvon and the Search for Tutankhamun.” [vii]

Fagan is clear that this meeting " triggered a much more serious interest in Egyptology for Carnarvon".

Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson goes a little further in his “A World Beneath the Sands:Adventurers and Archaeologists in the Golden Age of Egyptology” (2020):

 “In January 1903, in San Francisco’s Bohemian Club, Carnarvon met a former US senator by the name of Jeremiah Lynch ..…Inspired by Lynch’s account, Carnarvon decided to make Egypt his winter home…”

EXTRACTED FROM 

" LIES, DAMNED LIES AND THE CARNARVONS" BY WILLIAM CROSS

[i] Jeremiah Lynch (1849-1917) of Irish-American parentage. Traveller and adventurer in Egypt (1889). San Francisco stockbroker (Callaghan and Lynch) and later New York business man. Author of Egyptian Sketches (1890) and The Lady Isis in Bohemia (1914). In 1907 (only four years after meeting Lynch) Lord Carnarvon sponsored the excavation of the tombs in Deir el-Bahari (Thebes).

[ii] The San Francisco Call of 31 March 1903 lists the attendees as Miss Charlotte Russell, Miss Alice Hager, Miss Ethel Hager, Miss Linda Cadwalader, Miss King, Miss Helen Wagner, James D Phelan, Enrique Grau, Clement Tobin, Donald de V Graham, Dr Johnston and Richard McCreary

[iii] Lynch, Jeremiah  Egyptian Sketches  London:  Edward Arnold (1890).

[iv] Almina’s access to the millionaire Baron Alfred de Rothschild’s wealth base through her mother’s association with Alfred funded the years of digging in Egypt.

[v] Great San Francisco Earthquake and subsequent fires took place on 18 April 1906.

[vi] Lord Kitchener (1850-1916) was Consul General in Egypt, 1911-1914.

[vii]  Brian Fagan. “Lord and Pharaoh: Carnarvon and the Search for Tutankhamun”. Left Coast Press INC International Concepts. (2015).