Lies, Damned Lies and the Carnarvons from William Cross, FSA Scot

 

Lies, Damned Lies and the Carnarvons

 

           A BOOK FROM WILLIAM CROSS, FSA SCOT

Among the lies flushed out is the chronology of the near fatal car accident in Germany that was deemed the reason Lord Carnarvon first went to Egypt, discredited here with the real influence given for the Earl taking up digging for Royal tombs.

 

The  funding for digging & many years work in the sand dunes at Luxor from the Countess Almina’s access to Alfred de Rothschild’s money rightly celebrates what Almina brought to the discovery, but why did Rothschild pay up when he was certainly NOT her father (as defiantly – but quite wrongly claimed by Highclere)?

 

The reality of the 20-year relationship between Lord Carnarvon and his devoted physician ‘Dr Johnny’ is revealed – the good doctor knew all about the family secrets. But in old age his  tongue was too loose for comfort that he was shipped off to a lunatic asylum. Other lies surround Lord Carnarvon’s alliance with Howard Carter. Were they an item?    

 

Not least is the mystery surrounding the circumstances of Carnarvon’s death in a hotel room in Cairo after a mosquito bite. Unconscious, dying, with the Great Sword of Damocles hanging over him until his wife Almina, the nurse, arrived with a bag full of morphine.

 

In the shadow of the  centenary of the great find  it demands that any incorrect  elements in the historical record are expunged.   Truth matters!

 

Endorsements:  Dr Nicholas Reeves (British Egyptologist)  : “ I have followed your new dating in my book  ‘The Complete Tutankhamun’, and also your remarks on Carnarvon's health.”

 

Dr Carola Vogel (German Egyptologist):   “Be assured, I will support your  investigations into the date of Lord Carnarvon’s motor car  accident in Germany  and try to convince my colleagues to change their minds!” 

 

Professor Brian Fagan  ( Author or "Lord and Pharaoh: Carnarvon and the Search for Tutankhamun" ( 2015). )  “ I hope that it is a success for you.”

 

COMMENTS FROM READERS : “The book is a real potpourri—not all of it fragrant—of well researched tittle-tattle and gossip, totally gripping…”  MK , Historian / Author, Monmouth
 
 “Mr. Cross has proven to be an author of excellent talent; who possesses a tenacious bent for investigating what has always been accepted as fact, with the intent of upturning those inaccuracies of history, with a passion for rooting out the truth.”  NR, Writer and Historian : California, USA

“An absolutely superb book, very enlightening, beautifully written.  Highly recommended……” J D W, Oldham Businesswoman

“I enjoyed reading the book immensely. I've also watched a few TV  programmes on King Tut and read a few newspaper articles and none of them have contradicted your book. ”  BB, St Albans, Author and Historian.

“I admire your thoroughness in rooting out error &  pleased  that Will Cross' voice in the wilderness is cutting through. PW, Cambridge, Writer & Academic.

ENQUIRIES

CONTACT WILL CROSS  by email williecross@aol.com

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).

Tutankhamun Centenary: Lord Carnarvon’s Famous Car Accident At Langenschwalbach, Germany

 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

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Tutankhamun Centenary 2022 : Lady Almina Carnarvon's Game of Charades

 TUTANKHAMUN CENTENARY 2022

ALMINA COUNTESS OF CARNARVON  PLAYS  OUT  HER OWN  GAME OF CHARADES 

Almina, Countess of Carnarvon

In November-December 1922  whilst Howard Carter and  Lord George  Carnarvon were playing out their  choreographed games around the Old King Tut discovery  and then entering into  Tutankhamun’s tomb,  Almina, Carnarvon’s wife was missing from the centre stage at Luxor.  

Almina was playing out her own game of charades.                     

The woman who forked out  the money  for  the  14 years of digging through the generous  hand-outs  she secured  from  her sugar daddy,  Baron Alfred de Rothschild, was sorting out  how to add to her  bank balance.

The reason for  Almina’s absence  on  the first November 1922 trip by her husband  to Egypt  is crowded with surreptitious art deals and sneaky arrangements, the usual level of  Carnarvon lies that have confused history.  

Year on year, for 20 years, Lady Carnarvon had accompanied his Lordship  to Egypt.  Upon the epic discovery being made, and Howard Carter’s famous telegram, Almina  declined to go out to the scene of the great triumph.  This was because she had other bigger fish, much bigger fish to fry in the hotels  of Paris and in the English countryside, as far away as possible from the eyes and tongues of London spies.

One cute explanation given was that “being so often disappointed [on previous journeys to Luxor ] [Almina] decided  to  stay behind.”  [i] [ in England].

Colonel Ian Onslow Dennistoun and Almina, Countess of Carnarvon

Another reason, the true one,  is clear.  Almina was already  deeply involved  in a relationship with  Lt Colonel Ian Dennistoun, whom she later married a few months after  she   humanely hastened  Lord Carnarvon’s demise in the days she spent nursing him at the Continental Hotel,  Cairo from 26 March- 5 April 1923. 

 Almina  was seeing the Colonel and they were lovers. 

 This fact came out  in the High Court in 1925  during the  17 day sex scandal Dennistoun v  Dennistoun.  

 The Colonel – and his ex wife Dorothy may well   have had a cunning plan to deceive Almina,  but the Countess saw through any ploy.   She wanted the Colonel and  had him in her bed.   Moreover , he  was the fall guy, the  patsy. 

Almina’s plan was also  to money launder the proceeds of  her intended  art  sales through   Ian Dennistoun’s   barren bank  account. Ian was skint, he lived on a tiddly  army pension and hand outs from the  helpless  women he chased.

Baron Alfred de Rothschild

In the winter of  1922/3  the Countess was busy wheeling and dealing over the estate left to her by  Baron Alfred de Rothschild.  Alfred, a shrewd  collector of old Masters, Gainsboroughs,  French porcelain,  rare silver and the finest  jewels treated Almina well, he secured the title for her of Countess of Carnarvon, he funded the Carnarvons’ whims  for decades; but he had to as Almina’s mother Marie Wombwell  was aware and ready to disclose Alfred’s cloudy business  and shameful sex secrets to the world.

[i]  Sunday Times, 10 December, 1922.

READ MORE IN 

" LIES, DAMNED LIES AND THE CARNARVONS"

A NEW BOOK FROM

WILLIAM CROSS, FSA SCOT

Lies, Damned Lies And The Carnarvons

CONTACT WILL CROSS BY E-MAIL

williecross@aol.com

 

The Curse Of Tutankhamun : From William Cross, FSA Scot.

Carnarvon - Tutankhamun and Howard Carter

Howard  Carter’s view of the so called curse of Tutankhamun  was summed up by him  in one  word,  ‘Tommyrot’.  

It was something man made and encouraged by local Egyptians  whose heritage was being removed by foreigners all around them,  coupled with daft stories  fuelled  by journalists fighting for a good headline.  

After  1922 there were  several deaths of folk caught up in the Tutankhamun tale, the curse was introduced and hysteria and human playfulness  set  it to work.

Lord Carnarvon’s death (from throat cancer) was inevitable, it was inconvenient and had to be  staged managed. 

Some of the other demises attributed to the curse were  exaggerated   odd-ball, they  were not well enough explained or  facts were taken liberty with,  but nothing of this was  owing to any curse from the ancients.  Causes of death are often secret or  bizarre and complicated by circumstances of  fate and madness or even  medical incompetence. 

Many of those folk who feature  in the King Tut  story were affected by family secrets,  bad habits, poor health and incautious living. The hot climate of  Egypt  affected many of them  more so than any curse acting to strike them down dead.  

Howard Carter lived and ate, slept and worked constantly  in the tombs in Egypt  for many years,  he was not afraid or needed to be afraid of curses, he was more concerned with avoiding disease and taking sufficient respite and drinking enough whisky to  blot out  a hard day’s graft and  ease his  fragile body frame!

Moreover Carter did not subscribe to the stories ( fostered even by some  academics)  about  so called warning  signs  being present  for  him and Carnarvon  or threats being  given. Carter deemed these  the work of  troublemakers. 

There are no warnings in old writing texts  that Carter considered  wary,  or dangerous,   or fearsome  other than those from and by errant priests to  warn off  grave robbers, thieves and the gullible. There was  certainly no threatening  sign of death will come etc  to those who disturb the tomb. Nothing  like this was found  in or above the tomb  or evidence of intervention by the gods, the crazy things cited were only of acts that were the work of human hands. 

The cobra that consumed Carter’s canary, the lights going out in Cairo as Carnarvon died, a dog  howling and  perishing at the same moment  at Highclere  Castle.  These are  all fictions or have scanty facts dressed up as true.   All a charade,  the work of hacks planting and keeping going a story,  that began with  the Cairo correspondent of Reuters News Agency making world  news with  the so called insect bite affecting Carnarvon  rather  than revealing the true story of  Carnarvon being in extremis with a  terminal illness.  

Ploys by news agencies like Reuters  were to deflect attention away from the real crisis of Carnarvon being doomed, especially with so much money at stake with media deals etc  All this chaos and crisis caused Almina’s daughter Lady Evelyn  Herbert ( acting as the Earl's nurse)  to panic, Carter was at loggerheads with the Carnarvons and turned his back on his patron,  and Almina ( Carnarvon's wife)  rushed to her husband’s bedside to aid his passage into peace and oblivion.

All that said Lord Carnarvon was superstitious by nature  and had a keen perception of all the  ancient myths, however  his vaulting ambition to make money from the tomb overcame his fears. 

Carnarvon, Carter and Tutankhamun's lives were all cursed, they were affected personally and across  their overlapping lives  on more down to earth factors, on account of bad genes, inbreeding and  trauma during their development years. This blighted them and made them the people that they were, three dysfunctional adults.

But all that said no one can take away the glory of  Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon being celebrated this year, 100 years after 1922 for discovering the great tomb of Tutankhamun. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT THE AUTHOR WILLIAM CROSS  

   email  williecross@aol.com

NB William Cross's latest book written for the centenary of 2022  is entitled  "Lies, Damned Lies and the Carnarvons" and challenges many of the landmark events in the story of the discovery of Tutankhamun. 

"Lies, Damned Lies and the Carnarvons"
From William Cross, FSA Scot

New Book: Lies, Damned Lies and the Carnarvons of Highclere Castle

 

Lies, Damned Lies and the Carnarvons

Compiled by William Cross, FSA Scot

Published 1 September 2022

“Some books are lies frae end tae end”  Robert Burns

In this new offering  William Cross, FSA Scot  ( author of several  books on the Carnarvon family of Highclere Castle)  drills down to reveal the tissue of  lies, misrepresentations and bad history  in the timeline and narrative  in  the discovery of the Tomb of  Tutankhamun.

 

Among the lies flushed out  is the chronology of the  near fatal car accident in Germany that was deemed the reason Lord Carnarvon  first went to Egypt, discredited here with  the real influence given  for the Earl taking up digging for Royal tombs.

 

The funding for  many  years  work  in the sand dunes at Luxor from the Countess Almina’s access to  Alfred de  Rothschild’s money  rightly  celebrates what Almina brought to the discovery, but why did Rothschild pay up when he was certainly NOT her father ( as claimed by Highclere)?

 

The reality  of the 20- year  relationship  between Lord Carnarvon and his devoted physician ‘Dr Johnny’ is revealed – in  old age the  doctor’s tongue was too loose for comfort that  he  was shipped off to a lunatic asylum.

 

Other lies surround  Lord Carnarvon’s alliance with Howard Carter .  Were they an item?    

 

Not least is the mystery  surrounding the circumstances of Carnarvon’s  death in a hotel room in  Cairo after a mosquito bite.   Unconscious, dying, with the Great Sword of Damocles hanging over him until his wife Almina,  the nurse,  arrived with a bag full of morphine.

 

As the centenary  of the great find approaches  on 4 November 2022,  it demands  that  any  incorrect  elements  in the  historical record are  expunged.  

 

Truth  matters!

HOW TO GET THE BOOK

 

£10.00 ( INC P&P UK)   DIRECT FROM THE AUTHOR. PLEASE EMAIL     williecross@aol.com

 

He will then send you details of how to pay for the book by Bank Transfer

 

Amazon link :  https://amzn.to/3fJMj93

 

Ebay link : https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/204089212208

 

 

ISBN 10 1905914776  ISBN 13 9781905914777

Published by William P. Cross

Book Midden Publishing

CONTACT WILLIAM CROSS BY EMAIL FOR DETAILS

williecross@aol.com

Endorsements:  Dr Nicholas Reeves (British Egyptologist)  : “ I have followed your new dating in my book  ‘The Complete Tutankhamun’, and also your remarks on Carnarvon's health.”

 

Dr Carola Vogel (German Egyptologist):   “Be assured, I will support your  investigations into the date of Lord Carnarvon’s motor car  accident in Germany  and try to convince my colleagues to change their minds!” 

 

Professor Brian Fagan  ( Author or "Lord and Pharaoh: Carnarvon and the Search for Tutankhamun" ( 2015). )  “I hope that it is a success for you.” 

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT THE AUTHOR WILLIAM CROSS BY EMAIL

williecross@aol.com