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' book written for the centenary of 2022  entitled  "Lies, Damned Lies and the Carnarvons" 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

WHY LORD CARNARVON BEGAN DIGGING FOR TOMBS 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).

150th ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF ALMINA, COUNTESS OF CARNARVON

 

THE MANY FACES OF ALMINA CARNARVON

SUBJECT OF TWO BIOGRAPHIES

Today, 14 April 2026, is the 150^th anniversary of the birth of Almina Wombwell, later 5^th Countess of Carnarvon, chatelaine for almost 30 years of Highclere Castle, famous as the backdrop to film and TV’s Downton Abbey.

There are  two biographies of the extraordinary Almina, my book “ The Life and Secrets of Almina Carnarvon”, and  “Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey”, from Highclere’s stable.

The two works are polls apart in terms of sources used, in content and the years covered. The books stack up for closer scrutiny and integrity. One book was produced under the auspices of a worldwide kingdom of a major publishing house, whilst the other was compiled single-handed over three years, by me,  an experienced historical researcher, antiquarian and a Fellow of the Antiquaries of Scotland.

I was refused access to the Herbert family sources at its stately home at Highclere and the files hidden and forbidden that lie within the Archives of Highclere Castle, Hampshire, England, a place now a veritable shrine, an iconic a structure that television has turned into a glorified biscuit- tin image in adverts and programme breaks.

My book is  culled from devouring everything almost ever written about Almina and her first husband, George Herbert,  the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, the famed discoverer, with Howard Carter of Tutankhamun.

That assault course involved delving into numerous British, European and American Archives, The Royal Archives at Windsor Castle, the Rothschild Archives, London, the National Archives at Kew and the British Library among them- as well as papers and diaries held in private hands.

Testimonies were gathered far and wide from many people who knew Almina, or knew about her. This was an epic process which began long before television, press or public made Highclere a universal phallus. Importantly,  my book draws on the personal testimony about Almina, the 5th Countess of Carnarvon from her late godson, Anthony ( Tony ) Leadbetter ( 1938-2019). Tony actually lived with Almina for almost thirty years of her very long, colourful life.  His Aunt Alice Butler and his mother, Anne Leadbetter, were Almina's housekeepers from 1935 until 1969. If anyone knows what Almina was like it is Tony Leadbetter. There is no one in the Herbert family who has this experience of living under the same roof,  for the same duration with Almina over a number of the decades of life, and now, reliably, lovingly  recalling her voice, her memories and from a time when she was finally free at last to speak out candidly and frankly about her life and about those she knew, and loved and some whom she hated.

A writer and a publisher should always strive for indisputable accuracy and objectivity. The unvarnished truth about Almina, 5th Countess of Carnarvon is much too big to be suppressed, and that's why one of these books about her whole life, not a half life, half told, but all her life, told with a sense for seeking out the truth, will endure, with integrity, as her definitive biography, whilst the other will surely only be a minor accompaniment to a highly overrated television fiction.

The Life Secrets of Almina Carnarvon, Third Edition, is still available on ebay .

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/204794598968

For further details please contact William Cross, by e-mail, williecross@aol.com

William Cross, FSA Scot

14 April 2026, Newport, South Wales

Prince Victor Duleep Singh and The Curse of the Carnarvons : A Talk from William Cross. FSA Scot

                                       Prince Victor Duleep Singh 

                      and The Curse of the Carnarvons

OR

The Countess and The Maharajah

Synopsis of a talk by William Cross, FSA Scot

Almina and Victor at Highclere, 1895

Almina Wombwell,  the 5^th Countess of Carnarvon (1876-1969)  was born in London on 14 April 1876, but her birth was not registered in England until four years later.  Christened Almina Victoria Marie Alexandra Wombwell later Herbert, finally Mrs Dennistoun, she termed herself Almina, Countess of Carnarvon.  Her mother was a pushy  Frenchwoman, her father probably English. Almina’s childhood was spent among the decaying vestiges of  the old French and Spanish  aristocrats living in exile.  Almina grew up in Paris, spoke fluent French and was later a debutante in the London Season of 1893.  She lived and loved for nine decades – married the 5th Earl of Carnarvon in 1895 and then the caddish Lt. Col Ian Onslow Dennistoun in 1923. Lord Carnarvon died in 1923 (in Egypt). Ian died in 1938 (in London). Almina was chatelaine of Highclere Castle (the back drop to TV’s Downton Abbey)  from 1895 until 1923. Every inch a Countess,  Almina spent a King’s ransom and died a horrendous death in Bristol in 1969.

Victor and George Carnarvon at Highclere, 1895

Prince Victor Duleep Singh (1866-1918) was born in London on 10 July 1866. He was the grandson of Maharajah Ranjit Singh of Lahore, the Lion of the Punjab and the founder of the great Sikh empire.   Victor’s father was also  Maharajah of Lahore, although he was brought up as an English gentleman, as was Victor.  The Duleep Singh family history is one that highlights the “horrors” of the British conquest of India. The prized  Koh-i-Noor diamond   was one of the Duleep Singh assets seized by Queen Victoria’s agents.

With his handsome half-Indian, half-European appearance,  his mother Bamba Muller was of German- Abyssinian descent, Victor (nick named ‘Tulip’) stood out as an attractive male figure in Society circles in  Victorian/ Edwardian days, he died in Monte Carlo in 1918.  Educated at Eton College, Cambridge University &  Sandhurst Miltary Academy, Victor’s closest life  long friend was George Herbert, 5^th Earl of Carnarvon, who married Almina Wombwell in 1895. George and Victors’s  youth and early adulthood were of the playboy type,  wild &  irresponsible, they were gamblers, risk takers. George’s health was blighted, leading to consequences that endure  for the Carnarvons to this day.   

     

Almina and the Carnarvon Heir, Henry, Lord Porchester, at Highclere 1899

                                                          

A secret truth –almost a curse- links the Countess Almina and the Maharajah Victor together,   a  legacy within  the  British Peerage  exposed in books and in a recent TV documentary.  William Cross, FSA Scot ( biographer of Almina),  was first to reveal the secret in his book “ The Life and Secrets of Almina Carnarvon” ( 2011).  In this talk Cross offers some of the latest evidence from his researches that still sends ripples through High Society.  In 2022 Will added further analysis of the whole story in his book “ More on Prince Victor Duleep Singh and the Curse of the Carnarvons : The Final Twists”.

 NB Will’s latest book is “ Lies, Damned Lies and the Carnarvons” issued for last year’s centenary of the discovery of Tutankhamun in 1922. 

Will Cross is a retired civil servant, writer & lecturer based in Newport, South Wales.  He is  the author of several books on Scottish history, on the Carnarvons of Highclere Castle, on Tutankhamun, and many on the Morgans of Tredegar House, Newport. Will  has had a long standing interest  on Society scandals and cover ups in the British aristocracy. Contact Will  directly about his books, talks etc,  at  58, Sutton Road, Newport, South Wales, NP19 7JF.  

E-mail Contact Welcome

willicross@aol.com

The  weeping figure of Almina,  in black, at the grave of Prince Victor Duleep Singh every summer at Monte Carlo.

“It was a duty undertaken out of respect and regard & perhaps a token of her love”   

The Story Has Not Ended…..

Photographs reproduced  by permission of the family of the photographer J W  Righton of Newbury, Berkshire

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

Lady Winifred Burghclere and her Troublesome Daughters By William Cross, FSA Scot

 

Lady    Winifred    Burghclere  
And   her   Troublesome   Daughters
Four   Immoral   Tales   From   The   Roaring  Twenties

NEW BOOK  : NOW AVAILABLE 

FROM THE AUTHOR WILLIAM CROSS, FSA SCOT 

SYNOPIS

 

Winifred Burghclere  was  the  clever   sister of the Lord Carnarvon who discovered Tutankhamun, a biographer of Restoration toffs  and lady of letters. Her early years  were  spent at Highclere Castle, the back drop to TV’s ‘Downton Abbey’.    

Her widower father, the 4^th  Earl, a Cabinet Minister   made her his private secretary, Winifred learned early on how to keep secrets. Twice married she produced four lively, racy daughters from her second  marriage to the quixotic Herbert Gardner,  an actor playwright who turned to politics, a former  Liberal Government Minister  he was raised to the peerage.

 

A stickler for rules, duty and  old world  values  Winifred completely hemmed her daughters in,  they  were kept under their mother’s grip, bullied, isolated  and schooled by governesses. The girls   were named  Juliet,  Alathea, Mary and Evelyn Gardner,  each had a long string of  other forenames. They  began as  a peculiar  mix of  the prudish and  moral,  “as  naive as nuns “,   then  became  the complete  flip  side of this,  amoral, and unconventional, hence troublesome.

 

The  Gardner  girls’ rebellious period  overlapped with  the Great War and its aftermath into the Bright Young Things era and the roaring twenties. Each of the  girls had disastrous  marriages  albeit with  interesting men  like Geoffrey Fry  a member of the Fry’s chocolate family,  he  was  Private Secretary to several Prime Ministers and married the  very disturbed slim, boyish,  Alathea. The youngest Gardner daughter Evelyn  was the first wife of  Evelyn Waugh,  the  writer  of  Scoop and Brideshead Revisited  who  pop up in the infamous ‘ He-Evelyn-She- Evelyn’ partnership.

 

In this tale of  aristocratic snobbery,  scandal  and love  William Cross  ( author of several books on the Carnarvons of Highclere Castle ( Downton Abbey) ) offers a quaint  blend of  exciting, amusing,  shocking tales, unearthing  the inevitable  excesses, casualties and  horrors  of   the era’s pleasure domes  of night club frolics,  themed  dances,  crazy parties and drink, drugs and sex fuelled  romps   on the  London scene : all of which  forced four ‘poor little rich girls’ to  quickly grow up and face the consequences of their actions.  

FOR MORE BACKGROUND DETAILS  GO TO THIS LINK BELOW

https://lady-winifred-burghclere.yolasite.com/details-of-lady-burghclere-and-daughters.php

ISBN 10 1-905914-41-5   ISBN 13 978-1-905914-41-8     

Published by  Book Midden Publishing c/o William . Cross,  58 Sutton Road  Newport  Gwent   NP19 7JF   United Kingdom 

MORE INFORMATION  AVAILABLE DIRECT FROM THE AUTHOR    

email WILL CROSS

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).