Ancient robbers were not the only ones who looted tombs in Egypt.
In the 1800s, people from many different countries in Europe began traveling to Egypt. The ancient kingdom was long gone. The old beliefs had all disappeared. The squiggly picture writing—hieroglyphs—was a mystery to everyone.
But tourists visited the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx. They took trips down the Nile River. They saw the ruins of old temples and giant statues. They wanted to bring back souvenirs. Sometimes what they brought back was a whole mummy! They might keep it in a room with other souvenirs they had bought. They might give it to a museum to exhibit. Or they might decide to unwrap the mummy and see what was inside.
“Unwrapping parties” were held. One English lord sent out printed cards for the party. His guests in London got to see “a mummy from Thebes unrolled at half past two.” A German prince in Berlin had a mummy unwrapped on his pool table. If a person couldn’t afford a mummy all by himself, he could join a group. The group would pool their money and buy a mummy together. That’s what a group of German people did. They each had a certificate. It was like owning shares of a mummy!
One man from Italy started a business of finding mummies to sell to customers. His name was Giovanni Belzoni. Sometimes he used a battering ram to get inside a tomb. He described an accident he had inside one. Feeling his way with a torch, he was looking for someplace to sit. What he landed on, with all his weight, were mummies. “I sank right down between broken mummies, a confusion of bones, rags, wooden boxes, which threw up such a lot of dust that for a quarter of an hour I was unable to move.”
It is terrible to hear stories about the ancient dead being treated like this . . . just so someone could get rich quick. Of course, not all mummy hunters were in it for the money. Many people were interested in learning more about ancient Egypt, what life was like back then. People interested in finding objects that tell us about the past are called archaeologists.
THE END OF AN EMPIRE
DIFFERENT HISTORIANS GIVE DIFFERENT DATES FOR THE END OF THE GREAT KINGDOM OF ANCIENT EGYPT. SOME SAY THAT “ANCIENT EGYPT” WAS GONE BY 30 B.C. BY THIS TIME, THERE HAD BEEN MANY INVASIONS BY OTHER COUNTRIES.
SOME VERY FAMOUS “FOREIGNERS” RULED EGYPT AND BECAME PHARAOH. ALEXANDER THE GREAT TOOK EGYPT FROM THE PERSIANS. THE EGYPTIANS THOUGHT OF THE GREAT GREEK SOLDIER AS A HERO. AFTER ALEXANDER DIED, ONE OF HIS GENERALS, PTOLEMY I, TOOK OVER.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT
GENERAL PTOLEMY 1
CLEOPATRA
JULIUS CAESAR
PERHAPS YOU HAVE HEARD OF CLEOPATRA. SHE WAS A QUEEN OF EGYPT WHO LIVED FROM 69 TO 30 B.C. JULIUS CAESAR WAS EMPEROR OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. THE ROMANS TOOK OVER EGYPT. CLEOPATRA THOUGHT THAT IF SHE HAD CAESAR’S CHILD, SHE WOULD HAVE MORE POWER. BUT IT DIDN’T WORK OUT THAT WAY. THE ROMANS STAYED IN POWER. WITHIN ONE HUNDRED YEARS, THE OLD EGYPTIAN WAY OF LIFE WAS VANISHING. HIEROGLYPHS HAD BECOME A “DEAD LANGUAGE.” IT BECAME THE JOB OF ARCHAEOLOGISTS TO UNCOVER THE PAST.
By the late 1800s, many tombs of the pharaohs had been found. The trouble was that all of them were empty. The dream of every archaeologist was to find one that hadn’t been looted. Many thought that was just a wild dream. They didn’t believe there was even one tomb left with treasures. Howard Carter was practically the only man who thought there was. |