Howard Carter’s annotated typescript for “The Annexe,” the third chapter from his classic work, The Tomb of Tutankhamun: Volume III, Treasury and Annexe, ten pages, 8.5 x 11, circa 1933, unsigned but featuring copious emendations and annotations by Carter in pen and pencil, with the reverse of the fifth page and the final page containing autograph fragments, and the reverse of the ninth page bearing two pencil sketches of tomb complexes.
“The Annexe,” the third and final volume of The Tomb of Tutankhamun, describes the exciting moment in which Carter’s party enters this pivotal section of the tomb. Carter explains the "confusion" of the Annexe after months spent working in the Antechamber, Burial chamber, and the ‘Innermost Recess.’ He describes the room as “a jumble of every kind of funerary chattel” left by earlier grave-robbers, noting that the “history of this little room may have been unfortunate, but romantic. There was something bewildering, yet interesting, in the scene which lay before us.” He expounds on the excavation process of “three-hundred-odd pieces of antiquity,” ultimately leading to one very important discovery, “that two separate thefts of quite different nature had taken place in that little apartment” within a few years of the burial. Carter offers conclusions about the nature of the robberies, gives a reconstruction of the sequence of events that defined the filling and sealing of the Annexe, and on the reverse of the ninth page, Carter adds two overhead pencil sketches of the tomb complex. In fine condition, with binder holes to the left edges.
On November 26, 1922, after five years of largely unrewarded excavations in the Valley of the Kings, Howard Carter finally managed to obtain the first glimpse of site KV62, the Tomb of Tutankhamun, and become the first man to enter the burial chamber of the great king since ancient times. The clearing of the tomb took many years—Carter's meticulous cataloguing of the thousands of objects contained inside was not completed until 1932—and the annex, which was originally used to store oils, ointments, scents, foods and wine, was the last room to be cleared. Although small in size, it contained approximately 280 groups of objects, totaling more than 2,000 individual pieces. Also found within the annex chamber were 26 jars containing wine residue. A magnificent and heavily annotated typed draft that chronicles the work undertaken by Carter and crew between October 1927 and the spring of 1928.
The tomb complex drawings were published on page 16 of the article The Tomb of Tutankhamun (KV 62) : Supplementary Notes, (The Burial of Nefertiti? III) by Nicholas Reeves, as part of the Amarna Royal Tombs Project, Valley of the Kings, Occasional Paper No. 5. A passage from Reeves related to the drawing helps clarify what Carter was attempting to sketch: ‘Although at first glance this sketch might appear to record Carter’s ruminations on the location of additional
chambers within KV 62, a moment’s reflection will indicate that this is not the case. The typescript on the reverse of which this drawing was made almost certainly post-dates Carter’s failed investigation of the left-hand side of room J’s north wall—meaning that, by the time the
sketch was made, Carter’s hopes of KV 62 being a larger tomb were already in the past. Like Carter MSS, GI I.9.5.1…[the] document is a casual attempt to illustrate, for persons unknown, how the Annexe and Treasury within KV 62—pictured in the centre of the sheet—relate to a full-sized royal tomb. The tomb Carter here chose as example, and sketched above KV 62, was
WV 22 (Amenhotep III), drawing in neat dotted line the chambers present in that earlier tomb which were missing from the tomb he had found; obviously thrown in as an aside—as reflected in the sloppiness of the line—was Carter’s acknowledgement of other chambers running off from the WV 22 burial chamber and of no particular relevance to what he was then attempting to describe.’
Provenance: Bonhams: Carter Family, June 12, 2012, Part of Lot 39.
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