The Tutankhamen Deception

The book I read to research this post was The Tutankhamen Deception by Gerald OFarrell which is an excellent book which I bought as part of a boxset at a car boot sale. I think I have to watch what I'm saying in this blog because I don't want to get accused of libel. Basically in this book they accuse Lord Caernarvon & Howard Carter who discovered the Tutankhamen burial site of being a couple of rogues. They had an agreement with the egyptian authorities that if they found a tomb that had been disturbed by robbers they could have a share of the treasure but if it was undisturbed the egyptian authorities kept the lot. The discovery of Tutankhamen is one of the greatest archaelogical discoveries of all time. Anyway the theory in the book is that they discovered the tomb several years previously plundered it, sold some of the items on the black market & smashed some of the artefacts so it looked like it had been robbed. They used a rear entrance they had discovered to carry this out. There attitude was that they were providing employment to the local people & that they were helping the egyptians find out about there history so they were entitled to make money. The egyptians attitude was that the property in the tombs was their heritage & they shouldn't have to read the Times newspaper to find out what was going on. They sold a lot of treasure to the americans in particular the Metropolitan Museum in New York it was thought they paid a good price & didn't ask too many questions. Another theory in the book is that the people who allegedly died of the mummies were in fact murdered to stop them from spilling the beans.