Tutankhamun ITV Mini - Series
Hideous Examples of Bad History
Inside the Burial Chamber of Tutankhamun
It's time to tackle the sloppy and hideous tag lines of ITV’s forthcoming Mini- Series on “Tutankhamun”.
These tag lines ( to whet our appetite for the show to come) are examples of BAD HISTORY.
Whilst the principal figureheads behind the new series include the notable director Peter Webber and accomplished script writer Guy Burt, there are already horrific flaws in the publicity build up for the drama, currently being filmed in South Africa.
The storyline will follow Howard Carter and Lord George Carnarvon through to their epic discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt's Valley of the Kings.
However, looking through the pre-publicity spashed across the internet for the forthcoming ITV Series “Tutankhamun” the marketing side is already sloppy and disappointing, with the series tag lines revealing an outpouring of bad history.
Even allowing for marketing tricks it is bad history on par with the worst of the dangerous fiction in ITV’s previous Carnarvon family-related piece of bad history in the series “Downton Abbey” .
Calling it “dangerous fiction” is not too strong a phrase to use as these fictitious story elements invented by marketing departments and writers acting as rogue historians are liable to be believed by the gullible and impressionable and put across as historical fact.
Downton Abbey was written as fiction but it was turned into fact around the clever marketing by the incumbents of Highclere Castle and their spin on selling “ The Real Downton Abbey”.
But the Crowleys of Downton Abbey were made up. Howard Carter, Lord George Carnarvon and Tutankhamun were all real people. To mess with real people from history is to create bad history and this is unfitting..
Howard Carter
Tag line : “The disgraced ( Howard ) Carter's career is saved when he's hired by…Lord Carnarvon”
- Howard Carter was never disgraced. After an incident in 1905 in which he refused to apologise followed by being unable to settle in a new government posting, Carter left the Egyptian Antiquities Service of his own accord to work as a gentleman dealer, antiquities adviser and artist. Although this change meant a lean time for Carter the extent of his reduced circumstances ( and of him being “saved” ) have been exaggerated.
Howard Carter
- Howard Carter was aged 31 in 1905. In his 14 years in Egypt he worked for rich patrons under their digging licenses issued by the Egyptian Antiquities Service. Carter never had a digging license to revoke. From 1900-01 as an Inspector/ Chief Inspector with the Antiquities Service he was allowed to continue working under patronage arrangements as well as conducting his government duties . When he resigned as an Inspector he was completely free to work for any patron under their digging license and did just that. Before Carter worked full time for Carnarvon to had at least two other contracts with patrons between 1905 and 1908.
Lord George Carnarvon
Tag Line : “After years spent broke & ostracised, a chance meeting [ by Carter ] with ..the dashing Lord Carnarvon begins an unlikely friendship..”
Howard Carter was struggling being freelance but he continued to be favoured by colleagues to work on various digging, tracing and artistic assignments. The small number of people who avoided him were strangers anyway, English aristocrats whose snobbery consumed them. By 1905-6 Carter probably knew George Carnarvon by reputation as a collector of Egyptian Antiquities. As Carnarvon was working at Thebes from 1906 Carter would have known of this too. Several men claim credit for introducing Carter to Carnarvon to formalise things as public schoolboy lines of not speaking to anyone without an introduction. It was never a chance meeting. George Carnarvon was riddled to disease and injuries, “ a man who never smiled” : he could hardly to described as “dashing”.
Carter, King Tutankhamun and Carnarvon
Tag line : “The pair ( Carter & Carnarvon) ultimately discover the last resting place of the boy-king in 1921 against all odds and at great personal expense.”
Tutankhamun’s Tomb was discovered on 4 November 1922. The cost of the digging was largely paid by Carnarvon’s wife Almina Wombwell, with Rothschild money. Almina was one of the principal benefactors of the estate of Baron Alfred de Rothschild, who died in 1918; Rothschild also left Lord Carnarvon a substantial legacy.
Any enquiries about this post, please contact the Author William Cross, whose forthcoming book, " Carnarvon, Carter and Tutankhamun Revisisted: The hidden truths and doomed relationships" will be published on 4 November 2016.
williecross@aol.com
