Egyptology Quotes (3 quotes)
Hieroglyphics, or picture writing, consisted of owls, canaries, garter snakes, and the insides of alarm clocks.
In The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), 8.
I am told that the wall paintings which we had the happiness of admiring in all their beauty and freshness [in the chapel she discovered at Abu Simbel] are already much injured. Such is the fate of every Egyptian monument, great or small. The tourist carves it over with names and dates, and in some instances with caricatures. The student of Egyptology, by taking wet paper “squeezes” sponges away every vestige of the original colour. The “Collector” buys and carries off everything of value that he can, and the Arab steals it for him. The work of destruction, meanwhile goes on apace. The Museums of Berlin, of Turin, of Florence are rich in spoils which tell their lamentable tale. When science leads the way, is it wonderful that ignorance should follow?
Quoted in Margaret S. Drower, The Early Years, in T.G.H. James, (ed.), Excavating in Egypt: The Egypt Exploration Society, 1882-1982 (1982), 10. As cited in Wendy M.K. Shaw, Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire (2003), 37. Also quoted in Margaret S. Drower, Flinders Petrie: A Life in Archaeology (1995), 57.
LORD CARNARVON: Can you see anything?
HOWARD CARTER: Yes, wonderful things.
HOWARD CARTER: Yes, wonderful things.
Howard Carter’s reply to Lord Carnarvon (George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, 1866-1923) upon Carter's first entry to the tomb of Tutankhamen.