How a boy discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb
Hadj Yusuf in his Garden, Luxor, Egypt, January 2019
“I am Hadj Yusuf from the Western Bank of Luxor”, my taxi driver started his story while puffing on his shisha. We were taking a break in his garden after visiting the Valley of the Kings and other sights around Luxor.
“I have been living here since my childhood. I'm a man who never went to any school. Instead I spent my childhood working with archaeological missions, such as the French, German and the Italian missions. As a worker I would dig in the sand looking for tombs, If we found any, we would then have to clear the tomb and load the artifacts into crates to have them transported to museums. I was following the footsteps of my father and grandfather.
Egyptian local workers amaong them many children exacavating the entrance to Tutankhamun’s grave.
My grandfather was part of the expedition of Howard Carter on his quest to locate the tomb of Tutankhamun. After many years of unsuccessful digging we found the grave by a coincidence. A water boy had dropped a pottery jar filled with water on his way to the workers, but instead of the sand absorbing the water the water formed a puddle uncovering a stone step.
“There must be something here” he told the foremen, as if he was part of the expedition.
We went to Carter and showed him the step: “Ya Basha, the tomb must be here”.
We started digging, and uncovered the long-lost grave of Tutankhamun along with his treasures. This is how we found it.
The waterboy Hussein Abdel-Rassoul who discovered the first step wearing a necklace from Tutankhamun’s tomb
Back then, we used to live on the mountains close to the Valley of the Kings. Our homes were built on top of pharaonic tombs and some were even inside of them. We had been living there for hundreds of years, but the government resettled us and demolished our old homes to preserve the historic sites and grant access to researchers.
Now I live here next to the Colossi of Memnon, far from the city. It is isolated, but the calmness and serenity of these statues means a lot to me. Every day I am reminded of the might of the pharaohs. The world back then, in the 20th century was easier for us. It might have been hard work for us but at the end there we would always have food on the table. Nowadays tourists come mostly in organized groups, so they don’t need our taxis and we end up empty handed. Life is not getting easier for us.”
Listening to Hadj Yusuf’s story, I found the lines between past and present blurring. When talking about the workers in the mission of Howard Carter he would refer to them as “we”, instead of “they”. It seemed that he had internalized the narrated stories form his ancestors; to him they still lived in the stories and he himself became a protagonist in them. Most interestingly, the story of the waterboy turned out to be very close to the story that Howard Carter had reported. Who would have thought that a waterboy dropping a pottery jar full of water and stumbling over a stone stair could catapult Howard Carter to become a worldwide celebrity as the discoverer of the tomb of Tutankhamun. He had gained eternal fame with this discovery. But the names and stories of the local workers who were part of this expedition remained unknown. They were the unsung heroes, doomed to live in their ancestors shadows.
“I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, ‘Can you see anything?’ it was all I could do to get out the words, ‘Yes, wonderful things.”
