Quote of the Week: Howard Carter on the Good Old Days

Is there a more famous archaeologist than Howard Carter? Probably not. His discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb with his benefactor Lord Carnarvon is the stuff of dreams. But his kind of archaeology was definitely more akin to adventurer than scientist.

Those were the great days of excavating... anything to which a fancy was taken, from a scarab to an obelisk, was just appropriated, and if there was a difference with a brother excavator, one laid for him with a gun. [Howard Carter 1933]

• Howard Carter
• Tutankhamun's Tomb
• Quiz on Tutankhamun's Tomb
• The Red Scarab of Amenhotep III (Guardian's Egypt)

I chose this photo of the monumental scarab to illustrate this post because it's interesting--the scarab carved from red granite is located at Karnak in Luxor, and it was built for the New Kingdom pharaoh Amenhotep III [ruled about 1886-1849 BC], some five hundred years before Tutankhamun.