TOMB DISCOVERER

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 88, 13 April 1923, Page 7

TOMB DISCOVERER

HOWARD CARTER ILL NOW COUNTESS CARNARVON STAYS IN EGYPT ON ACCOUNT OF HIS CONDITION. (ONITED PRES3 ASSOCIATION.—COPIRIaBT.) (AUSTRALIAN - NEW ZEALAND CABU ASSOCIATION.) CAIRO, 12th April. Mr. Howard Carter has fallen ill. The Countess of Carnarvon has postponed her return to England, owing to his condition. She had intended accompanying her husband's embalmed body, which went to England to-day. ——_ Mr. Carter worked with the late Earl of Carnarvon for eight years in the Valley of the Kings, and when the tomb of Tutankhamen was discovered, w,as the first to look into it. Lord Carnarvon'died fyom an attack of pneumonia; it is supposed that he was infected in the tomb. The -epoch-making discovery by Mr. Howard Carter of the magnificent mausoleum and funerary furniture of King Tutankhamen recalls the work of Mr. Theodore Davis, of Boston, Mass., who, in his excavations in the Valleys of the Kings in 1914, came within six feet of the site of the present tomb, telegraphs Reuters Luxor . correspondent to the "Daily Telegraph." It might have fallen to the lot of this American archaeologist to have introduced Tutankhamen to the world had he not given up digging too soon. Mr. Davis, who had already discovered more royal tombs than any living man, was excavating on the very spot where Mr. Carter made his sensational find, when a slight fissure in the adjoining road led him to cease his labours. He was afraid further digging would undermine the road and endanger some of the adjacent royal tombs. Associated with Mr. Davis was Mr. Henry Burton, an expert of the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York, who is now assisting Mr. Howard Carter. "There is little doubt," said Mr. Burton, discussing the incident, "that had Davis continued digging, as I urged him to do, he would have struck the flight of stone steps leading to Tutankhamen's tomb, and finally the mortuary chamber itself. But h© gave up too soon."