Tensions were already high among the archaeologists, surveyors, and artists of the Archaeological Survey of Egypt in 1891 when an eventful dispute arose on Christmas Eve.
The first season (1890-1891) of the Egypt Exploration Fund’s survey set out to explore monuments along a 25km stretch of the Nile, including the Middle Kingdom cemetery at Beni Hasan, where governors and administrators were buried. Under field director Percy Newberry, surveyor George Willoughby Fraser recorded the architecture and locations of the tombs, while artist Marcus Blackden helped Newberry copy their decoration, and produced colour facsimiles of key details, like the birds from the tomb of Khnumhotep II.
But work was slow, and so funds were found for extra staff, among them 17-year-old artist Howard Carter, for the next season. During this second season, on 24 December 1891, Newberry and Carter were taken to a nearby site by a group of Bedouin. While this was not the tomb of the pharaoh Akhenaten as had been rumoured, it was still an important location: the alabaster quarries of Hatnub described in ancient texts.
Stone tools, space dust, and sacramental ash