Carnarvon, Carter and Tutankhamun Revisited

Everything We Are Is Shaped In Childhood

Everything   we are   is  shaped   in childhood.

Psychologists   say  that  the  ages of 0-5  onwards are crucial in forming our personalities. Although not fully developed, by the age of 8 or 9 the human brain has evolved sufficiently to learn to read and reach out to the world.

At the time they were aged 8 or 9, the boy Prince Tutankhamun, Lord George (Porchey) Carnarvon and Howard Carter (ever intertwined in the greatest archeological discovery of the 20th century) were aware of the intrigue, chaos and struggles in their lives, and in the lives of those controlling them.

Within their ancient and modern worlds they were surrounded by family and minders; they had sized up their core relationships, whom or whom not to turn for attention and love, feeding, warmth and comfort.

At this tender age of 8 or 9 an onslaught of tragedy was bound to be strongly felt if it involved a central player in their life.

From the images that survive in the young faces of each of the three historic figures as pre-adolescent boys they seem to be frowning; each bares a sad expression.

Prince Tutankhamun does not look like a boy who has just won a chariot race, Porchey is not a sporty fellow who has scored a six at a game of cricket for his 'prep school', Howard is not someone who has executed a fine pencil drawing that pleased his artistic Papa.

It is not surprising. The boys shared sorrows and disability. They were exposed to heartbreak with a major psychological trauma at about the age of 8 to 9 years old.

The events were similar, an unexpected death in the family. It provoked fits of screaming and weeping, forcing them into becoming grown-up, to rise above the after affects; but the upheaval came before they were fully developed or hardened by life experience. The trauma left a mark. It was one of the reasons why none of them was able to enjoy meaningful social or personal relationships.

As a boy of 9 the Egyptian Prince Tutankhamun (sometimes just called 'Tut'), succeeded Smenkhkare the successor as Pharaoh to Tut's father Akhenaten. Tut's mother (The Younger Lady) was already dead (probably in childbirth) and his brother was dead too. The new boy King found himself the charge of a faithful but pushy old mentor named Ay, an Egyptian Mr Fixer, and a Court Chamberlain; he may have been the boy's grandfather. Ay later succeeded Tutankhamun as King of Egypt in a stormy reign. Besides Ay, on the fringes was the beautiful Queen Nefertiti, Tut's ambitious step-mother, famously known for her statue wearing a tall hat.

Prince Tutankhamun came to the throne ill-prepared to become the ruler of his people. Besides this, as the King he had to take a Queen. He had already been married off to his half-sister, and cousin, Ankhesenpaaten. More trauma followed when she delivered him two dead, deformed babies, bearing signs of dwarfism. The King was not able to produce an heir, a fate that also befell George Carnarvon, ( see later Chapter). Howard Carter- who never married- was also childless.

In late 1875 at the age of 9 George, known as Lord Porchester (or 'Porchey' for short) lost an essential parent, his mother, Lady Evelyn Stanhope, 4th Countess of Carnarvon. Porchey felt he'd been abandoned with only a stern, distant, ever-busy politician father, the 4th Earl, who paid him (albeit the 5th Earl in waiting) no attention.

Further trauma followed for Porchey with the arrival of a step-mother, his father's young cousin Elizabeth 'Elsie' Howard; Porchey (unlike his three sisters) never accepted a replacement mother.

At the age of 9 in 1884 it was Howard Carter who suffered the most damaging childhood experience of all, a horrific family suicide. Howard witnessed at first hand his 17-year-old brother Horace (christened Horatio) when described as 'not of sound mind' take his own life by deliberately drinking a corrosive cleaning solvent, probably bleach or carbolic acid.

All the above mentioned events influenced the formation of extreme manners of an autistic nature in the boys' personalities, particularly Carter, but the condition may have been inbred.

The three figures in this tale all had a bad start in life. As babies they never tasted their mother's milk, but were fed by wet nurses. Highclere's wet nurses were hired as nursery maids. Carter's wet nurse was a female cousin from Swaffham in Norfolk, a Carter family stronghold. In the case of Prince Tutankhamun archaeologists have traced wall paintings of his wet nurse Maia feeding him, she is thought to be his sister.

Wet nurses were employed when the mother was unable or chose not to nurse the child herself. Lady Evelyn Herbert and Martha Carter's lives were too full of Society activity to breast feed; Tutankhamun's feeding was set by ancient Royal custom.

The three figures in this tale as babies were deprived of the vital vitamins and body fluids from their own mother they may have needed to fight off infection and give immunities. Breast feeding also strengthened the maternal bond between child and mother. These building blocks were sacrificed in favour of feeding by emotionally unattached women.

Each baby was already a congenital weakling, a misfit, physically disabled, bodily incomplete.... comparable with the hunchback  King Richard III who in his pains and woes complains at being "deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world, scare half  made up".     In a self-sketch Carter uses a similar phrase for himself, that "Nature thrusts some of us into the world miserably incomplete".

THIS IS THE OPENING FEW PARAGRAPHS OF " Carnarvon, Carter and Tutankhamun Revisited:  The  hidden  truths and doomed relationships".  The  book is  compiled by William Cross, FSA Scot,  the biographer of Almina, 5th Countess of Carnarvon and                  " Lordy! Tutankhamun's Patron as A Young Man"  a book on Lord Carnarvon's early years.

The highly controversial  book is now available from William Cross direct  and on e bay and AMAZON.