Foreshadowing is a common trope in movies, where a seemingly irrelevant clue or allusion becomes highly relevant later in the narrative. When done tactlessly it can be annoying, for example when too obvious foreshadowing gives away the plot or hints at its resolution. Even when effective, it can seem over-coincidental. But real life is sometimes stranger than fiction, as when an article he wrote in 1917 foreshadowed Carter’s discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun.

In 1917 Carter and Gardiner published a paper in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology on the Turin papyrus plan of the tomb of Ramesses IV (Turin Cat. 1885). This papyrus was first studied in 1867 by Lepsius, who correctly identified it as a plan of the tomb of Ramesses IV (KV2) in the Valley of the Kings, but as the tomb had yet to be fully excavated and recorded Lepsius had to work without recent measurements or records.

Following Carter’s excavation and recording of KV2, Carter and Gardiner published a new treatment of the Turin papyrus, comparing its plan and notations to the excavated tomb and finding the plan of KV2 to be more accurate than expected.

During the course of the article Carter and Gardiner discuss the details of the plan, including the burial chamber, which is shown with six yellow rectangles around the sarcophagus.

These rectangles clearly confused Carter and Gardiner (1917, 133), who concluded that all but one of the rectangles were temporary steps put in to allow the mummy to be inserted into the sarcophagus. The second to outermost rectangle, which is shown as ‘yellow corner blocks, interconnected by read lines’ they suggest was a funeral canopy.

Five years’ later one of the authors of the article would finally resolve the question of the yellow rectangles, when Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62). Inside the burial chamber, Tutankhamun’s sarcophagus was surrounded four gilded wooden shrines, with a funerary canopy between the outermost and the second shrine, exactly as the Turin plan shows. The layout of these shrines was recently displayed to the public during the successful Tutankhamun: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh, where the position of the shrines was shown as four gold rectangles on the floor and ceiling of the exhibition room surrounding a representation of the Pharaoh’s mummy, adorned with some of his jewellery.

These golden shrines, recently in the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square and shortly to go on display in the Grand Egyptian Museum, are truly impressive. Forming literal walls of gold, they also offered an additional surface for funerary imagery and underworld books, including the first examples of the Book of the Heavenly Cow.

When Carter and Gardiner co-authored their article on Turin Papyrus 1885 they cannot have imagined that one of them would resolve the question of the yellow-rectangles in such a spectacular fashion within just a few years of publication. Sometimes foreshadowing in real life is stranger than fiction.

References

Carter, H. and A. H. Gardiner 1917, The Tomb of Ramesses IV and the Turin Plan of a Royal Tomb, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 4: 130–158.

Lepsius, R. 1867. Grundplan des Grabes König Ramses IV in einem Turiner Papyrus K. Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Theban Mapping Project, Theban Mapping Project Website, <https://thebanmappingproject.com/&gt; accessed 15 April 2021.

Museo Egizio, Turin, Papyrus with the plan of the tomb of Ramesses IV on the front and some administrative texts on the reverse, Museo Egizio Collection <http://collezioni.museoegizio.it/it-IT/material/Cat_1885/&gt; accessed 15 April 2021.