Within a few days of his arrival in Luxor, Wilbour made contact with a local guide who brought him to the village of Qurnah and the house of Ahmed Abd el Rassul. Finally in 1881 Maspero enlisted the aid of Charles Wilbour, a wealthy American collector, who was known to be willing to pay high prices for authentic antiquities. Maspero sent investigators but they learned nothing for years, while antiquities continued to appear. Maspero knew these came from no licensed excavation, yet, they had to have come from somewhere. Other important objects like papyri, shabti-figurines, bronze vessels, inscribed wrapping, and perhaps even at least one mummy (that of the missing Ramesses I?), were also leaking out onto the Luxor antiquities market. In 1874, Gaston Maspero, the head of the Antiquities Service in Cairo, noticed that on the antiquities market, figures bearing royal names from the 21st Dynasty, a wooden tablet inscribed in scribal ink, a papyrus belonging to Queen Nedjmet, and other artifacts were being sold.
Amelia Edwards, one of the travelers to Egypt in the late 19th century, who recorded her observations and perceptions, herself witnessed such a dig, and was able to see a coffin brought to light, carved with hieroglyphics and the Four Sons of Horus (so she wrote.) She further recorded that "Objects of great rarity and antiquity were being brought to Europe every season by travelers who had purchased them from native dealers living on the spot and many of these objects were historically traceable to certain Royal dynasties which made Thebes their royal cityAt length, suspicion became certainty." Contents of unviolated, or intact, tombs would remain the property of the Egyptian government.īut illicit excavations continued. After the Museum made its selections from amongst the artifacts, the rest would belong to the excavator. No tomb could b entered without an inspector present, and the contents of any violated tomb had to be first presented to the new Egyptian Museum. Anyone planning to dig had to first obtain a signed agreement from the Society, and inspectors thereafter had to be allowed on site any time. When the Antiquities Society was formed in Cairo by Auguste Mariette in 1858, for the first time, controls were placed on excavations and exports of discovered artifacts.
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