The great King Tut tit for tat
How Egypt (egged on by France) nearly thwarted UK’s historic Tutankhamun show with string of impossible demands
IT WAS hailed as the world’s first blockbuster exhibition.
When treasures from the tomb of King Tutankhamun first went on display at the British Museum more than 40 years ago, people queued for up to eight hours to catch a glimpse of the astonishing artefacts.
But The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the 1972 show, which attracted a total of 1.7million visitors, was almost scrapped due to scheming French diplomats, who sparked a bizarre row between Britain and Egypt.
British Museum papers show how the French attempted to stymie sensitive negotiations to borrow the priceless 3,000-yearold treasures, including the Boy King’s death mask, by urging Egyptian dictator Gamal Nasser to make extravagant conditions for his co-operation. Among the demands Nasser made during talks, which began in 1966, were for him to be photographed by society favourite Lord Snowdon – husband of Princess Margaret – and for superstars Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev to perform in Cairo alongside members of the Royal Ballet. Paris was determined to stall the London exhibition over fears that it would overshadow the Louvre’s own Tutankhamun show, which eventually took place in 1967.
The papers show that talks collapsed on more than one occasion because of the demands.
In one undated memo, Iorwerth Edwards, the British Museum’s Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities, said: ‘I went to Cairo in February and the discussions proceeded very satisfactorily until my last morning when [Egyptian culture minister] Dr Magi Wahba told me that in addition to the Royal Ballet, the Egyptian government wanted the Oxford Playhouse Company and Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev.
‘When I returned to London, I reported the revised demand to the Arts Council, who consulted the British Council and the Foreign Office with the result that the whole scheme was dropped…
‘Shortly afterwards, we learnt privately that the change in the Egyptian attitude was the outcome of diplomatic pressure on Nasser by the French because they wanted to be the only country in Europe to have the exhibition.’
The documents also show that the museum’s attempts to appease Nasser were blocked by the Foreign Office, which did not want to engage with the dictator at a time when Anglo-Egyptian relations were still at a low ebb following the 1956 Suez Crisis.
Nasser’s death in 1970 and a tour of Egypt by the Royal Ballet – with- out Fonteyn or Nureyev – finally paved the way for the exhibition to take place in London.
The show was far more lavish than the earlier French exhibition, and had to be extended on several occasions due to public demand.
The news of the row comes as ITV screens a new drama at 9pm tonight about the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. The show stars Max Irons as archaeologist Howard Carter and Sam Neill as his financial backer, Lord Carnarvon.