The accidental Indiana Jones
He went to Egypt to escape the Scottish weather but became...
HE moved to Egypt in his twenties to escape the Scottish weather that was making him so unwell.
But lawyer Alexander Henry Rhind would go on to make some of the most remarkable archaeological discoveries of the mid-19th Century.
Yet the work of the Caithnessborn pioneer, who suffered from pulmonary disease and died days before his 30th birthday, has been largely forgotten – until now.
The National Museum of Scotland (NMS) in Edinburgh is preparing to celebrate Rhind and some of his incredible finds in an exhibition that will form the prelude to the opening of a new permanent Egypt gallery in 2018.
His discoveries will also be examined in a new BBC Scotland documentary, Scotland’s Treasmassive ures, which will be aired at the end of the month.
Rhind, from Wick, blamed the smoky atmosphere of ‘Auld Reekie’ for a lung infection he developed in 1853 while a law student at Edinburgh University.
After visiting England and France, he went to Egypt on behalf of the Museum of Antiquities of Scotland and fell in love with the ancient civilisation.
Battling continued ill health, he undertook excavations around Thebes and became one of the first excavators scientifically to record his discoveries in his book Thebes, its Tombs and their Tenants.
Hailed as ‘the bright shining light of archaeological method and conscience’, Rhind was also the first to plot the exact location of artefacts and their relationships.
Among his discoveries were a multi-chamber tomb used for hundreds of years by different families and a stunning cosmetics box that belonged to Pharaoh Amenhotep II.
Dr Margaret Maitland, senior curator of Ancient Mediterranean collections at the NMS, said: ‘Rhind went to Egypt when archaeology was little more than looting. He was actually accurately recording and planning the objects and where he was finding them.’
The intact family tomb – recognised as one of the most significant finds in early Egyptology – will be shown on Scotland’s Treasures.
Dr Maitland said: ‘He was hoping he could find an intact tomb group. There were already lots of funerary objects in museums around Europe but the understanding of how those objects were used in the tomb, where they were found and how they related to each other wasn’t really understood.
‘The tomb is enormous – over 100ft cut into the rock face – with multiple chambers and different rooms used for different members of the family. Among the objects he found was a funerary papyrus created for a woman. It describes how she died shortly after her husband and how important it was that she had been able to give the family a son and a daughter.
‘It is a really intensely personal document, quite different to some of the earlier, more standardised funerary papyri.’
Another of the several hundred artefacts found by Rhind that are now in the NMS is the decorative box of Amenhotep II, used to store perfumes and cosmetics.
Dr Maitland said: ‘It is made of all these incredible precious materials – ivory, ebony, cedar wood – with gilding; all these different products that came from different parts of the Egyptian Empire.
‘It is also decorated with the god Bes, a protective household deity, who has this sort of grotesque appearance to be able to frighten off any potential evil forces.
‘In terms of the craftsmanship, it is comparable to the boxes from the tomb of Tutankhamun.’
The NMS Egyptian collection has more than 6,000 artefacts covering a period of 4,000 years, including 11 individuals mummified or skeletal and dozens of coffins.
A recent scan of one mummified figure found by Rhind could yet shed new light on the Egyptians.
Existing techniques that showed the woman’s age and height also revealed a hidden papyrus whose secrets cannot yet be revealed.
Dr Maitland said: ‘She was 25-30 years old. She was about 5ft in height and one of the most exciting things we discovered was a papyrus scroll by her side.
‘Hopefully in the near future, progress in scanning developments will allow us to actually read that scroll and find out exactly who she was.’
Scotland’s Treasures is on BBC1 Scotland on Wednesday, November 30, at 9pm.
‘Archaeology was little more than looting’
‘Comparable to the tomb of Tutankhamun’