William Tyssen-Amherst was a collector, he was also extremely wealthy, the result being that Didlington Hall became for a time one of the treasure houses of England. One of the most important collections was the library of rare and early printed books. This included a copy of the Gutenberg Bible, and no less than seventeen Caxtons. Each one of these would now be worth many thousands of pounds, and in the case of the Gutenberg Bible, millions.
It was however, the Egyptian collection that probably caught most visitors’ attention. This was certainly true of a young Howard Carter who visited Didlington as a young man, perhaps even as a boy. By the time he arrived at Didlington in the 1880s accompanying his father, the artist Samuel John Carter, the Egyptian collection was housed in the ‘New Museum’ an enormous room specially built for the purpose.
Whilst the treasures that once belonged to the Tyssen-Amherst family have long since been dispersed, large quantities of the family’s papers do still exist. Although some still remain within the family, many more are in museum archives and university libraries in cities as far apart as Oxford, and Toronto.
Perhaps one of my most prized resources is the bundle of photographs of the Egyptian collection, which so inspired Howard Carter’s interest in ancient Egypt. This led to his being sent to Egypt at the age of seventeen to work for the Egyptian Exploration Fund as an artist to assist in the recording of the art and writings found in the tombs of the ancient Egyptians, before it was destroyed by tourists, weather or general looting.
Through photographs, family journals, sketch books, along with papers in the numerous archives, I am unearthing an extraordinary story of an extraordinary family. This story appears to contain all the elements a great story should have.
There is the splendid setting of Didlington Hall, which was indeed a truly ‘golden world’, a cast of brilliant and colourful characters, travels and adventure in Egypt, tales of royalty, and a passionate and desperate love story. There are also other ingredients useful in the creation of any powerful drama, such as a suitably ‘evil’ villain, bankruptcy, tragedy, and unexpected death.
However, it was the convergence of several key factors—the Tyssen-Amherst family’s remarkable collection of Egyptian antiquities, the artistic talent and growing fascination with Egypt of a young Howard Carter, and the Egypt Exploration Fund’s search for a skilled tracer—that set Carter on the path toward one of the most extraordinary archaeological discoveries of the modern age: the tomb of Tutankhamun.
In FROM NORFOLK TO THE NILE – the Story of The Tyssen-Amhersts, Howard Carter and the Road to Tutankhamun – their story will be told…!