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In the fall of 1921, Reisner returned to America for the first time since 1912, while Dows Dunham managed Harvard Camp at Giza. In late November Dunham returned to Meroe. From Boston Reisner successfully helped Ludwig Borchardt regain his Cairo institute and property after confiscation by the British during the war. Reisner’s Harvard students included several talented foreigners, but African American William Leo Hansberry openly challenged his colonialist interpretations of indigenous African civilizations. Others rejected his Libyan-origins theory for ancient Nubia as well. The chapter also covers the new antiquities division law and Howard Carter’s 1922 discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun as seen through Reisner’s eyes. Dows Dunham was “loaned” to the Egyptian Antiquities Service for Saqqara excavations and parted ways with Reisner thereafter. The team completed the drawings of the Menkaure temples at Giza, and Reisner’s two-volume publication of Kerma finally appeared, a solid archaeological work but hardly free from racist historical interpretation. The Meroe excavations were finished by 1923; a short excavation season at Sheikh Farag, near Naga ed-Deir, was followed by clearance of the Middle Kingdom forts of Semna and Kumma at the Second Cataract. 1924 saw the inaugural season of James Breasted’s Epigraphic Survey at Luxor, the discovery of Djoser’s Third Dynasty Step Pyramid complex at Saqqara, the murder of British officer Sir Lee Stack, and the expedition’s discovery of the Sixth Dynasty tombs of Qar and Idu at Giza. |
