[Published by Minerva Magazine, and reproduced here by permission of Neil Cooke. For further information click here and follow the links to the Theban Mapping programme.]

Burton

James Burton

Recent reports of discoveries in the Valley of the Kings have named James Burton as the first person to enter Tomb KV5 in modern times. While his sketch plan and notes of the tomb can be seen at the British Library, diaries in the collection provide few details of his life. Neil Cooke has spent six years gathering together the facts for a biography. Unlike his contemporaries: Wilkinson, Robert Hay and Lane, James Burton wasn't driven by a scholarly desire to visit Egypt. He went as an excuse for not returning home to fulfil his father's wish that he 'find himself some gainful employment'. Burton's problem was that he was 'of a dilatory nature'. He preferred the unencumbered life of a young man with private means. In fact, just the sort of life he pretended to live in Egypt.

Burton was invited to Egypt by the Pasha, Mohammed Ali, as one component in a plan to modernise the country by taking advantage of technical help offered by an industrialising Europe. His job, as a mineralogist, was found by G B Greenough, a family friend. He was to search for and find coal for if stocks could be made available at both Alexandria and Suez, then the journey time from England to India by steamship could be halved, as would the cost of a ticket, with Egypt earning much needed foreign currency. The Pasha, however, was not told of Burton's inadequacies. Although Greenough could pass as an amateur geologist, Burton was barely able to distinguish one rock from another.

Prior to the years in Egypt, Burton had tried many ways to earn a living. On leaving school, his father, a successful speculative builder, placed him in the office of the architect, John Soane but it was only weeks before the seventeen year old Burton excused himself by declaring that 'he couldn't look at another volume of Palladio'. His attention then shifted to the study of mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, with tuition from the Revd George Tavel who complained that he 'was not a good pupil'. After graduation, his father took him to meet a Captain Bush, hoping the threat of a career in the navy would bring some improvement. It worked, for the young Burton was then articled to a solicitor, Mr Rouppell, with the benefit of bringing with him most of his father's business.

It only took a short while before Burton's dilatory nature reappeared and he took to gambling. A writ was served with a debt attached, which his father discharged, and with Greenough's help, Burton left England for Italy, to take up a post as assistant to Humphrey Davy, then employed in Naples to find a way of unrolling papyri discovered at Pompeii. Laziness prevented Burton from arriving in time to take up the position, so he enjoyed himself waiting for Greenough to arrive and settle his bills. The two men then spent a year travelling about Italy. During one excursion they met Wilkinson and learned of his intention to visit Egypt. Burton, still wishing to avoid his father's ideas on employment, thought travelling around Egypt would make a good alternative.

Burton arrived in Egypt on 8 April 1822, with Charles Humphreys 'his secretary' who had accompanied him from England, and Vicenzo Rosa, a servant they had employed while in Italy. As with other English travellers in Egypt they soon found themselves accepting assistance from Osman, a Scotsman working as an interpreter at the British Consulate. Osman was a master in the art of assimilation and with his help, the three new arrivals purchased clothes and other items which enabled them to pass as Turks. Further purchases by Osman on behalf of Burton were slaves. Initially, there were two Nubian girls bought in 1822 but two years later, Osman acquired for Burton a young Greek or Cretan girl whom he would one day take to England.

Following a meeting with the Pasha, to learn the object of his employment, Burton and his companions went off into the Eastern Desert to search for coal. After a meandering journey, they found themselves in Beni Suef and returned, via the Nile, to Cairo. While this was taking place, Greenough, knowing that Burton was not up to the job, sent him assistance from England in the form of a mining engineer and a chemist. On their arrival in Cairo, a second reconnaissance was made of the Eastern Desert, this time with Wilkinson in the party. A source of coal was not located but Burton found the time to show Wilkinson the Porphyry Quarries he had discovered during his earlier journey.

By April 1824, Burton had been in Egypt for two years, yet he had not visited any of the monuments. What he knew of them he had only read about in books or seen in Wilkinson's sketches. To allow time for studying the ancient remains Burton ended his Contract with the Pasha. In reality, he was dismissed, the Pasha declaring that Burton 'couldn't find a butterfly even if it were on the nose of his horse'. He had been rumbled.

In January 1825, Burton, Humphreys, a group of servants and the slave girls sailed south along the Nile to the area of ancient Thebes. They camped in the Memnonium [Ramesseum or Mortuary Temple of Ramesses II] and visited Medinet Habu [Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III], the Colossi of Memnon [Site of the Temple of Amenophis III] and spent a month in the Valley of the Kings. During this visit Burton entered KV5, where he made measurements for a plan and recorded that 'The tomb is all in a state of ruin. On the ceiling alone which has generally fallen in vast masses are to be seen small remains here and there of colouring. The substance of the rock between the small chambers and the large ones above cannot be more than eighteen inches. Being full of mud and earth the descent from the pillared room to those underneath is not perceptible. The Catacomb must have been excavated very low in the Valley or the Valley very much raised by the accumulation of earth and rubbish brought down by the rains.' [BM AddMs 25642, 25643].

Having exhausted the west bank sites, Burton and his group continued sailing south, landing at Kom Ombos, Aswan and Philae before reaching Abu Simbel in September 1825. On the return journey, the party stopped again in the area of ancient Thebes and camped atop the 1st Pylon of the Temple of Amun-Ra. Over the next few weeks, Burton measured and sketched plans of large parts of the Temple. He also excavated around the Granite Sanctuary, finding the bronze hinges still on display in the British Museum.

His appetite for the antique satisfied, Burton returned to Cairo where he acquired a printing press. With help from Humphreys, Joseph Bonomi, Lord Prudhoe and Colonel Orlando Felix, he made his first printed work, the Excerpta Hieroglyphica — a collection of fairly accurate copies of hieroglyphic inscriptions. Making the plates and printing occupied Burton and his friends for a number of years and as each of the four sections was completed they were sent to scholars all over Europe.

[Burton's other, but unaccredited, work did not appear until his return to England when he put the text to Robert Hay's Views of Cairo.]

On completing the Excerpta there followed a short trip into the Delta region. When he returned, Burton leased a house on the outskirts of Cairo. Lane wrote to Hay 'it has a small garden between it and the lake where I suppose he will plant sycamores and wait for them to grow up. His father has received nothing from him lately but those short notes called drafts or bills of exchange'. By now, they had rumbled him also. Simultaneously, Burton decided to spend the next five years camped in the Eastern Desert with Humphreys, the servants and slave girls for company. What he did during those years remains a mystery. Burton's father discontinued the allowance that enabled him to stay in Egypt and he was kept by an ever increasing loan from Greenough.

Towards the end of 1833, Burton took the decision to return to England. Naturally, he set off with Humphreys but he also took along the Egyptian servants and the Greek slave girl, plus a menagerie of animals, including a giraffe. For the sea voyage to Italy, to prevent the giraffe falling over, it was suspended in a canvas sling with holes for each leg. After a few months quarantine, the whole menagerie transferred to Marseilles and then to Paris before setting out in December 1834 for Calais where, within sight of a boat to England, the giraffe slipped on a patch of ice, broke a leg and died.

Although appearing happy at having him home, his family soon realised what a burden he was to them. At the age of forty seven, he had no property, no money and no means of earning any. He also had a sizeable household to maintain. Without a giraffe to sell, writing commissions, such as Views of Cairo, provided him with a limited income, but on the death of both his parents a small annual allowance must have been offered upon which he was able to survive.

To repay the debt to Greenough, Burton decided to offer his collection of Egyptian antiquities and Books in Arabic for sale. The auction took place at Sothebys and many lots were acquired by the British Museum, Lord Prudhoe and other collectors. Annoyingly for Burton, Sothebys went bankrupt within a few days of the sale and were unable to pay him, their business being in hands of the receiver. Unfortunately, he was also unable to get any money from the British Museum and the other purchasers as they had already settled their accounts with Sothebys.

One antiquity, however, had been kept back from the sale. A mummy and cartonnage were retained by Greenough, probably as a first instalment on repaying the debt. They were displayed in a 'Mummy Room' at his house in the Regent's Park as part of a collection shown to after dinner guests in order to stimulate conversation. Eventually, Greenough must have tired of it and found a new owner through an after dinner raffle. The mummy was won by Edmund Hopkinson, a banker married to James Burton's younger sister and was given a place in their Gloucestershire home. After the customary 'unwrapping' to the accompaniment of a brass band, the mummy was given to the new Gloucester Museum. It is now at Liverpool as the replacement for another mummy lost in an air-raid on the museum during World War II.

As with his last five years in Egypt, the remaining third of his life is also something of a mystery. It is not until a year or two before his death, in 1862, that he is recorded at an address in Edinburgh. Before that, he may have been living in Newhaven, a small coastal village nearby, perhaps being supported by Hay or Lord Prudhoe. In the intervening years, he had divided his time between the homes of his brothers in London and St Leonard's on Sea. One useful piece of evidence remains from this period — a family tree, and this was recently found in a box, in the attic of a house just outside New York. Research would have taken Burton all over the United Kingdom with the single purpose of proving he was related to Sir Walter Scott. It can only be assumed he hoped to gain some income by a claim on Scott's estate.

Robert Hay was an executor of Burton's Will and paid from his own pocket a debt owed to Bonomi since the 1830s. The following year, his journals and drawings of Egypt were given to the British Museum but only after the family had removed pictures and details of named individuals. It was as if the family wished to remove their connection to James Burton and his friends. Much the same view as they took when supplying details for the entry in the Dictionary of National Biography from which they omitted the fact he was married.

Burton was survived by his Greek slave girl, Andreana, whom he married at some time or other. She was visited by the family and offered an allowance of £200 a year provided she renounced any claim on the family estate. With no other source of income on which to live, she acquiesced. Being that much younger, she outlived her husband by twenty-two years. It is impossible not to think of Andreana, alone for her last years and moving around Edinburgh to ever smaller houses, yet she knew more about James Burton than his family ever did. It is tantalising to speculate that she may have kept a journal of her own. Like so many items from Burton's life, it remains to be found.


Last modified 10 December 2002