The Man Who Sold the Lost Queen's Ring

#002: An American in Cairo and a mystery for the ages

Dear Reader,

Nothing says “crammed with cool ancient Egyptian stuff” like the tomb of glitzy boy-king Tutankhamun, discovered in 1922 by archaeologist Howard Carter and his sponsor, Lord Carnarvon. Mountains of gold and priceless artifacts came out of one of the most complete tombs ever excavated in Egypt in modern times.¹

But unless you were an archeologist (or tomb robber) yourself, the only place in 1920s Egypt where you could get your hands on a similarly fabulous collection was Mr. Blanchard’s Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Located right next door to the celebrated Shepheard’s Hotel, described by Anthony Trollope in 1860 as the place “where the English tongue in Egypt finds its centre,” the “museum” was really the establishment of American antiques dealer Ralph Huntington Blanchard.² An obscure figure today, Blanchard rubbed shoulders with almost every archaeologist and well-heeled tourist in Egypt for a good thirty years.

Blanchard may not have been able to compete with the famous Howard Carter in the literary field—compare Carter’s immortal description of first looking into Tutankhamun’s tomb (“details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold—everywhere the glint of gold”) with Blanchard’s concise introduction to his 1909 guide to amulets (“the great staring eyes of a cow and her peaceful demeanour [sic] impel a strange feeling upon the beholder”)—but the businessman may have helped uncover a vital clue to unraveling the mystery of what happened to King Tut’s wife.

First, a quick lore recap: after the death of his heretic father Akhenaten, Tutankhamun restored the normalsauce Egyptian religion, had a cool tomb built, and then died around the age of nineteen. He was succeeded as pharaoh by his advisor Ay (who is shown wearing the royal crown and presiding at Tutankhamun’s funeral in the latter’s tomb paintings). But Ay wasn’t of royal descent, scholars asked, so how did he become pharaoh?³

Egyptologist Percy Newberry thought he found the smoking gun in early 1931. In an article the following year he described how “Mr. Blanchard of Cairo acquired last spring, from an unknown site in the Delta, a blue glass finger-ring” engraved with the royal cartouches of both Ay and Tut’s young widow Ankhesenamun.⁴ Newberry confidently assumed that this meant that Ay had married Ankhesenamun to legitimize his reign.⁵

Sinister-sounding evidence of this marriage exists in the Hittite royal archives, which contain a contemporaneous letter from an Egyptian queen telling the King of the Hittites that her husband had died and asking for one of his royal sons to marry: “Never shall I pick out a servant of mine and make him my husband!....…I am afraid.”⁶ Egyptologists like Bob Brier believe that the “servant” here refers to Ay, pressuring the young widow into an unwanted second marriage.⁷

Not everyone buys this theory. For one, Ay’s wife Tiy, not Ankhesenamun, appears on the walls of his tomb.⁸ Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley is also skeptical that Akhenesenamun even wrote the Hittite letter, suggesting it might have been “part of a plot, hatched either at the Hittite court or the Egyptian one” to cause conflict among the Hittite powers-that-be or between the Egyptians and the Hittites.⁹ We don’t know how long Ankhesenamun lived after her husband died or if she remarried at all. To this day, her tomb has never been located.

We don’t even have the ring Newberry saw in 1931. He didn’t buy it, and it probably disappeared into the steamer trunk of one of Ralph Blanchard’s well-to-do customers, never to be seen again. The Berlin Museum purchased a similar double-cartouche ring of Ay and Ankhesenamun in 1973—also of murky provenance—but this one is made from a different color glass.¹⁰

Both of these rings are a little mysterious, and Tyldesley even suggests the Newberry ring might be a forgery.¹¹ What do we know of the man who sold it?

Modest and industrious, Ralph Blanchard arrived in Egypt in 1900 to work as a messenger for American Consul-General James G. Long.¹² After a jaunt with a private expedition to explore the possibility of growing cotton in Sudan, he set up an antiquities business, and his mother came over from New York in 1904 to help.¹³

Blanchard was well-established enough by 1906 to feature in a piece by American humorist George Ade. On a junket to Cairo, Ade’s conceit was finding a papyrus and having Blanchard, “an American who is noted as an antiquarian, Egyptologist, and mummy collector” translate it. The “startled” but meticulous Blanchard translates Ade’s (fictional) papyrus, in part: “Rameses Second is a Smooth Citizen. His Foxy Scheme is to bunko Posterity.”¹⁴

In real life, Blanchard never let this little brush with fame go to his head. Acquaintances recalled him as “a quiet, retiring, unostentatious personality,” a man who “could never be induced” to show off his expertise by delivering public lectures, and a bachelor devoted to his trade and to his mother until her death in 1925.¹⁵ His obituary in the Belgian journal Chronique d’Égypte describes him as “courteous,” and your purchase from Blanchard’s always came with a little typed card describing the item and closing with the promise “guaranteed genuine, R.H. Blanchard.”¹⁶

You might want to take that “guaranteed genuine” with a grain of natron, though. Blanchard occasionally did business with Armenian antiquities dealer and forger Oxnan Aslanian, who may have retouched a pair of sandstone statues that Blanchard sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.¹⁷ At least one other known forgery acquired from Blanchard is in the collections of the British Museum.¹⁸ Whether Blanchard was aware of any of these forgeries isn’t clear—contemporary George Reisner, a titan of Egyptian archaeology, regarded him as fastidiously honest.¹⁹

Blanchard died of pneumonia in Cairo in 1936.²⁰ Appropriately enough for someone who made his living off of ancient Egypt, his collection of antiquities had an eventful afterlife. During World War II, an American team moved his collection into an empty tomb in the Valley of the Kings to protect it from the Nazis.²¹ According to the wife of the American Consul-General, after the war Blanchard’s collection went on to save a Yugoslav diplomat in Egypt: she claims the American University in Cairo put him in charge of selling the collection so he wouldn’t have to go home to the now-hostile government of Josep Broz Tito.²²

But let’s return now to that other casualty of regime change, poor Ankhesenamun. What became of her after Tutankhamun’s death? Did Ay have a Foxy Scheme to make himself king, or did someone—ancient or modern, cunning or misunderstanding—bunko Posterity with a double-cartouche ring?

Sincerely,

Miss Remember

YOUR HOMEWORK

Find your favorite Blanchard-acquired antique in the collections of the British Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago (or elsewhere) and drop it in the comments.

APPENDIX A: Newberry’s Ring Transcription

Fig I. in Percy Edward Newberry, “King Ay, the Successor of Tut'ankhamūn,” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 18, No. 1/2 (May 1932), pp. 50-52, https://doi.org/10.2307/3854904.

APPENDIX B: Blanchard’s Eulogy

Charles Watson, “The Late Mr. R.H. Blanchard: Dr. C.R. Watson’s Tribute,” The Egyptian Gazette [Cairo, Egypt], July 24, 1936.

APPENDIX B: George Reisner’s Tribute to Blanchard

George Reisner, “The Late Mr. R. H. Blanchard,” The Egyptian Gazette [Cairo, Egypt], July 25, 1936.

SOURCES

PRIMARY

• Ade, George. “In and Around Luxor with a Side Light on Rameses the Great.” In Ade, In Pastures New. Toronto, CA: The Musson Book Company, 1906. Accessed online through Project Gutenberg (produced by Al Haines): https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/38364/pg38364-images.html#chap17.

• Blanchard, R.H. Handbook of Egyptian Gods and Mummy Amulets. Cairo, Egypt: 1909. Accessed online through the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/HandbookOfEgyptianGodsAndMummyAmulets/blanchard-r-handbook-1909-00008127-LowRes/.

• Carter, Howard and A.C. Mace. The Tomb of Tut-ankh-Amen, vol. I. New York: George H. Doran Company, 1923. Accessed online through the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/tomboftutankhame00cart_1/mode/2up.

• “Fall Causes Death.” Twice-a-Week Plain Dealer [Cresco, Howard County, Iowa]. July 31, 1903, image 4. Accessed online through Chronicling America: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn88059319/1903-07-31/ed-1/seq-4/.

• “Grand Tour Souvenirs.” J. Wiss & Sons Co., Newark, NJ: 1848-1976, Scans of Vintage Catalogs, Books, Ephemera, Mementos, Ads, Etc. [created and maintained by Don Wiss]. http://jwissandsons.com/family/grand-tour/scarabs.htm.

• Güterbock, Hans Gustav. “The Deeds of Suppiluliuma as Told by His Son, Mursili II.” Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol. 10, No. 3 (1956), pp. 75-98. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1359312.

• Head and shoulders of a man from a Pair Statue (New Kingdom), Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession number 13.182.1a, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/548635.

• “Hospital as Her Memorial.” The Omaha Daily Bee [Omaha, NE]. March 9, 1901. Accessed online through Chronicling America: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn99021999/1901-03-09/ed-1/seq-1/.

• “King Tut, Ruler of White House Kennels, Is Dead.” The Evening Star [Washington, D.C.]. June 4, 1930, page B-1, image 17. Accessed online through Chronicling America: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1930-06-04/ed-1/seq-17/.

• Miller-Degenfeld, Marie Therese. Memoirs of Marie Therese Miller-Degenfeld: An International Life in the Twentieth Century. Victoria, BC: Trafford Publishing, 2005.

• “MME. BRANKO ADJEMOVITCH" [photo caption]. The Evening Star [Washington, D.C.]. August 30, 1924. Accessed online through Chronicling America: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1924-08-30/ed-1/seq-7/.

• “Nécrologie: R. H. Blanchard.” Chronique d’Égypte (Bulletin Périodique de la Fondation Égyptologique Reine Elisabeth) 24 (July 1937), p. 229.

• Newberry, Percy Edward. “King Ay, the Successor of Tut'ankhamūn.” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology Vol. 18, No. 1/2 (May 1932), pp. 50-52. https://doi.org/10.2307/3854904.

• “Obituary: James G. Long, Cairo, Egypt.” The Savannah Morning News [Savannah, GA]. July 29, 1903, page 5, image 5. Accessed online through Chronicling America: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89053684/1903-07-29/ed-1/seq-5/.

• Anna Louise Blanchard death report. April 13, 1925. Record Group 59, General Records of the Department of State, 1763 - 2002, Series Number: Publication A1 205; Box Number: 1761; Box Description: 1930-1939 Egypt Bl - Z. U.S. National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD. Accessed online through Ancestry.com.

• Ralph Huntington Blanchard death report. July 23rd, 1936. Record Group 59, General Records of the Department of State, 1763 - 2002, Series Number: Publication A1 205; Box Number: 1761; Box Description: 1930-1939 Egypt Bl - Z. U.S. National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD. Accessed online through Ancestry.com.

• Reisner, George. “The Late Mr. R. H. Blanchard.” The Egyptian Gazette [Cairo, Egypt]. July 25, 1936.

• Scarab (forgery), British Museum, museum number EA64770, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA64770.

• Sheppard, Kathleen L., ed. My dear Miss Ransom: Letters between Caroline Ransom Williams and James Henry Breasted, 1898-1935. Oxford, UK: Archaeopress, 2018.

• “State News Items.” The Florida Star [Titusville, FL]. July 27, 1900. Accessed online through Chronicling America: <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn96027111/1900-07-27/ed-1/seq-1/.

• Trollope, Anthony. “An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids.” Transcribed by David Price from Trollope, Tales of All Countries (London, UK: Chapman and Hall, 1864). Accessed online through Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3710/pg3710-images.html.

• U.S. Consular Registration for Ralph Huntington Blanchard, June 13, 1918. Consular Registration Applications, 1916-1925. NAID: 1251970. Record Group 59, General Records of the Department of State, 1763 - 2002. U.S. National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD. Accessed online through Ancestry.com.

• Watson, Charles. “The Late Mr. R.H. Blanchard: Dr. C.R. Watson’s Tribute.” The Egyptian Gazette [Cairo, Egypt]. July 24, 1936.

• “Wedding Announcements: Alice Jane Schmidt—Arthur Jay Sachs.” The Washington Post and Times Herald. August 29, 1958. Accessed online through ProQuest Historical Newspapers: 149109118.

• “Withdraws Charges Against Italians.” The San Francisco Call [San Francisco, CA]. December 23, 1901, page 2, image 2. Accessed online through Chronicling America: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1901-12-23/ed-1/seq-2/.

SECONDARY

• Brier, Bob. “Who killed King Tut?” Times Higher Education. April 10, 1998. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/who-killed-king-tut/106805.article.

• Cormack, Raphael. “Life was a cabaret – the Roaring Twenties in Cairo.” Apollo: The International Art Magazine. January 6 2020. https://www.apollo-magazine.com/roaring-twenties-cairo/.

  • “How Cairo Became a Cosmopolitan Destination in the 1920s.” Literary Hub. March 18, 2021. https://lithub.com/how-cairo-became-a-cosmopolitan-destination-in-the-1920s/

• Darnell, Colleen Manassa. “Transition 18th-19th Dynasty.” UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. June 2015. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0b9005fw.

• Fiechter, Jean-Jacques. Egyptian Fakes: Masterpieces That Duped the Art World and the Experts Who Uncovered Them. Paris, France: Flammarion, 2009. Accessed online through the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/egyptianfakesmas0000fiec/page/n7/mode/2up.

• Evans, Elaine Altman. “Edward Libbey: An American Glass Magnate Collects in Egypt.” In Souvenirs and New Ideas: Travel and Collecting in the Egypt and Near East, Diane Fortenberry, ed. Oxford, UK: Oxbow Books, 2013.

• “Leigh Hunt (1854-1933), Adventuresome Capitalist.” Far Outliers. June 5, 2004. https://faroutliers.blogspot.com/2004/06/leigh-s-j-hunt-1854-1933-adventuresome.html.

• Ikram, Salima. “Mummification.” UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. September 2010. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0gn7x3ff.

• Jarus, Owen. “Who Ruled Ancient Egypt after King Tut Died?” Live Science. April 1, 2023. https://www.livescience.com/who-ruled-ancient-egypt-after-king-tut-died.

• Der Manuelian, Peter. Walking Among Pharaohs: George Reisner and the Dawn of Modern Egyptology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2022.

• Schaden, Otto J. “Clearance of the Tomb of King Ay (WV-23).” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Vol. 21 (1984), pp. 39-64. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40000956.

• Searle, Peter. “General Data Re: Egypt, Page 2: Shepheard’s Hotel.” SearleCanada.org. https://www.searlecanada.org/misc/egypt2.html.

• Tyldesley, Joyce. Tutankhamun: The Search for an Egyptian King. New York: Basic, 2012.

  • Tutankhamun: Pharaoh, Icon, Enigma. London, UK: Headline Publishing, 2022.

• Williamson, Jacquelyn. “Amarna Period.” UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. June 2015. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/77s6r0zr.

• Wilson, Penelope. “The Nile Delta.” In The Egyptian World, ed. Toby Wilkinson. London: Routledge, 2007. Accessed online through Taylor & Francis Group: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203820933-10/nile-delta-penelope-wilson.

• Witcombe, Christopher L.C.E. “3. The Queen’s Husband.” In “Menkaure and His Queen.” Art History Resources on the Web. 2000. http://arthistoryresources.net/menkaure/menkaurequeen.html.
  

1. Even future president Herbert Hoover named a dog King Tut: “King Tut, Ruler of White House Kennels, Is Dead,” The Evening Star [Washington, D.C.]. June 4, 1930, accessed online through Chronicling America: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1930-06-04/ed-1/seq-17/.

2. Anthony Trollope, “An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids,” transcribed by David Price from Trollope, Tales of All Countries (London, UK: Chapman and Hall, 1864), accessed online through Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3710/pg3710-images.html; Peter Searle, “General Data Re: Egypt, Page 2: Shepheard’s Hotel,” SearleCanada.org, https://www.searlecanada.org/misc/egypt2.html.

For a picture of Blanchard’s shop, see Elaine Altman Evans, “Edward Libbey: An American Glass Magnate Collects in Egypt,” in Souvenirs and New Ideas: Travel and Collecting in the Egypt and Near East (Diane Fortenberry, ed., Oxford, UK: Oxbow Books, 2013), 27. The Google Books preview will get you there, too, but don’t search for “Blanchard” or any other term. Just start at the beginning of the preview and scroll down to Figure 3.2.

3. Colleen Manassa Darnell, “Transition 18th-19th Dynasty,” UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. June 2015, 2, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0b9005fw.

4. Percy Edward Newberry, “King Ay, the Successor of Tut'ankhamūn,” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology Vol. 18, No. 1/2 (May 1932), pp. 50-52, 50, https://doi.org/10.2307/3854904. In a 1931 letter to Howard Carter, Newberry specifies the ring “was found somewhere in the Eastern Delta” (as quoted in Bob Brier, “Who killed King Tut?” Times Higher Education, April 10, 1998, https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/who-killed-king-tut/106805.article).

5. The notion that Ay had to marry Akhesenamun to become king runs up against a longstanding Egyptological controversy known as the “heiress theory”—the idea that royal legitimacy descended through the female line. See Christopher L.C.E. Witcombe, “3. The Queen’s Husband,” in “Menkaure and His Queen,” Art History Resources on the Web, 2000, http://arthistoryresources.net/menkaure/menkaurequeen.html. Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley (recently interviewed, by the way, on Cunk on Earth) describes the heiress theory as “entirely erroneous” (Tyldesley, Tutankhamun: The Search for an Egyptian King [New York: Basic, 2012], 165). As a dilettante, I can rate this one a shrug emoji and move on. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

6. Hans Gustav Güterbock, “The Deeds of Suppiluliuma as Told by His Son, Mursili II,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol. 10, No. 3 (1956), pp. 75-98, 94, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1359312.

7. Brier, “Who killed King Tut?”.

8. Otto J. Schaden, “Clearance of the Tomb of King Ay (WV-23),” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Vol. 21 (1984), pp. 39-64, 58, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40000956.

9. As quoted in Owen Jarus, “Who Ruled Ancient Egypt after King Tut Died?”, Live Science, April 1, 2023, https://www.livescience.com/who-ruled-ancient-egypt-after-king-tut-died. She elaborates on the trap/hoax theory in Tutankhamun: Pharaoh, Icon, Enigma (London, UK: Headline Publishing, 2022), 141.

10. Many thanks to Jessica Knebel of the Berlin Museum, who provided me extremely helpful information on this ring.

11. Tyldesley 2022, 137. Tyldesley offers two other explanations for the existence of the Ay-Ankhesenamun rings: an ancient scrivener’s error on the part of the artisan who created the mold for the ring, or the reflection of “an amicable relationship between Ay and Ankhesenamun.”

12. Long was a Floridian whose short but enjoyable tenure in Egypt included a project to build a hospital in Cairo in memory of Queen Victoria and accusing the Italian diplomatic corps of slave trading in Eritrea. Long died in July 1903 in Scotland, after slipping and falling at the residence of a British colonial official.

See: “State News Items,” The Florida Star [Titusville, FL], July 27, 1900, accessed online through Chronicling America: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn96027111/1900-07-27/ed-1/seq-1/; “Hospital as Her Memorial,” The Omaha Daily Bee [Omaha, NE], March 9, 1901, accessed online through Chronicling America: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn99021999/1901-03-09/ed-1/seq-1/; “Withdraws Charges Against Italians,” The San Francisco Call [San Francisco, CA]. December 23, 1901, page 2, image 2, accessed online through Chronicling America: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1901-12-23/ed-1/seq-2/; “Obituary: James G. Long, Cairo, Egypt.” The Savannah Morning News [Savannah, GA], July 29, 1903, page 5, image 5, accessed online through Chronicling America: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89053684/1903-07-29/ed-1/seq-5/; “Fall Causes Death,” Twice-a-Week Plain Dealer [Cresco, Howard County, Iowa], July 31, 1903, image 4, accessed online through Chronicling America: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn88059319/1903-07-31/ed-1/seq-4/.

13. U.S. Consular Registration for Ralph Huntington Blanchard, June 13, 1918, Consular Registration Applications, 1916-1925, NAID: 1251970, Record Group 59, General Records of the Department of State, 1763 - 2002, U.S. National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD, accessed online through Ancestry.com.

Growing cotton in Sudan was an adventure of American businessman Leigh Hunt (not the earlier English poet who writes rather charmingly of a fish). This one made his fortune mining gold in Korea: “Leigh S. J. Hunt (1854-1933), Adventuresome Capitalist,” Far Outliers, June 5, 2004, https://faroutliers.blogspot.com/2004/06/leigh-s-j-hunt-1854-1933-adventuresome.html.

14. George Ade, “In and Around Luxor with a Side Light on Rameses the Great” in Ade, In Pastures New (Toronto, CA: The Musson Book Company, 1906), accessed online through Project Gutenberg (produced by Al Haines): https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/38364/pg38364-images.html#chap17. (Be warned that one of the illustrations for this article contains typical early 20th-century-style racial caricatures.)

If you’re wondering what your hip turn-of-the-20th-century ancestors may have sounded like, the fictionalized Blanchard then takes Ade’s papyrus to other experts to confirm his translation, who agree that “there was no getting away from ‘scraps’ and ‘butt in’ and ‘dope out’ and other characters which seemed to have somewhat of a modern flavor.” (Ade was also the author of 1899’s Fables in Slang.)

15. Personality and bachelorhood, see Charles Watson, “The Late Mr. R.H. Blanchard: Dr. C.R. Watson’s Tribute,” The Egyptian Gazette [Cairo, Egypt]. July 24, 1936; turning down lecture invitations, see George Reisner, “The Late Mr. R. H. Blanchard,” The Egyptian Gazette [Cairo, Egypt]. July 25, 1936.

16. “Nécrologie: R. H. Blanchard,” Chronique d’Égypte (Bulletin Périodique de la Fondation Égyptologique Reine Elisabeth) 24 (July 1937), p. 229; for an example of a Blanchard certificate, see: “Grand Tour Souvenirs,” J. Wiss & Sons Co., Newark, NJ: 1848-1976, Scans of Vintage Catalogs, Books, Ephemera, Mementos, Ads, Etc., [created and maintained by Don Wiss], http://jwissandsons.com/family/grand-tour/scarabs.htm.

If you’re interested in footage of Egypt in the 1920s, check out the incredible digitized “Grand Tour” film made by the Wiss family (Egypt begins 27:40):

17. Jean-Jacques Fiechter, Egyptian Fakes: Masterpieces That Duped the Art World and the Experts Who Uncovered Them (Paris, France: Flammarion, 2009), 75-76, accessed online through the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/egyptianfakesmas0000fiec/page/n7/mode/2up. Fiechter’s verdict on Blanchard and his associates: “though apparently not crossing into forgery in the beginning, it was not long before the mark was overstepped in the restoration of antique pieces too badly damaged for sale and the trade in fully fledged fakes” (Fiechter, 95).

I believe these to be the same items referenced by Fiechter, but I haven’t been able to confirm with the Met: Head and shoulders of a man from a Pair Statue (New Kingdom), Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession number 13.182.1a, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/548635.

18. Scarab (forgery), British Museum, museum number EA64770, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA64770.

19. Reisner, “The Late Mr. R. H. Blanchard.” At least two other contemporary archaeologists were more skeptical of Blanchard: Herbert Winlock, on a reconnaissance mission for the Metropolitan Museum in 1920, uncovered the Aslanian association (see Fiechter, 75), and Caroline Ransom Williams “hesitated a little as to [the] genuineness” of some items in his shop in 1927, which irked Blanchard (Caroline Ransom Williams to James Henry Breasted, April 11, 1927, as published in My dear Miss Ransom: Letters between Caroline Ransom Williams and James Henry Breasted, 1898-1935 [ed. Kathleen Sheppard, Oxford, UK: Archaeopress, 2018], 187-189, 187.

Thank you to Dr. Peter Der Manuelian for leading me to Blanchard’s obituaries and the collection’s tomb and for helping me access Marie-Therese Miller-Degenfeld’s memoirs (referenced below).

20. Ralph Huntington Blanchard death report, July 23rd, 1936, Record Group 59, General Records of the Department of State, 1763 - 2002, Series Number: Publication A1 205; Box Number: 1761; Box Description: 1930-1939 Egypt Bl - Z, U.S. National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD, accessed online through Ancestry.com.

21. Peter Der Manuelian, Walking Among Pharaohs: George Reisner and the Dawn of Modern Egyptology (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2022), 779.

22. Marie-Therese Miller-Degenfeld, Memoirs of Marie Therese Miller-Degenfeld: An International Life in the Twentieth Century (Victoria, BC: Trafford Publishing, 2005), 280. Serbian diplomat Branko Adjemovitch and his wife Aspasia did end up returning to Washington, D.C. area by the 1950s (they had done a stint in D.C. in the ‘20s), but I haven’t been able to figure out exactly when.

For the Adjemovitchs in ‘20s Washington, see: “MME. BRANKO ADJEMOVITCH" [photo caption], The Evening Star [Washington, D.C.], August 30, 1924, accessed online through Chronicling America: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1924-08-30/ed-1/seq-7/). For their presence in D.C. in the ‘50s, see: “Wedding Announcements: Alice Jane Schmidt—Arthur Jay Sachs,” The Washington Post and Times Herald, August 29, 1958, accessed online through ProQuest Historical Newspapers: 149109118. One of their daughters married a scion of Virginia’s Ambler family.

And finally, congratulations for making it to the last footnote. Here’s a joke: if you met a French archaeologist in Egypt and really hit it off, you could say you had tout in common.