Did this grasshopper come from the tomb of Tutankhamun? - Apollo Magazine
- Apollo Auctions
- Jul 21
- 1 min read
18th July 2025
On 27 July, a London auction house will attempt to sell an exquisite 3,300-year-old Egyptian painted ivory grasshopper. Under9cm long and estimated at £300,000–£500,000, it spent more than 50 years on display in a major museum and passed through the hands of renowned archaeologists, dealers, collectors and royalty. Some experts also believe that it comes from the tomb of Tutankhamun. The Guennol Grasshopper, as it is known, takes its name from the collection formed from the 1940s onwards by Alastair BradleyMartin, heir to a Pittsburgh steel fortune(‘gwennol’ is Welsh for martin). He purchased ahead of the curve and exhibited and published his collections astutely.‘Guennol’ objects have long been sought after by younger collectors anxious to establish a name for themselves. The Guennol Lioness, a 5,000-year-old Iranian
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Apollo Auctions stated that ‘The connection to Tutankhamun’s tomb is a recent scholarly hypothesis and not an established fact, and as such does not constitute legal or historical proof.’ It added, ‘There is no excavation photograph of this item in the tomb, Carter never listed it in the inventory, [and] no definitive documentation proving it came from KV62’. Apollo Auctions said it had carried out ‘extensive due diligence before listing the piece for auction and received a certificate of clearance confirming that the item had not been stolen or looted. In the printed catalogue for the auction, page 8 says that the grasshopper is ‘believed to be among the “known and potential strays” from the tomb of Tutankhamun, and once part of the collection of the late Howard Carter’.
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