Updated November 26, 2018

Ninety six years ago, many believed all the royal tombs in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings had been discovered. However, English archaeologist Howard Carter thought there might be one last find, an obscure New Kingdom child pharaoh named Tutankhamun (1332 BC- 1323 BC).[1] Out of 170 known kings and pharaohs of Egypt, none had been discovered in an intact tomb. The looting became such a problem, Egyptian priests in circa 930 BC had hurriedly gathered most royal mummies and secretly re-buried them in a cave with none of their possessions. Many mummies were severely damaged and some were even re-interred in the wrong sarcophagi.

Howard Carter began his career in Egypt at the age of 17 as part of a British survey of Queen Hatshepsut’s temple in Thebes as an illustrator. Later he oversaw the excavations of Hatshepsut and Thutmose IV as Inspector General of the Egyptian Antiquities Department. In the process he uncovered a few artifacts with the name Tutankhamun. Tutankhamun was not on any list of Egyptian rulers because of his short reign and controversial father, Amenhotep IV.

Tutankhamun’s father fundamentally changed Egyptian religion discarding the traditional polytheistic beliefs in many gods in favor of a single major god, Aten. Amenhotep went so far as to change his name to Akhenaten. He named his son and successor Tutankhaten (“Living Image of Aten”). Akhenaten’s change in religious beliefs were deeply unpopular. Upon Akhenaten’s death, the new nine year old, Tutankhaten changed his name to Tutankhamun to appease the people signaling that he was returning Egypt’s religious traditions.

In spite of Tutankhamun’s reforms, Egyptians removed his and his father’s names and images form temples and their lists of rulers to erase Akhenaten’s sacrilege. By the dawn of the 20th century, Egyptologists had confirmed Akhenaten’s reign but little evidence of Tutankhamun existed and no mummy had never been found. In 1914, Carter secured financing from English philanthropist George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon to conduct a five-year search for the missing pharaoh. Frustratingly, World War I forced Carter to suspend work for four years.

In 1918, Carter began again working for four more years with no success. On November 4, 1922, as time was running out, a water boy shifted rock scrapings on the ground with his foot and noticed a stone slab. Carter was summoned and after digging further, Carter unearthed the first step of a stone staircase descending into the Earth to a passage tunneled out of the bedrock. At the end of the tunnel, Carter found a plaster door with the intact seal of Tutankhamun.

After nine years, Carter stood before plaster door at the end of a stone cut subterranean tunnel after years of patient work. He knew he was on the verge of an important and unique find. Yet even then he had to wait, proceeding without Lord Carnarvon would not be right. Carter telegraphed Lord Carnarvon to come immediately. Carnarvon had to travel by boat from England which took another maddening 19 days. Finally, with Carnarvon standing directly behind him on November 26, 1922, Carter chiseled a hole in the door and extended a candle into the darkness. After a few tense moments of silence, Carnarvon asked: “Can you see anything?” Carter responded simply: “Yes, wonderful things.” Howard Carter had just discovered the intact tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun and it did indeed contain wonderful things.

The faint smell of perfume met Carter and Lord Carnarvon as they entered the first room. In the dust on the floor, they could see 3,000 year-old footprints of tomb builders. The tomb consisted of four rooms. Carter had first glimpsed the largest room an antechamber with three royal beds, a golden chariot, a pharaonic throne, ornate trunks, board games, boxes, vases, jars and other items. A small sealed room to one side contained everyday furniture, oils, perfumes, food, wine and water in sealed vases.

To the opposite side a sealed plaster door guarded by two statues of Tutankhamun contained the greatest find. Four golden shrines inscribed with hieroglyphics almost filled the room. Inside the shrines lay three progressively smaller sarcophagi. At the center Carter uncovered the most precious treasure, the golden mask of Tutankhamun on his mummified remains.

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Next to the sarcophagus room, Carter discovered another chamber with black statue of the jackal god Anubis atop a golden shrine standing sentinel. Behind Anubis lay Tutankhamun’s treasures and canopic jars (containing Tutankhamun’s removed internal organs inside a beautiful golden box guarded by the outstretched arms four gold statues of Tutankhamun’s wife. Numerous intricately carved boat models lined one wall and on the other side, stood several miniature statues of Tutankhamun hunting or engaging in some other activity.

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Carter spent eight years painstakingly excavating and meticulously documenting the thousands of artifacts revealing a wealth of information about everyday life, religious beliefs and burial practices of the Egyptians. The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 by Howard Carter is the most significant archaeological find in Egypt. Carter’s 20+ years of determined but careful work electrified the world creating a fascination with Egyptology and study of the ancient world that continues today.

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[1] Tomb desecration caused Egyptian rulers to hide their tombs over time. For some perspective, the Egyptian Empire began circa 3,000 BC. In the earliest years kings were buried in trapezoidal shaped mastabas and then pyramids in the Old Kingdom (2,686 BC- 2,134 BC). Middle Kingdom rulers built (2,050 BC- 1,800 BC) built mortuary temples further up the Nile at places like Dar-el-Bari. Many New Kingdom (circa 1,570 BC – 1070 BC) pharaohs such as Tutankhamun were interred in underground tombs in the Valley of the Kings which was distant from Egyptian population centers. The New Kingdom rulers hoped the remote location would prevent grave robbing and desecration, but even these extreme measures mostly failed.

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