The tomb of Tutankhamen, located just a few yards from the great tomb of Ramesses VI
About 40 years after the finding of Deir-el Bahri cache, another discovery shook not only the world of Egyptology, but caught the imagination of a much wider public.
In Nov. 1922, the English archaeologist Howard Carter opened the virtually intact tomb of a largely unknown pharaoh: Tutankhamen. Carter born in Kensington, England and was on his way to joining father's profession, commerial artist, when he was hired in 1891 by Egyptologist Percy Newberry to finish a series of drawings of reliefs Newberry had made in Egypt.
Carter then travelled to Egypt, where he worked for the Egyptian Exploration Fund, a society founded in London to promote archaeology in Egypt, and as an assistant to the celebrate archaeologist William Flind making facsimiles at the temple Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri, copying reliefs and executing a number of watercolour drawings. Although Carter had never taken a degree, he was highly thought of by Gaston Maspero, the successor to Mariette as the head of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, and was offered the job of Inspector-General of Monuments in Upper Egypt, with headquarters at Luxor.
He continued as an inspector until 1905, when he resigned following a dispute with a party of French tourists visiting the Serapeum at Saqqara.
In 1907, Carter met Lord Carnarvon, a wealthy English aristocrat with a passion for archaeology, who hired Carter to work for him. Carter and Carnarvon carried out a number of excavations, making interesting though not spectacular discoveries, when, in 1914, they received from the Egyptian Antiquities Service a licence to dig in the Valley of the Kings.
Until the previous year, the American enthusiast Theodore Davis had been working there. Davis had declared the site to be exhausted from an archaeological point of view; Carter, on the other hand, piecing together the evidence, felt certain that the valley still held the tomb of a pharaoh called Tutankhamen, whose name had been found on a stela uncovered at the temple of Karnak, and on a number of artifacts found in the Valley itself by Davis.
The outbreak of the World War I prevented Carter from proceeding, and he was only able to begin work in 1917, in the area between the tomb of Ramesses II and that of Ramesses VI. Not far from the latter tomb, he discovered the remains of huts used by the workers who had built this tomb.
Carter soon stopped excavating these structures, and decided to investigate instead the immediately surrounding areas. This work, which went on in campaign after annual campaign, lasted until 1921, when still nothing had been discovered. In that year, Lord Carnarvon, who had already spent a huge amount of money, was about to give up the search and withdraw financing.
Carnarvon told Carter that he could carry out one final year's digging, beginning in fall 1922. This campaign was intended to cover the area around the workmen's huts found previously. On 4 November, one of Carter's labourers stumbled upon a stone step, the first step in a stairway that ran down into the rock.
Carter, sensing that this might be the long-awaited discovery, covered up the hole, and sent a telegram to Carnarvon in England, informing his sponsor of what had been found, and summoning him to the site with the utmost urgency. On 24 November, work resumed, in Carnarvon's presence. The stairway was cleared of rubble, and Carter and Carnarvon found themselves before a walled-up door, followed by a second inner door, which bore both the seals of the necropolis and the long dreamed-of name: Tutankhamen.
On 26 November, Carter, Carnarvon, and his daughter Evelyn, with the engineer Callender, who had just joined the dig, were finally able to pierce a hole through the second door and observe the interior of the tomb and the treasures it contained. This was the first, and to date the finest royal tomb found virtually intact in the history of Egyptology, even though careful study showed that there had been no fewer than two attempts in ancient times to rob the tomb, the consequences of which had fortunately been minor.
It took almost a decade of meticulous and painstaking work to empty the tomb of Tutankhamen. Around 3500 individual items were recovered. Clearly, this was the most exceptional archaeological discovery ever made in Egypt.
