Tutankhamun's Tomb Found: Egypt's Golden Age Revealed

Howard Carter had been digging in Egypt''s Valley of the Kings for nearly a decade with nothing to show for it. His wealthy patron, Lord Carnarvon, was losing patience and money. One more season, Carnarvon said. Then the funding stops. On November 4, 1922, a water boy stumbled on a step cut into the bedrock. Then another step. Then sixteen steps leading down to a sealed doorway. Carter wired Carnarvon to come immediately. Three weeks later, on November 26, they opened a small hole in the second sealed doorway. Carter held a candle to the gap and peered inside. When Carnarvon asked if he could see anything, Carter replied with words that became the most famous sentence in archaeological history: "Yes, wonderful things." Four chambers contained approximately 5,398 objects, including golden chariots, ceremonial weapons, jewelry, furniture, clothing, wine jars with readable vintage labels, and even linen underwear. The burial goods had been packed so densely that it took Carter and his team a full decade to catalog everything. On January 3, 1924, Carter opened the stone sarcophagus and found the iconic golden death mask that would become the most recognizable artifact in Egyptian archaeology. Tutankhamun himself was a minor pharaoh who died at approximately nineteen years of age, likely from complications of malaria combined with a genetic bone disorder caused by generations of royal inbreeding. His reign lasted barely a decade and was largely unremarkable. But his tomb was the only pharaoh''s burial ever found substantially intact, having been overlooked by ancient robbers because debris from the construction of a later tomb buried its entrance. The discovery proved that Egyptian wealth exceeded anything historians had imagined and launched a global fascination with ancient Egypt that continues unabated.