Tutankhamun's Tomb Uncovered: Egypt's Secrets Revealed

A water boy's donkey stumbled on a stone step in the Valley of the Kings on November 4, 1922, and within days Howard Carter was staring at a sealed doorway bearing the cartouche of an obscure pharaoh dead for over 3,300 years. The discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, designated KV62, was the culmination of a search that had consumed Carter for over a decade and had nearly been abandoned by his financial backer, the Earl of Carnarvon, who had told Carter that the 1922 season would be his last. Carter had been methodically excavating a triangular area between the tombs of Ramesses II, Merenptah, and Ramesses VI that other archaeologists had dismissed as thoroughly explored. When the first step appeared, he ordered the stairway cleared, revealing a descending passage leading to a sealed doorway. He cabled Carnarvon in England, waited three weeks for his patron to arrive, and on November 26, breached the inner doorway. Asked if he could see anything, Carter reportedly replied, "Yes, wonderful things." The tomb's survival was a miracle of obscurity. Tutankhamun ruled for only about ten years and died around age 19 in approximately 1323 BCE. His reign was later deliberately erased from official records by successors who wanted to distance the dynasty from the religious upheavals of his father Akhenaten's rule. The debris from the construction of Ramesses VI's tomb above had buried and concealed the entrance. The burial chamber contained four gilded shrines nested inside one another, a stone sarcophagus, three coffins, and the famous golden death mask weighing 24 pounds. The full cataloging of over 5,000 objects took Carter a decade to complete. The discovery ignited a global fascination with ancient Egypt that generated an "Egyptomania" in fashion, architecture, and popular culture throughout the 1920s. Carnarvon's death from an infected mosquito bite five months later spawned the enduring legend of the "Curse of the Pharaohs."