INTRODUCTION

“WONDERFUL THINGS”

“THE GENERAL PUBLIC WAS IN A STATE OF PROFOUND BOREDOM WITH NEWS OF REPARATIONS, CONFERENCES AND MANDATES, AND CRAVED FOR SOME NEW TOPIC… THE IDEA OF BURIED TREASURE IS ONE THAT APPEALS TO MOST OF US.”

— HOWARD CARTER, ARCHAEOLOGIST, EXPLAINING THE MANIA SPARKED
BY HIS DISCOVERY OF KING TUT’S TOMB IN 1922

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IN 1922, CARTER discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun, a 3,000-year-old royal burial site that had been largely untouched and filled with ancient treasures belonging to the young king. Past the passageway and antechamber, Carter and his team located the burial chamber, which contained Tut’s mummy. Here, Carter (kneeling), British archaeologist Arthur Callender, and an Egyptian workman, peer through the open doors of the gilded shrines. The mummy was laid to rest within four nested shrines, a quartzite sarcophagus, and three coffins.

Some fascinations are truly eternal. Such is the case with the story of King Tut, a tale that continues to be told, and retold, with new insight and wonder throughout the modern age.

At the time of the tomb’s unearthing, the world that Howard Carter was reflecting on in his book with A.C. Mace, The Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamen, was just four years removed from the end of World War I. One out of every 10 people in the U.S. finally owned a car, the latest breakthrough in medicine was the invention of insulin by Sir Frederick Grant Banting, and over the next decade—the amount of time it took Carter and his team to remove and catalog the contents of their dig—the world would become home to self-winding watches, frozen foods, traffic signals, Technicolor movies, electric shavers, jet engines, and television. Yet none of those modern advancements would expunge from the pages of popular history a 3,000-year-old Egyptian king who by all accounts led a life of minimal accomplishment punctuated by early death.

From the Roaring ’20s straight through to the present day, each new generation has sparked to the same core elements of the Tut story: an ancient and advanced civilization, a young ruler, a mysterious death, and gold—lots of gold—gilding every corner of his buried legacy. As the times changed, so did the interpretations and manifestations of Tutankhamun’s popularity. From fashion and art to touring exhibits and Top 40 radio, folktales to high-tech forensics, Tut’s story has not only endured, it’s been constantly updated to remain forever modern.

As a chronicle of popular culture and history, LIFE reflected on the fascination. The boy king’s first cover photo came on April 5, 1968 (billed, appropriately enough, with a review of “a fantastic movie about man’s future” called 2001: A Space Odyssey). The story inside was actually the first in a series that explored the marvels of ancient Egypt—marvels that arguably wouldn’t have been nearly as relevant to LIFE’s audience of more than 8 million readers were it not for Carter’s discovery of the most intact tomb in ancient Egyptian history, and the hoopla that followed.

When Carter first focused his eyes on the contents of Tut’s tomb by the flicker of candlelight, he was asked by his benefactor George Herbert, the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, who was standing behind him, if he could see anything. “Yes,” Carter was finally able to answer after an awestruck pause, “wonderful things.”

The contents of Tut’s tomb—treasures of gold, alabaster, wood and lapis lazuli, not to mention a fully intact mummy—would not only turn Egypt’s Valley of the Kings into the place to be seen for the rich and powerful, it would open a symbolic peephole into ancient Egypt, a civilization filled with countless more wonderful things that matched or even surpassed our modern achievements.

For affluent Europeans and Americans of the 1920s, following news of the riches found in Tut’s tomb and the theories behind the significance of the objects must have been like peering into a mirror. The ancient Egyptian culture created behemoth structures, designed with unfathomable precision and constructed with the strength to stand the test of time. The Egyptians also demonstrated a vibrant flair in style and art, a powerful political system that spanned three millennia, and an elaborately structured devotion to the idea of an afterlife.

Even today, understanding the history of ancient Egypt allows us to reflect on ourselves—to learn lessons and become beguiled by the romance of a clearly relatable civilization that is still far enough away to feel safely distant and contained, like a bedtime fairy tale. Tut offers us a way into these powerful stories. His life and history are our “once upon a time…”

Over the course of this book, we will show and tell the story of Tutankhamun (1332–1322 BC)—pharaoh of Egypt’s 18th Dynasty, grandson of one of Egypt’s most beloved kings, and son of its most reviled. He was a boy who would rule, with heavy guidance and influence from power-hungry advisors, for just 10 years before dying of unknown causes at the age of 19, but who would fulfill his destiny of life never ending. We will relive Carter’s great adventure, an epic quest led by a frustrated Egyptologist. And we will reveal the latest scientific discoveries that have been used to answer age-old questions and render the most vivid portrait ever created of what Tutankhamun, the man, might really have looked like.

Where does the tale begin? It starts with our interpretation of what Carter himself saw on November 4, 1922: beautiful, golden objects glimmering against a field of darkness. Wonderful things, indeed.

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IN THE ANTECHAMBER, Carter discovered a magnificent wooden throne covered in a sheet of gold and inlaid with colored glass, faience and semiprecious stones. The arms displayed winged serpents wearing a double crown, signifying Tut’s rule over both Upper and Lower Egypt.

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THE BACK PANEL OF the throne features Tut with his wife, Ankhesenamun, depicted in lapis lazuli and carnelian. The affectionate image shows the queen bending over and lovingly touching Tut on his shoulder. “It is the most beautiful thing that has ever been found in Egypt,” Carter later said.

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TUT’S MUMMIFIED BODY was found wearing a diadem, a crown that features a narrow gold band inlaid with semiprecious stones. The vulture and the cobra together on the same crown signified the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt and Tut’s rule over the entire land.

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TUT WAS BURIED with daggers, arming him with weapons to protect him from wild beasts in the afterlife. The one shown here has a blade of hardened gold. However, Carter also found one with an iron blade and noted its significance. Ancient Egypt was the greatest empire in the Age of Bronze. Iron was the specialty of the Hittites in Asia Minor. The existence of iron in Tut’s tomb signaled signs of foreign influence in Egypt. “From that moment, gradual foreign intrusion becomes more and more noticeable, ending eventually in foreign domination,” Carter wrote.

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THESE SANDALS FROM the tomb are made of wood and overlaid with bark, green leather, and gold foil. The inner sole shows figures of captives and groups of four bows, which together with the captives represent the nine traditional enemies of Egypt whom the king symbolically kept in check underfoot while wearing the sandals.

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TUT WAS BURIED wearing this golden falcon collar around his neck. It was common for high-ranking rulers to have tombs stockpiled with precious jewelry to be worn in the next life. Jewelry contained important iconography of gods, such as this one, which has the shape of Horus. Horus was the most significant deity of ancient Egypt and was commonly depicted with a falcon head.

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TUT’S TOES WERE covered with detailed gold pieces, engraved with nails and showing the joints. His fingers were also enclosed with a gold sheath over the linen. The gold covers were used to protect the tiny, fragile bones in Tut’s toes and fingers.

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THIS BED, CARVED of wood and gilded, features two lions that make up the sides. The lions are thought to be the Egyptian deity Sekhmet, a lioness goddess who protected pharaohs and led them into battle. The nose is inlaid with blue glass, while the eyelids are made of black glass.