East Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt
(Harry Burton / The Griffith Institute)
This sight was the culmination of many years of labor for archaeologist and Egyptologist Howard Carter and his backer George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon. After years of fruitless excavation, the discovery of the tomb of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun came during the very last season of digging that Carnarvon was prepared to fund.
On November 4, at the derelict site of an earlier dig, Carter’s team stumbled upon a step. The following day, the step had become a stairway, leading to a door. Carter wired Carnarvon, and on November 26, the two broke through the doorway. There then followed an eight-year-long process of deconstructing the tomb and its contents.
Opening the inner sarcophagus reveals the pharaoh’s mummy, and its magnificent funerary mask of gold. The twenty-four-pound solid gold mask, inlaid with blue glass and semi-precious stones, was placed directly over the mummy. The eyes of the mask are made from lapis lazuli, quartz and obsidian. What you can’t see here is the protection spell carved on the mask’s back and shoulders.
‘The day following, November 26, was the day of days, the most wonderful that I have ever lived through and certainly one whose like I can never hope to see again. The decisive moment had arrived. With trembling hands I made a tiny breach in the upper left-hand corner of the door. I inserted the candle and peered in. For a moment – an eternity it must have seemed to the others – I was struck dumb. When Carnarvon inquired, “Can you see anything?” all I could do was get out the words, “Yes, wonderful things.”’
Howard Carter, ‘The Tomb of Tutankhamun’, November 26, 1922
