It was a small boy who discovered the first sign of the tomb of King Tutankhamun in 1922. He was serving as a water carrier on Howard Carter’s expedition to find the tomb, believed to be one of the last to remain hidden. He had nothing to do for long periods of time, and at one point, he sat down and started drawing in the sand with a stick. He found something — a flat stone, which proved to be a step. The boy showed his discovery to Carter, and soon the whole crew was excavating there.
Carter was an English archaeologist and Egyptologist, who had worked in the field essentially all his adult life. In 1907 he was employed by George Herbert, the Fifth Earl of Carnarvon, to supervise his excavations in Egypt. The project was halted during World War I, but resumed again in 1917. There had not been much success, and in 1922, Carnarvon, discouraged with the project, told Carter he had one final season to find something. After that, Carnarvon was pulling the plug on the financing.
The flight of stone steps led down to a sealed door. Carter made a hole in the door, and lit a match. There was oxygen beyond the doorway; at least, he could tell that much. Breaking through, he discovered a passageway filled with rubble, and another sealed door beyond. Carter decided it was time to send for Carnarvon.
Carnarvon and his daughter were at Carter’s side when he breached the second door, creating a tiny hole in the upper left hand corner.He used a chisel that had been given to him by his grandmother on his 17th birthday. He put a testing rod through the hole, and could tell that the space beyond was clear, for at least as far as the rod could reach. At first he could see nothing; the stale air almost put out the candle, and it flickered too badly too provide much visibility. Eventually the flame stabilized, and Carter’s eyes grew used to the gloom. “Can you see anything?” asked Carnarvon? “Yes, wonderful things,” replied Carter.
What Carter saw was the largest and best collection of Egyptian antiquities ever discovered. The first chamber contained about 700 objects, including three funeral beds, plates, statues, and strange animals. Everywhere there was the gleam of gold.
But this first room was only the beginning. Lying beyond the antechamber was another room, it too filled with priceless treasures. The archaeology team took two and a half months to catalogue and remove the objects in just these two rooms. Then it was time to break through into the next room, which Carter believed would be the actual burial chamber itself.
Working carefully, he made a hole large enough to shine a flashlight through. He didn’t understand what he was seeing; it looked to be a solid wall of gold. Widening the hole, he began to understand. It was a gold shrine that had been built to cover the sarcophagus of the pharaoh. It measured 17 feet by 11 feet, and was 9 feet tall. Carter had found the burial chamber.
Inside the shrine were the sarcophagi, a series of three. The outer two were of gilded wood, and the innermost was made of pure gold. A mask had been placed over the mummy’s face, made of gold, and inlaid with precious stones: lapis lazuli, carnelian,quartz, turquoise, and obsidian.
Even this was not the end of the discovery. There was a side room, the Treasury, that contained over 5,000 items, most of them funerary in nature. The two largest objects were a statue of Anubis, and an elaborate chest that held the canopic jars holding the pharaoh’s organs. There were also numerous statues of gods, as well as model boats and chariots. Two small mummified foetuses are thought to have been the pharaoh’s stillborn daughters.
There was still another room, called the Annex, which was laden with oils, ointments, and food and drink. This was the last room to be catalogued and cleared. It was 1928 before all the contents had been removed from the tomb.
Who was Tutankhamun, the boy king who was buried with all this treasure? Actually, he was not a very important pharaoh, and this may be the key to the tomb’s survival. In all the years that Tutankhamun lay buried, it was only robbed twice, in both cases soon after the pharaoh’s death. The tomb was undisturbed for centuries because no one knew it was there. In fact, workers’ huts had been built right over the entrance to the tomb. No one had any idea what lay beneath.
Tutankhamun was nine years old when he ascended the throne in 1333 BC, and died when he was 18. He married his half-sister, Ankhesenepatan, who gave birth to two daughters, both stillborn. His father, Akhenaten, had banned the worship of the god Amun, and promoted Aten. Tutankhamun reversed this, restoring Amun to supremacy. He apparently restored diplomatic relations with neighboring countries, and there is some evidence that he pursued a military agenda. Since he was lame, it is unlikely that he took part in battles himself.
Tutankhamun was about 5 feet 11 inches tall, and had a slight overbite. He had a cleft palate, and may have had a slight case of scoliosis. Shortly before his death, he broke his leg, and walked with a cane after that. He suffered from malaria at several points during his life. We don’t know for certain what he died of — it may have been an infection from his leg, or a general weakening from malaria. It is probable that his many health problems were a result of inbreeding, and he would have been likely to succumb to any additional stress on his body. Some have speculated that he was murdered, but there does not seem to be any direct evidence to support that theory.
Sources: “Howard Carter”, Wikipedia; “KV62″, Wikipedia; Wikipedia; “Tutankhamun”, Wikipedia; “Guardian’s King Tut”, Guardian’s Egypt; “The Discovery of King Tut’s Tomb”, KingTutOne.com; “Entering King Tut’s Tomb, 1923″, Eyewitness to History.