Posted
on May 9, 2014
Howard
Carter made one of the most famous archeological discoveries,
anywhere, ever:
He
discovered the only intact tomb of an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh that
has ever been discovered, before or since.
Of
course, I'm talking about the tomb of King Tutankhamun.
And he found it in the Valley of the Kings, even though all the experts said that there were no more tombs to be found there.
Here's
a brief version of Carter's story:
Howard
Carter was born on this date in 1874 in London, England. His dad was
an artist, and Carter learned about drawing and painting from him. As
a matter of fact, Carter ended up getting into archeology through
art!
He
had no desire to stay in his little English town and paint portraits
of families and pets. Instead, he got a job working for the Egyptian
Exploration Fund as a tracer—one who carefully copies drawings and
inscriptions from tomb walls, sarcophagi, and other ancient sources.
These careful copies are used by scholars in their studies of Ancient
Egyptian history and culture.
And
so, at age 17, he left England for the first time and sailed to
Alexandria, Egypt.
It
turned out that he was willing to work hard. He was enthusiastic. He
was even brave! Get this – sometimes, after working all day copying
the scenes of the walls of a tomb, he would spend the night in the
tomb. I'm talking all alone, by himself. Except for the bats.
Soon
Carter began to work for a skilled archeologist named Flinders
Petrie. He learned excavation skills while keeping up his artistic
skills.
Up
and up he climbed in responsibility and knowledge. Illustration,
excavation, restoration. When he was just 25 years old, Carter was
offered the job of First Chief Inspector General of Monuments for
Upper Egypt. At this point, he supervised and controlled all of
archeology along the Nile Valley!
Unfortunately,
Carter lost his position when a bunch of drunken French tourists were
violent toward the guards who protected the archeological sites.
Carter allowed the guards to defend themselves—which seems like a
pretty normal thing to me! But the French tourists were really mad
and called on their important connections to demand an apology from
Carter.
Carter
stood his ground and refused to apologize for what he thought was the
right thing to do.
Out
of a job, Carter made a bit of a living by selling watercolor
paintings and by giving people tours in Egypt. I'm sure this seemed
like a very bleak time in his life. I bet a lot of people would've
thought that Carter should have caved in and apologized.
But
if he had, he probably wouldn't have met Lord Carnarvon.
Lord
Carnarvon was a rich English nobleman who was staying in warm, dry
Egypt while he recovered from an automobile accident. He was bored
and restless, and he became very interested in what Carter told him
about the Ancient civilization that had built the sphinx and the
pyramids.
The
two became partners. Soon, thanks to Carter's hard work and
knowledge, Carnarvon owned one of the most valuable private
collections of Egyptian artifacts in the world. But Carter had seen a
name of a little-known pharaoh several times—here on a cup, there
on a piece of gold foil, over here on a few funerary items. The name
was Tutankhamun,
and Carter knew that no tomb for a pharaoh of that name had ever been
found.
And
that meant that there was an as-yet undiscovered tomb somewhere.
Carter
used his smarts to look for a tomb of a King Tutankhamun. He searched
for about six years with no results. Lord Carnarvon was getting a bit
dissatisfied—after all, he was paying the bills, and there was
little more than a few artifacts turned up in those six years.
Carnarvon informed Carter that the 1922-23 season would be the last
that he would fund.
And
in November, 1922, the top of a staircase was discovered.
 |
| It took ten years for Carter and others to catalog the tomb's 2000+ artifacts. |
Curse? What curse?
Lord
Carnarvon died from an infected mosquito bite in Egypt in 1923, just
about half a year after the discovery of the tomb.
After
Carnarvon's death, a rumor began that the mummy of King Tutankhamun
had put a curse on all who dared enter the tomb. As conspiracy
theorists always do, the people who whispered about this so-called
curse seized on the deaths of several visitors to the tomb, a
radiologist who x-rayed Tutankhamun's mummy, and Carter's personal
secretary—even though they all died in different ways (one was
killed by his wife, for example, and several died of various
diseases)—
and
most died years later.
Of
course, a lot of people who had visited the tomb had nice long lives.
Of the 58 people who were present when the tomb and, later,
sarcophagus were opened, only 8 died within the next dozen years.
And
Howard Carter himself died of lymphoma at 1939, many years after his
discovery. There was no mummy's curse!
Find
out more...
...about
Carter and King Tut in this earlier post.
And
here is
a very short video about Carter's amazing discovery.
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