Tutankhamon

ON THE MORNING OF NOVEMBER 4, 1922, Howard Carter, excavating in the Valley of the Kings, found steps buried under a layer of stone chips. “By the solemn silence all around caused by the stoppage of work, I guessed that something out of the ordinary had occurred, ” he wrote later, “My reis (foreman) was most cheerful, and confidentially told me that the beginning of a staircase had been discovered ...” Further clearing of the steps revealed the top of a doorway. On November 26 the tomb was finally opened. It was to be the most important discovery in the history of Egyptology, an intact tomb of a Pharoah of the Eighteenth Dynasty.

The tomb was intact, except for several attempts to rob it in antiquity. There were four chambers in all, each of them full of the various treasures buried with the young king to provide for him for all eternity. The burial chamber lay as it had been on the day the priests had tied the knots on the shrine enclosing the sarcophagus and impressed upon them the seal of the king.

In the following years Howard Carter excavated the objects of the tomb. The task was monumental in proportion. Carter wrote: “This was no ordinary find, to be disposed of in a normal season's work; nor was there any precedent to show us how to handle it. The thing was bewildering, and for the moment it seemed as though there were more to be done than any human could accomplish.” Nevertheless, through painstaking and dedicated effort the objects were brought up to the light and the wondering gaze and edification of the entire world.



When the young pharoah was laid in his tomb 3000 years ago, it was with the fervent desire that he remain undisturbed throughout eternity, that his funerary equipment remain to serve him in the afterlife. Carter's discovery of the burial brought to an end his quiet slumber. The young man, almost forgotten in the annals of time, an insignificant ruler at the end of a glorious line, was suddenly a familiar name. He became Egypt for millions of people, his personal possessions became objects of wonder and discourse. This then, is the final immortality that fate has afforded Tutankhamon.