November 26 - Howard Carter and King Tut

This Day in History: 26 November 2019

 

26 November 1922

 

97 years ago, today, English archaeologist Howard Carter opened Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun's virtually intact tomb in Egypt. Carter first went to Egypt as a young artist to sketch artefacts, but later went on to become the lead excavator of the tomb of King Tutankhamun. After being told he had one more season of funding to find the tomb, a boy who worked as a water fetcher nearby started to dig alongside Carter, and helped the crew find a flight of stairs that led down to a sealed door and a secret chamber. Later, on this day, Carter and his excavation boss, Lord Carnarvon entered the tomb, and found a large amount of gold and treasures. In the following February, the coffin of King Tut was found, containing his mask and mummy. This caused an interest to spark in ancient Egypt around the world, and the discovery is considered to be one of the most significant archaeological discoveries in our modern era.

 

Tutankhamun, known to many as King Tut, was the 12th pharaoh of the 18th Egyptian dynasty, and was in power from about 1332 to 1323 B.C.E. In his reign, he accomplished little, and died at the age of 19, from a possible gangrene infection as a result of a broken leg. He was just nine years old when he took power, and his first years of reign may have been controlled by an elder known as Ay. The same year that King Tut took power, he married his half-sister and had two, supposedly stillborn, daughters. He was buried in the Valley of the Kings in a tomb, and seventy days afterwards, his body was laid to rest and the tomb was sealed, and later found much later by Howard Carter, in 1922.

 

As well as it being the 97th anniversary of this discovery, there is also an exhibition including KingTut's 150 original artefacts, 60 of which have never left Egypt before, going on in London's Saatchi Gallery until May 3 2020, as well as a virtual reality ride that takes you into the tomb as Carter first discovered it. It promises to be the largest Tutankhamun exhibition outside of Egypt and will be the last time the treasures will leave the country!

 

Want to find out more on this discovery? Visit https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/magazine/2018/03-04/findingkingtutstomb/ for more details, and https://tutankhamun-london.com for more details on the exhibition.