Discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun
The tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered in the Valley of the Kings in 1922 by excavators led by the Egyptologist Howard Carter, more than 3,300 years after Tutankhamun's death and burial. Whereas the tombs of most pharaohs were plundered by graverobbers in ancient times, Tutankhamun's tomb was hidden by debris for most of its existence and therefore not extensively robbed. It thus became the only known near-intact royal burial from ancient Egypt.
The tomb was opened beginning on 4 November 1922 during an excavation by Carter and his patron, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon. The burial consisted of more than five thousand objects, many of which were in a highly fragile state, so conserving the burial goods for removal from the tomb required an unprecedented effort. The opulence of the burial goods inspired a media frenzy and popularised ancient Egyptian-inspired designs with the Western public. To the Egyptians, who had recently become partially independent of British rule, the tomb became a symbol of national pride, strengthening Pharaonism, a nationalist ideology that emphasised modern Egypt's ties to the ancient civilisation, and creating friction between Egyptians and the British-led excavation team. The publicity surrounding the excavation intensified when Carnarvon died of an infection, giving rise to speculation that his death and other misfortunes connected with the tomb were the result of an ancient curse.
After Carnarvon's death, tensions arose between Carter and the Egyptian government over who should control access to the tomb. In early 1924, Carter stopped work in protest, beginning a dispute that lasted until the end of the year. Under the agreement that resolved the dispute, the artefacts from the tomb would not be divided between the government and the dig's sponsors, as was standard practice in previous Egyptological digs, and most of the tomb's contents went to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. In later seasons media attention waned, apart from coverage of the removal of Tutankhamun's mummy from its coffin in 1925. The last of the burial goods were conserved and shipped to Cairo in 1932.
The tomb's discovery did not reveal as much about the history of Tutankhamun's time as Egyptologists had initially hoped, but it established the length of his reign and gave clues about the end of the Amarna Period, which preceded his reign. It was more informative about the material culture of Tutankhamun's time, demonstrating what a complete royal burial was like and providing evidence about the lifestyles of wealthy Egyptians and the behaviour of ancient tomb robbers. The interest generated by the find stimulated efforts to train Egyptians in Egyptology. Since the discovery, the Egyptian government has capitalised on its enduring fame by using exhibitions of the burial goods for purposes of fundraising and diplomacy, and Tutankhamun has become a symbol of ancient Egypt itself.
Background
Burial and ancient robberies
The pharaoh Tutankhamun ruled during the Eighteenth Dynasty, during the New Kingdom. He died and was entombed in the Valley of the Kings, near Thebes, like most New Kingdom rulers. Instead of a full-size royal tomb cut into the slopes of the valley, he was interred in a small tomb dug into the valley floor, probably a private tomb that was modified to fit the large amount of goods that accompanied a royal burial.The tomb was robbed twice soon after its construction. Officials restored and resealed it, filling the entrance passage with chips of limestone to deter further intrusion. During the reigns of Ramesses V and Ramesses VI, nearly two centuries after Tutankhamun's death, his tomb was covered by debris from the construction of their tomb, KV9. Tutankhamun's tomb was thus hidden from later waves of robbery so that, unlike the other tombs in the valley, it retained most of the goods it was stocked with.
Exploration of the Valley of the Kings
In the early twentieth century Egypt was a de facto British colony, ostensibly ruled by monarchs from the Muhammad Ali dynasty but in fact managed by a British consul-general, who oversaw a government staffed by Egyptians but dominated by the British. Egyptology, the study of ancient Egypt, was overseen by the Antiquities Service, a department of the Egyptian government. New excavations of ancient sites were heavily dependent on the system known as "partage" or "division of finds": museums or private collectors of ancient artefacts would fund an Egyptological dig in exchange for a share of the artefacts, customarily half, and the remainder went to the Antiquities Service and its museum, the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.Many of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings had been open since ancient times. Dozens of others, whose entrances had been deliberately buried by their builders or had become hidden by flash flood debris, were discovered in the course of the nineteenth century. Royal mummies and individual burial goods were discovered in some of these tombs, but nothing close to a complete set of royal burial equipment was found.
A period of rapid discoveries in the valley began after Howard Carter became the Antiquities Service's inspector for Upper Egypt, including the Valley of the Kings, in 1900. Carter had come to Egypt as an artist, assisting in recording Egyptian tomb art, and was then trained as an archaeologist. As inspector, Carter both restored and protected the open tombs in the valley and sought to dig for undiscovered tombs. In searching for a patron to fund these efforts he found Theodore M. Davis, a wealthy American who regularly visited Egypt. With Davis's support Carter made several small finds and cleared three previously unexplored tombs. After the Antiquities Service transferred Carter to Lower Egypt in 1904, Davis held the concession to excavate in the valley for another ten years, his efforts managed by a series of five archaeologists. Davis pressured these excavators to work rapidly, nearly doubling the number of known tombs in the valley, but his discoveries were often carelessly treated and inadequately documented. His excavation of KV55, the tomb of a member of the royal family from Tutankhamun's time, was so poorly handled that the identity of its occupant has been uncertain ever since.
Little was known about Tutankhamun in Davis's time, though he was known to have restored traditional practices in the monarchy after a brief episode of radical innovation known as the Amarna Period. It was thus likely that he was buried in the Valley of the Kings, the traditional site for royal burials before and after the Amarna Period. Davis never found Tutankhamun's tomb, assuming no tomb would have been cut into the valley floor, but he did find signs that the king had been buried in the valley. One such sign was a pit, discovered in 1907 and designated KV54, that contained a handful of objects bearing Tutankhamun's name. These objects are now thought to have been either burial goods that were originally stored in the entrance corridor of Tutankhamun's tomb, which were removed and reburied in KV54 when the restorers filled the corridor, or objects related to Tutankhamun's funeral. Another was an uninscribed tomb, found in 1909 and known as KV58, that contained pieces of a chariot harness bearing Tutankhamun's name and that of his successor, Ay. Davis concluded that KV58 was all that remained of Tutankhamun's burial, which would mean that virtually all the kings' tombs expected to exist in the valley were accounted for. The last years of Davis's work in the valley produced almost no finds, and in 1912 he wrote: "I fear the Valley of the Tombs is now exhausted."
Scouring the valley
Carter left the Antiquities Service in 1905 after a group of French tourists forced their way into a closed archaeological site at Saqqara and he ordered the Egyptian guards to eject them. The use of force by Egyptians against Europeans caused a scandal and led to his resignation. He subsequently worked as an excavator for George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, a collector of Egyptian antiquities, at several sites in Egypt. Carnarvon bought the concession for the Valley of the Kings when Davis relinquished it in 1914, and although the First World War made it difficult to conduct fieldwork, in 1917 Carter began to clear the valley down to the bedrock. This required sifting through the spoil heaps produced by decades of earlier excavations, as well as the valley's natural alluvium. At the time neither Carter nor Carnarvon stated they were looking for Tutankhamun's tomb, but there was reason for them to believe it had not been found. The objects in KV54 and KV58 indicated that Tutankhamun had been buried somewhere in the valley, but such meagre remains were unlikely to be a royal burial.During these excavations the political status of Egypt changed dramatically. The Egyptian Revolution of 1919 convinced British authorities that Egypt's current status was unsustainable, and they issued the Unilateral Declaration of Egyptian Independence in February 1922. It left the United Kingdom with substantial influence over the government, particularly in military and foreign affairs. Antiquities policy was one of the areas ceded to the Egyptians. The Antiquities Service retained its incumbent director, Pierre Lacau, but he now answered to an Egyptian minister of public works.
The season for excavation and tourism in Egypt extends from November to April, avoiding the worst of the country's heat. In mid-1922, when Carter and Carnarvon were paused between digging seasons, only one section of the Valley of the Kings remained covered by debris. This area was difficult to clear because it included the remains of ancient workers' huts and lay close to the entrance to KV9, which attracted heavy tourist traffic. Carnarvon discussed abandoning excavation in the valley, given how fruitless the effort had been, but Carter offered to cover the expense of clearing this final section. Carnarvon, impressed by Carter's dedication, agreed to fund the work for one more season.