On 4 November 1922, a water boy tripped over a stone step hidden beneath ancient workmen's huts in the Valley of the Kings. Archaeologist Howard Carter, funded by Lord Carnarvon after five years of near-failure, ordered the rubble cleared. Twelve steps led down to a sealed doorway stamped with the cartouche of a minor pharaoh: Tutankhamun.
When Carter chipped a small hole in the second sealed door and held up a candle, the hot air escaping from the chamber made the flame flicker. "Can you see anything?" Carnarvon asked. "Yes," Carter replied, "wonderful things." Inside were over 5,000 objects: gilded shrines, chariots, thrones, weapons, clothing, food, wine, board games, and the iconic gold death mask weighing over ten kilograms of solid gold.
Tutankhamun himself was unremarkable — a boy who became pharaoh at nine and died at nineteen, around 1323 BCE, his reign largely controlled by older advisors. His tomb was small by royal standards, likely repurposed from a noble's burial when his death came unexpectedly. It was precisely this obscurity that saved it: grander tombs were systematically robbed over millennia, while Tutankhamun's modest entrance was buried under debris from later construction.
The discovery ignited a global craze for all things Egyptian. When Lord Carnarvon died from an infected mosquito bite five months after the opening, newspapers invented the "Curse of the Pharaohs." Carter, who spent ten years cataloguing the contents, was unimpressed by the curse — he lived until 1939. The treasures now fill an entire wing of the Grand Egyptian Museum, and Tutankhamun, an insignificant king in life, became the most famous pharaoh in death.
