Grave of Tut-ankh-amen

After years of searching, British archaeologist Howard Carter opens the nearly undamaged grave chamber of Tut-ankh-amen (Egyptian king of the 18th dynasty in the era from approximately 1347 to 1339 B.C.) on 24 November 1922 in the „Valley of the Kings“ near Luxor.

© NYT Carter at the sarcophagus of Tut-ankh-amen

At first, the archaeologists bore only a small hole in the door to check the chamber for poisonous gasses. Agonising minutes of waiting pass. To the impatient question of Lord Carnarvon, the financial backer present at the excavation, if anything could be seen, Carter answers: „Yes, marvellous things.“ As an eye-witness will later rhapsodise: „It was an incredible vision, a scene from a fairy tale, the cumulated treasures of a pharaoh who had died over three thousand years ago, before Greece had been born or Rome had been conceived“. The report of the grave’s discovery will make classical archaeology popular all over the world.