WHAT KILLED TUTANKHAMUN?
In 1922, Howard Carter and his team made what would become perhaps the greatest archaeological discovery of all time. It was the intact tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty: Tutankhamun. The ‘boy king’ has since become one of the most famous figures from the ancient world, and his face – more particularly his golden death mask – provides us with one of the most iconic images from anywhere, and at any time.
The Valley of the Kings was the burial place of the pharaohs throughout the great era we now call the New Kingdom (1550–1069 BC), and its use helps to define the period.
Fast-forward 3,000 years, and the valley was the site of a series of spectacular discoveries in the 19th and early 20th centuries AD. A map made by Napoleon’s scientific expedition in the early 1800s recorded the position of 16 tombs. By the outbreak of the First World War, 61 had been located.
The great American lawyer and patron of work in the valley, Theodore Davis, was responsible for many of the more recent of these discoveries, but in 1914, after a couple of disappointing seasons, he declared the valley to be “exhausted”. Carter, however, thought otherwise, believing there to be tombs still left undiscovered, including that of Tutankhamun. Under the patronage of the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, in 1917 he began excavations in the valley. After a few unproductive seasons, and with Carnarvon’s patience very nearly exhausted, he made the greatest discovery of them all.
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