Why the Discovery of Tutankhamun’s Tomb Was the Most Significant Archaeological Find of the 20th Century

On the afternoon of November 26, 1922, archaeologist Howard Carter and a team of Egyptian laborers dug themselves into history. As they moved deeper into a stony tomb in the Valley of the Kings, they reached a door adorned with the seals of the royal Egyptian necropolis and the pharaoh Tutankhamun—and made one of history’s most remarkable archaeological discoveries.

“Feverishly, we cleared away the remaining last scraps of rubbish on the floor of the passage before the doorway, until we had only the clean sealed doorway before us,” Carter later wrote in his journal. He removed a few more loose stones from the top corner of the door, sticking an iron rod and a lit candle inside to ensure the space was empty and the air non-toxic.

Carter was the first to look into the dark chamber. “It was some time before one could see,” he wrote. “But as soon as one’s eyes became accustomed to the glimmer of light, the interior of the chamber gradually loomed … with its strange and wonderful medley of extraordinary and beautiful objects heaped upon one another.”

Standing behind him, the archaeologist’s wealthy sponsor, George Herbert, Earl of Carnarvon, demanded to know if he could see anything inside. “Yes, it is wonderful,” Carter replied breathlessly.

In front of a widened hole in the door, Carnarvon, Carter and the others shone a light and gazed into the room.

“What they saw arguably still stands as the most amazing archaeological discovery of all time,” wrote Jo Marchant, author of The Shadow King: The Bizarre Afterlife of King Tut’s Mummy, for Smithsonian magazine in 2022.

Inside was a trove of riches from Tutankhamun, a pharaoh from Egypt’s New Kingdom (around 1550 to 1070 B.C.E.) who had been largely forgotten by history. As a result, his tomb wasn’t plundered or looted to the same extent as others in the Valley of the Kings.

“Looming out of the darkness of the chamber were two ebony-black statues of a king with gold staffs, kilts and sandals,” Marchant wrote, “gilded couches with the heads of strange beasts; exquisitely painted ornamental caskets; dried flowers; alabaster vases; strange black shrines adorned with a gilded monster snake; white chests; finely carved chairs; a golden throne; a heap of curious white egg-shaped boxes; stools of all shapes and designs; and a scramble of overturned chariot parts, glinting with gold.”

Carter’s team included Egyptian foremen Ahmed Gerigar, Gad Hassan, Hussein Abu Awad and Hussein Ahmed, who have typically been excluded from histories of the tomb’s discovery. Together, they undertook months of painstaking archaeological work, bringing out each day’s precious finds on a convoy of wooden stretchers for analysis and cataloging in a lab. Visitors and newspaper reporters rushed to Luxor, a nearby town on the Nile River, to watch the excavation in action.

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It took another 14 and a half months for the archaeologists to come face to face for the first time with Tutankhamun’s nesting coffin and iconic funerary mask in February 1924. (Carnarvon, the dig’s benefactor, had died a year earlier from a blood infection, helping to launch the rumor of the so-called mummy’s curse.)

At long last, the archaeologists could confirm that the pharaoh was still inside the tomb and that his coffin was remarkably intact—“a moment looked forward to ever since it became evident that the chambers discovered … must be the tomb of Tutankhamun,” Carter wrote.

“Many and disturbing were our emotions, … most of them voiceless,” he continued in words that described the sanctity of the tomb they had found. “But, in that silence, to listen—you could almost hear the ghostly footsteps of the departing mourners.”

Eli Wizevich | | READ MORE

Eli Wizevich is a history correspondent for Smithsonian. He studied history at the University of Chicago and previously wrote for the El Paso Times.