Excitement still fizzes from the pages of Howard Carter’s account of the discovery. Almost 100 years since a rock-cut step was exposed in an ancient workman’s hut in the Valley of the Kings, we can share Carter’s hopes and doubts as digging progressed. He confides nagging fears that his sixth and final season in the Valley would be in vain, that any tomb would be unfinished, or at best a cache of royal mummies long since stripped of their finery. We experience the emotional rollercoaster as his team locates a seemingly sealed doorway, only to find it was breached by looters. And, ultimately, we reach the most-celebrated moment in the annals of archaeological discovery. On 26 November 1922, Carter opened an aperture in a second doorway, and illuminated the void beyond with a flickering candle. ‘Can you see anything?’, asked his sponsor Lord Carnarvon. ‘Yes,’ Carter replied, ‘wonderful things.’
The spell cast by those wonderful things has never been broken. In the 1920s, they ignited ‘Tut-mania’: a passion for ancient Egypt that coursed through the architecture and accessories of the age. Today, the golden images of the king are unsurpassed as symbols of the romance of archaeological exploration. Amid all the gold and glory, though, it can be easy to forget that the story is not just about fabulous riches laid down by an ancient civilisation. At its heart is a fragile boy who ruled in turbulent times, and a life cut short.
That shadowy monarch
The pharaoh we know as Tutankhamun was born around 1340 BC, and named Tutankhaten. DNA evidence reveals that his father and mother were also brother and sister, a union that may explain abnormalities in their son’s feet: Tutankhamun was born with one flatfoot and one clubfoot, perhaps meaning he needed a walking stick for support. He also had a mild cleft palate, and later in life an impacted wisdom tooth probably brought pain. Tutankhamun’s father was most likely Akhenaten, a radical heretic who upended worship of Egypt’s broad pantheon in favour of the sun (Aten). It was this schism that led to Tutankhamun’s change of name. Judging by a small golden throne found in his tomb, the boy was still known as Tutankhaten when he became pharaoh, aged nine or ten. Amending this name, which means ‘the living image of Aten’, to reference Amun, the principal deity worshipped at Karnak, symbolised the victory of the old gods over the new one. The consequences were huge, as Tutankhamun’s embrace of the traditional deities ensured the Aten obsession was just a blip, rather than Egypt’s new normal.
