1. Discovery by:-

Howard Carter & Lord Carnarvon

2. Blue Print

3. Excavating the Tomb

4. Inside the tomb

Howard Carter (May 9, 1874 - March 2, 1939) was an English archaeologist and Egyptologist. He is most famous as the discoverer of KV62, the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt. Howard Carter was born in 1874 in Kensington, London, the youngest son of eight children. His father, Samuel Carter, was an artist. His mother was Martha Joyce (Sands) Carter. Carter grew up in Swaffham, in northern Norfolk, and had no formal education. His father trained him in the fundamentals of drawing and painting. Carter began work in 1891, at the age of 17, copying inscriptions and paintings in Egypt. He worked on the excavation of Beni Hasan, the gravesite of the princes of Middle Egypt, c. 2000 BC. Later he came under the tutelage of William Flinders Petrie.He is also famous for finding the remains of Queen Hatshepsut tomb in Deir-el-Babri.

In 1899, at the age of 25, Carter was offered a position working for the Egyptian Antiquities Service, from which he resigned as a result of a dispute between Egyptian site guards and a group of drunken French tourists in 1905.

After several hard years, Carter was introduced, in 1907, to Lord Carnarvon, an eager amateur who was prepared to supply the funds necessary for Carter's work to continue. Soon, Carter was supervising all of Lord Carnarvon's excavations. Lord Carnarvon financed Carter's search for the tomb of a previously unknown Pharaoh, Tutankhamun, whose existence Carter had discovered. After a few months of fruitless searching, Carnarvon was becoming dissatisfied with the lack of return from his investment and, in 1922, he gave Carter one more season of funding to find the tomb.

It took only three days before the top of a staircase was unearthed. On November 4th, 1922 Carter's workmen discovered a step cut into the rock. Then they found fifteen more leading to an ancient doorway that appeared to be still sealed. The rumor of an ancient curse didn't stop this archaeologist from opening the tomb of King Tut. Death Shall Come on Swift Wings To Him Who Disturbs the Peace of the King was allegedly engraved on the exterior of King Tutankhamen's Tomb. On the doorway was the name Tutankhamen. Almost three weeks later the staircase was entirely excavated and the full side of the plaster block was visible. By November 26, the first plaster block was removed, the chip filling the corridor was emptied, and the second plaster was ready to be taken apart. At about 4 P.M. that day, Carter broke through the second plaster block and made one of the discoveries of the century, the tomb of King Tutankhamun.

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Though small and unimpressive, Tutankhamen's Tomb is probably the most famous, due to its late discovery. Howard Carter's description upon opening the tomb in 1922 was, "At first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle flames to flicker, but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues and gold - everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment - an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by - I was dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, 'Can you see anything?' it was all I could do to get out the words, "Yes, wonderful things."' The royal seal on the door was found intact. The first three chambers were unadorned, with evidence of early entrance through one of the outside walls. The next chamber contained most of the funerary objects.

The sarcophagus was four guilded wooden shrines, one inside the other, within which lay the stone sarcophagus, three mummiform coffins, the inner one being solid gold, and then the mummy. Haste can be seen in the reliefs and the sarcophagus, due to the fact that Tutankhamun died at only 18 years of age following a brief reign. Though extremely impressive to the modern world, the treasures of Tutankhamun must have paled when compared to the tombs of the great Pharaohs that ruled for many years during Egypt's golden age.

The tomb is much smaller than, any of the other kings tombs, with plain walls, until you reach the burial chamber. It took almost a decade of meticulous and painstaking work to empty the tomb of Tutankhamen. Around 3500 individual items were recovered. Tutankhamen is the only pharaoh, in the valley of the kings, still to have his mummy in its original burial location. Discovered resting on a sled dressed in silver in, the antechamber of the tomb of Tutankhamun, this wooden shrine is covered in gold leaf applied to a layer of stucco. Its form, with the roof sloping down from front to rear and the projecting cornice at the top of the walls, recalls the ancient chapels of Upper Egypt.

A double door opens on one of the short sides and is closed with two ebony latches running through gold rings. A cord would once have passed through another two and been fastened with a clay seal. Inside the shrine there is a gilded wooden support for a statue, which was probably in solid gold and removed by grave robbers. The base still carries the marks of the feet while the name of Tutankhamun is inscribed on the dorsal pillar. On the floor lay the remains of a pectoral of which fragments have been found scattered elsewhere in the tomb. The roof of the shrine is decorated with a winged solar disc at the front and twelve images of the vulture goddess Nekhbet with outspread wings protecting the cartouches of the sovereign and his wife. Two winged serpents with long, sinuous bodies are depicted on the sides of the roof and hold in front of them the shen hieroglyph, symbolizing eternity. The lintel of the door also features a winged solar disc while the cornice above is incised with a continuous series of vertical lines.

The external walls and the doors are subdivided into panels framed by hieroglyphic inscriptions with scenes showing Tutankhamun and his wife in various aspects of married life, a theme that recalls the scenes of the Amarna Period. However, it is not only the contents of the various scenes that recall the art of Akhenaten, but also their style characterized by the fineness, grace, and sophistication of the modeling. The couple, adorned with jewels and dressed in finely pleated, adherent clothing, appear in various poses that reveal their reciprocal affection and a sense of absolute peace and serenity. The left wall is divided into four panels. In the bottom left Ankhesenamun is crouching before the seated Tutankhamun and is receiving a liquid poured by her husband into her hands from a small ampoule. In the other scenes Tutankhamun, always sitting on his throne, is portrayed receiving various from his wife. On the right-hand wall, divided into two registers, Tutankhamun is seen hunting in a swamp, again in the company of the queen. The rear wall and the doors, both inside and out, are decorated with scenes in which Ankhesenamun is making offerings in the presence of her husband. The entire decorative scheme of the shrine has strong symbolic connotations associated with the religious and political spheres. The intimate ties between the pharaoh and his bride represent the serene relationship between god and man. For this reason it is almost always the queen who is the active figure, embodying the concept of humanity paying homage to the celestial being personified by Tutankhamun. The hunting scene is to be interpreted as a symbolic episode referring to the pharaoh's role in the maintenance of the cosmic order and his constant fight against chaos (symbolized by the birds in the swamp). Thanks to the images of the king identified as a god, the sovereign¹s shrine thus becomes a reproduction of a shrine dedicated to the cult of a divinity.

The statues, of refined craftsmanship and striking in both their life-size dimensions and the black finish of the skin, are testimony to the skill of the artist who has succeeded in investing their features with a sense of the almost supernatural power they wielded as guardians of the burial chamber. Rather than being designed to frighten eventual intruders, the black skin tone was a reference to the earth and thus, given that these are ka images of the sovereign, emphasizes indestructibility of the creative nature of the king, evoking the aspects of rebirth and cyclical resurrection of Osiris The two statues differ only in the type of head covering they are wearing (one a khat head-cloth, the other a nemes) and the inscriptions on their skirts.

These two statues were discovered in the antechamber of the royal tomb, facing each other on either side of the sealed entrance to the burial chamber. At the time of their discovery traces of the linen bandages in which they had been wrapped were found, along with two bundles of olive and persea branches placed as offerings, one on the floor, the other still propped against the wall.

The king is portrayed in a striding pose, a mace gripped in his right hand and a long staff with a papyrus stem in his left hand. A gilded bronze asp adorns his forehead while the eyes are inlaid and outlined with gilded bronze, as are the eyebrows. A gilded usekh necklace and a pectoral are worn on the chest. The pleated skirt is fastened on the hips with a belt inscribed at the rear and on the buckle with the coronation name of the king Nebkbeperura

The protruding frontal section of the skirt of the statue with the khat head-cloth carries the vertical inscription "The perfect god, rich in glory, a sovereign to be proud of, the regal ka of Horakhty, the Osiris, and Lord of the Two Lands, Nebkbeperura, made just." The inscription on the statue wearing the nemes records the birth name of the pharaoh, "Tutankhamun, living forever as Ra each day". Both statues are wearing anklets and bracelets of gilded bronze. Although made some years after the end of the Amarna Period, these sculptures clearly show the influence of the art of Akhenaten with their prominent bellies, slim legs and pierced ears.