Howard Carter: A Secret Night in Tut's Tomb and the Missing Artifacts

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

Howard Carter was born in London in 1874, sent as a sickly boy to Swaffham in Norfolk, and taught to draw by his father, an animal painter. His precise sketches impressed Lady Amherst of nearby Didlington Hall, home to a major Egyptian collection, and in 1891, at 17, she sponsored him to go to Egypt as a tracer copying tomb decorations. He used grids and mirrors to record walls accurately, earned the trust of Flinders Petrie, and in 1899, at 25, became Inspector of Monuments for Upper Egypt. In the 1905 Saqqara affair he sided with Egyptian guards attacked by French tourists, refused to apologize, and was forced to resign. He spent years selling watercolors in Luxor until 1907, when he began a 16-year partnership with George Herbert, the fifth Earl of Carnarvon.

In 1922 Carnarvon agreed to fund one final season, and on November 4 a step was found beneath ancient workers' huts in the Valley of the Kings. Carter reburied the stairway, waited more than two weeks for Carnarvon and Lady Evelyn, then on November 26 peered through a breach and saw "wonderful things." Evidence indicates the three secretly crawled into the burial chamber that night before officials arrived. Carter spent ten years clearing more than 5,000 objects, dismissed the curse as "tommy rot" after Carnarvon died in 1923, and in 1924 locked the tomb in protest against the Egyptian government. In 1934 Alan Gardiner accused him of deception over an amulet, and after Carter's death in 1939 his executor Harry Burton found at least 18 objects from the tomb among his possessions.

• Local accounts credit a water boy, Hussein Abdel Rassul, with finding the first step while setting down water jars.
• Carter chipped the breach with a chisel his grandmother had given him for his 17th birthday.
• Every object was photographed in place by Harry Burton, numbered, and mapped before it was moved.
• He received the Order of the Nile from Egypt's king and American honorary degrees, but no British honors.
• Only nine people attended his funeral, and his London gravestone quotes Tutankhamun's alabaster wishing cup.