WE ARE so familiar with the story of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s 3300-year-old tomb that it has acquired an almost mythical status. On 26 November 1922, Howard Carter, a British archaeologist, broke through a sealed door under Egypt’s Valley of the Kings and poked his candle into the darkness beyond.
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Luckily, it can bear repeating, and to coincide with the centenary of the find, Bob Brier retells the tale. A palaeopathologist at Long Island University, New York, Brier is famous for mummifying a human cadaver for a TV show in 1994 (earning him the nickname “Mr Mummy”) and the topics of his books range from Egyptomania to obelisks.
His aim is to update the legend. Carter found so many treasures (5398 to be precise), it took a decade to retrieve and document them. For most of us, writes Brier, the story ends there. But he aims “to form a better picture of the boy king” by reviewing later research.
Brier sets the scene, recounting how centuries after the Giza pyramid complex was built, rulers of Egypt’s 18th dynasty hid their tombs in a remote desert valley near Thebes. Excavators in the 19th century discovered a succession of these resting places. By the first world war, most Egyptologists believed there was nothing left, but Carter, sponsored by the super-rich Earl of Carnarvon, was rewarded with Tutankhamun’s jam-packed tomb.
Carter set new standards for excavating sites, compiling a stellar team – including engineers and a chemist – and carefully recording finds before carrying them on stretchers to a makeshift lab nearby. But not all his actions stand up to modern scrutiny. Carter and Carnarvon broke into the burial chamber before its official opening and kept several smaller items. In those colonial days, writes Brier, Carter felt he “owned” the tomb.
In October 1925, Carter first glimpsed the king with his golden mask, a spectacle so vivid that “time, measured by the brevity of human life, seemed to lose its common perspectives”. But the body was in a sorry state, effectively glued inside the coffin by oils and unguents that had set solid over millennia.
Researchers have often returned to the bones for X-rays, CT scans and DNA tests, claiming, for instance, that Tutankhamun’s parents were siblings. Yet the DNA methods could be contaminated, and CT scans often can’t reveal if damage occurred before or after death (see ). Brier conveys this uncertainty, as he writes that examination of the human remains in the tomb seems “cursed” by a host of problems.
But he avoids pinpointing the real problem, that this research is funded by media companies with a vested interest in selling dramatic stories to popular audiences. Perhaps it is a sensitive topic. In 1998, Brier published The Murder of Tutankhamen (he used the alternative spelling). It became a bestseller, popularising the now disproven hypothesis that the king was killed by blow to the head.
The picture improves away from the bones, with results such as the otherworldly origins of Tutankhamun’s dagger and the possibility of hidden chambers behind the tomb walls. There is also a rundown of research hinting at an active king who may have gone into battle. His chariots had shock-absorbing floors made from leather strips, and he was buried with 32 luxury bows and hundreds of arrows.
Brier also weaves in thoughtful discussions of how Carter’s discovery influenced politics and culture, from inspiring blockbuster exhibitions to fuelling Egyptian nationalism. He doesn’t break the new ground he aimed for, but this is an engaging, accessible synthesis.
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