TUT'S FINAL TOUR

Ancient Egypt’s most notorious pharaoh visits London for the very last time…

- Anna Walker and Eva Mackevic

It’s 1922, anD archaeologist Howard Carter is desperate. He was hired by the fifth Earl of Carnarvon 15 years previously to oversee excavations in the Valley of the Kings, but while other Egyptologists are discovering glorious things through their digs in this ancient land, he has unearthed nothing more than a mummified cat, and time is running out. Carnarvon has agreed to fund just one more season of digging…

That final season was to prove perhaps the most important in all of Egyptology. Just as they neared giving up hope, a chance discovery by a local boy looking for a place to prop a bowl of water, suggested the top of a staircase was jutting out of the ground. Howard’s first explorations warned of disappointment—the evidence of two historical robberies led to concern that the tomb may now contain nothing at all. But what he eventually unearthed would shape the way the modern world viewed ancient Egypt forever.

In his journal, Carter wrote, “I inserted the candle and peered in…At first I could see nothing… 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 struck dumb with amazement.”

With the discovery came global fame for Tutankhamun, who died aged just 19. Ancient Egyptians believed every man dies twice—first, when he loses life, and again the moment his name is uttered for the last time. Carter’s discovery was to make King Tut, the Boy King—ironically obscure in his own time—immortal…