Tutankhamen and the Discovery of His Tomb by the Late Earl of Carnarvon and Mr. Howard Carter

Never before in the history of archæological inquiry has any event excited such immediate and world-wide interest as Mr Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb in November 1922. Very little is known as yet of the king himself, but twelve months hence no doubt his mummy will give up its secrets and perhaps the story of his life will be revealed. But at the moment he is supposed to have been merely a colourless youth, who reigned for a few years only, and achieved such notoriety as is associated with his name by virtue of weakness rather than strength of character. For his religious and political opinions seem to have been as plastic as those of the famous Vicar of Bray, adapting themselves with facility to his changing environment. The objects so far found in his tomb do not add very materially to our knowledge of history.


Yet, in spite of the unimportance of Tutankhamen himself and the comparative lack of new historical data, the world-wide interest the discovery has evoked is amply warranted by the new appreciation of historical values it affords.

It gives us a new revelation of the wealth and luxury of Egyptian civilization during its most magnificent period. The value of the gold and precious objects far surpasses that of any hoard previously recovered from ancient times. Judged merely by its quantity the collection of furniture is the most wonderful ever found; and everyone who has examined the individual pieces agrees that in beauty of design and perfection of craftsmanship Tutankhamen’s funerary equipment is indeed a new revelation of the ancient Egyptians’ artistic feeling and technical skill, far surpassing anything known before.

The fact that the tomb of so insignificant a personage as Tutankhamen was equipped with such lavish magnificence adds to the importance of the discovery. For if a youthful nonentity who reigned no more than six or seven years in one of the leanest phases of Egypt’s history had all this wealth poured into his tomb, one’s imagination tries in vain to picture the funerary equipment of the famous and longer-lived pharaohs, such as Thothmes III, who established the Egyptian Empire in Asia and could command the tribute of the then civilized world, or Amenhotep III, under whom the sovereign power in Egypt attained its culmination, and luxury and ostentation their fullest expression. Or again what riches must have been poured into the vast tombs of Seti I and Rameses II, the powerful pharaohs who recovered for a time the Egyptian dominion in Asia which Akhenaton and his sons-in-law had lost? A thousand years before Christ the desolate Valley of the Tombs of the Kings must have had buried in its recesses the vastest collection of gold and precious furniture that perhaps was ever collected in one spot in the history of the world. For these reasons alone there is ample justification for the world-wide interest in the discovery which will always be associated with the names of Lord Carnarvon and Mr Howard Carter.

But apart from its interest as an artistic revelation and the intrinsic value of the objects found the discovery is important for other reasons. The dazzling display of skill and luxury has forced the scholar and the man in the street to recognize in some measure the vastness of the achievements of ancient Egyptian civilization and to ask themselves whether this vigorous and highly developed culture could have failed to exert a much more profound influence upon its neighbours than is generally admitted. When it is recalled that Egypt herself devised the ships and developed the seamanship which created the chief bond of union with Syria and Crete, East Africa and Arabia, the Persian Gulf and beyond, we should be in a better position to realize the plain meaning of the evidence that points to Egypt as the dominating factor in shaping the nascent civilization of the world. The wide interest in the revelation of Egypt’s achievements more than thirty centuries ago should prepare men’s minds impartially to study the vast significance of the facts thus displayed by Mr Howard Carter’s investigations.

Besides revealing the wonderful equipment of a royal tomb the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb enables us to examine many objects and articles of funerary equipment hitherto known to us only in pictures. This makes it possible for us not only to study and appreciate the nature of the things themselves, but also to acquire new confidence in the accuracy and the reality of the scenes and the objects depicted upon the walls of the tombs and the pictures inscribed on papyri. Many of the illustrations that have long been familiar to us in the old books of Belzoni, Lepsius, Rosellini, and Wilkinson, have acquired a new meaning and a new reality from the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb. Moreover, when the examination of the tomb is completed, and we learn something of the mummy, the king’s distinctive features, his age, and his ailments, we shall be able to read the history of his time more clearly, and perhaps be able to appreciate the deeper significance of one of the most piquant phases in the history of civilization.