Thread by @marinamaral2

This month's issue of History Revealed is quite special. In addition to my monthly contribution, there's a fantastic feature on The Colour of Time inside!

Photo: Howard Carter opens the door to the second of four gilded shrines surrounding Tutankhamun's sarcophagus, 1923.

In 1907, after three hard years for Carter, Lord Carnarvon employed him to supervise excavations of nobles' tombs in Deir el-Bahri, near Thebes. Gaston Maspero had recommended Carter to Carnarvon as he knew he would apply modern archaeological methods and systems of recording.

In 1914, Lord Carnarvon received the concession to dig in the Valley of the Kings, Carter was again employed to lead the work. However excavations and study were soon interrupted by the First World War.

By 1922, Lord Carnarvon had become dissatisfied with the lack of results after several years of finding little. He informed Carter that he had one more season of funding to make a significant find in the Valley of the Kings.

Carter returned to the Valley of Kings, and investigated a line of huts that he had abandoned a few seasons earlier. The crew cleared the huts and rock debris beneath.

On 4 November 1922, their young water boy accidentally stumbled on a stone that turned out to be the top of a flight of steps cut into the bedrock. Carter had the steps partially dug out until the top of a mud-plastered doorway was found.

The doorway was stamped with indistinct cartouches (oval seals with hieroglyphic writing). Carter ordered the staircase to be refilled, and sent a telegram to Carnarvon, who arrived two-and-a-half weeks later on 23 November.

On 26 November 1922, Carter made a "tiny breach in the top left hand corner" of the doorway, with Carnarvon, his daughter Lady Evelyn Herbert, and others in attendance, using a chisel that his grandmother had given him for his 17th birthday.

He was able to peer in by the light of a candle and see that many of the gold and ebony treasures were still in place. He did not yet know whether it was "a tomb or merely a cache", but he did see a promising sealed doorway between two sentinel statues.

Carnarvon asked, "Can you see anything?"

Carter replied with the famous words: "Yes, wonderful things!"

Carter had, in fact, discovered Tutankhamun's tomb.

The next several months were spent cataloguing the contents of the antechamber under the "often stressful" supervision of Pierre Lacau, director general of the Department of Antiquities of Egypt.

On 16 February 1923, Carter opened the sealed doorway and found that it did indeed lead to a burial chamber, and he got his first glimpse of the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun.

The tomb was considered the best preserved and most intact pharaonic tomb ever found in the Valley of the Kings, and the discovery was eagerly covered by the world's press, but most of their representatives were kept in their hotels, much to their annoyance.

Carter's own notes and photographic evidence indicate that he, Lord Carnarvon, and Lady Evelyn Herbert entered the burial chamber in November 1922, shortly after the tomb's discovery and before the official opening.

(My colorized version of this photo is in The Colour of Time)

Towards the end of February 1923 a rift between Lord Carnarvon and Carter, probably caused by a disagreement on how to manage the supervising Egyptian authorities, temporarily closed excavation. Work recommenced in early March after Lord Carnarvon apologized to Carter.

Later that month Lord Carnarvon contracted blood poisoning while staying in Luxor near the tomb site. He died in Cairo on 5 April 1923.

Lady Carnarvon retained her late husband’s concession in the Valley of the Kings, allowing Carter to continue his work.

Carter’s painstaking cataloguing of the thousands of objects in the tomb continued until 1932, most being moved to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

There were a number of breaks in the work, including one lasting nearly a year in 1924-25, caused by to a dispute over what Carter saw as excessive control of the excavation by the Egyptian Antiquities Service.

The Egyptian authorities eventually agreed that Carter should complete the tomb’s clearance.

Despite being involved in the greatest archaeological find of his time, Carter received no honor from the British government.

In 1926, he received the Order of the Nile, third class, from King Fuad I of Egypt.

After the clearance of the tomb had been completed, Carter retired from archaeology and became a part-time agent for collectors and museums, including the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts.

In 1924 he toured Britain, as well as France, Spain and the United States, delivering a series of illustrated lectures. Those in New York City and other US cities were attended by large and enthusiastic audiences, sparking American Egyptomania.

Carter died at his London flat at 49 Albert Court, next to the Royal Albert Hall, on 2 March 1939, aged 64 from Hodgkin's Disease. Few people attended his funeral, one of them was his older brother William who died in the same year.

Carter is buried in Putney Vale Cemetery in London.