On November 4, 1922, a young Egyptian boy clearing sand from the entrance to the Valley of the Kings uncovered a stone step. His name was Hussein Abdel-Rassul, and he was working for the British archaeologist Howard Carter. By the next day, workers had uncovered sixteen steps leading down to a sealed door. Carter sent a telegram to his patron, Lord Carnarvon, in England: At last have made wonderful discovery in Valley; a magnificent tomb with seals intact; re-covered same for your arrival; congratulations.

Carnarvon arrived on November 23. On November 26, Carter made a small hole in the inner door, held a candle through it, and looked. When Carnarvon asked whether he could see anything, Carter replied: “Yes, wonderful things.”

Who Was Tutankhamun?

Tutankhamun was born around 1341 BCE, probably the son of the controversial pharaoh Akhenaten and a secondary wife. His mother’s identity remains uncertain — genetic analysis of mummies from the Valley suggests she may have been a woman sometimes called the Younger Lady, a daughter of Amenhotep III. He was born with the name Tutankhaten, meaning “the living image of the Aten,” reflecting his father’s insistence on a single solar deity.

Akhenaten’s religious revolution had dismantled the traditional pantheon, suppressed the powerful priests of Amun, and moved Egypt’s capital to a purpose-built city in the desert. When Akhenaten died, the reversal began almost immediately. The boy king — who was perhaps eight or nine when he took the throne — changed his name to Tutankhamun, moved the capital back to Thebes, and began restoring the temples and priesthoods his father had shut down. He almost certainly did not make these decisions himself at that age. The real power behind the throne belonged to two older men: the general Horemheb and the official Ay.

Tutankhamun died around age eighteen or nineteen, in approximately 1323 BCE. The cause of his death has been debated for a century. Early theories centered on murder — a blow to the head, a conspiracy. Later analysis identified a severe leg fracture consistent with a chariot accident or a fall, combined with malaria and a bone disease called Kohler disease. The current consensus is that he died from a combination of these factors rather than foul play. He left no surviving heirs. The elderly official Ay took the throne briefly, followed by Horemheb, who systematically erased most traces of the heretic dynasty, including Tutankhamun himself.

The Tomb

KV62 is, by the standards of New Kingdom royal tombs, quite small. Tutankhamun’s brief reign and sudden death meant there was not time to prepare the grand tomb a pharaoh of his status would normally have received. The tomb consists of four chambers: an antechamber, an annex, a burial chamber, and a treasury. Every one of them was packed.

Carter spent ten years fully excavating and cataloguing the tomb’s contents. The final count exceeded five thousand objects. There were three gilt couches in the shapes of mythological animals — a hippopotamus goddess, a lion, and a cow. There were two life-size black resin guardian statues flanking the sealed doorway to the burial chamber. There were chariots, disassembled and stacked. There were alabaster canopic jars containing the pharaoh’s mummified organs. There were hundreds of ushabti figurines meant to do manual labor in the afterlife on the king’s behalf. There was a golden throne inlaid with glass and semi-precious stones, its back panel showing the king and queen in a domestic scene so intimate it seems almost private.

And then there was the burial chamber itself, almost entirely filled by four nested gilded shrines, inside which was a stone sarcophagus containing three nested coffins. The outermost two were gilded wood. The innermost, which held the king’s mummy, was solid gold, nearly a quarter-inch thick, and weighed 110 kilograms. Over the mummy’s face lay the famous golden death mask: 10 kilograms of beaten gold inlaid with lapis lazuli, obsidian, carnelian, quartz, and faience, fashioned into the idealized likeness of a young king.

What the Tomb Revealed

Because nearly every other royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings had been robbed in antiquity, Tutankhamun’s tomb represented something entirely new: a complete royal burial assemblage. For the first time, archaeologists could see exactly what a pharaoh’s funeral equipment looked like — every ritual object, every piece of furniture, every provision for the afterlife.

The tomb also revealed something about the young king as a person. Among the grave goods were his childhood toys. A throw stick he used as a boy. Walking sticks — evidence, combined with his skeletal analysis, that he suffered from a congenital foot condition that made walking difficult. Food: wine, honey, oils, spices. A lock of hair from his grandmother, Queen Tiye, carefully coiled in a tiny coffin-shaped box. Personal objects that were simply his, not ritual equipment.

DNA analysis conducted in 2010 confirmed his parentage and identified health issues including malaria and bone disease. It also revealed that he was the product of a sibling marriage — his parents were almost certainly brother and sister, a common practice in the royal family intended to concentrate divine blood but which carried severe genetic risks. He was, at the time of his death, a physically fragile young man who had probably been ill for much of his life.

The Curse That Wasn’t

Lord Carnarvon died in Cairo on April 5, 1923, five months after the tomb was opened. He had been in poor health for years — a car accident in Germany in 1901 had permanently damaged his lungs — and he died of blood poisoning following an infected mosquito bite that he accidentally opened while shaving. British newspapers decided this was the fulfillment of an ancient curse and ran with the story enthusiastically.

There was no curse inscription in the tomb. Statisticians who have tracked the longevity of everyone present at the opening found no unusual pattern of early death. Carter himself died in 1939 at the age of sixty-four. Most of those present at the opening lived to normal ages. The curse was, as these things generally are, a compelling story that newspapers found irresistible and the facts declined to support. A fuller treatment appears in the Curses and Mysteries article.

Tutankhamun’s golden mask now sits in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The mummy remains in the tomb in the Valley of the Kings, inside its outermost coffin, where it has rested for more than three thousand years. He was a minor king. He changed almost nothing. But the accident of his tomb’s survival means we know him better than almost any other person from the ancient world.