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Howard Carter

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For other people named Howard Carter, see Howard Carter (disambiguation).
KV62 in the Valley of the Kings

Howard Carter (9 May 1874 – 2 March 1939) was an English archaeologist and Egyptologist born in Kensington England. He is most famous as the discoverer of KV62, the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt.

Early Work

Carter began work in 1890, at the age of 16, copying inscriptions and paintings in Egypt. He worked on the excavation of Beni Hasan, the gravesite of the princes of Middle Egypt, c. 2000 BC. Later he came under the tutelage of William Flinders Petrie.

He is also famous for finding the fecal remains of Queen Hatshepsut's tomb in Deir el-Bahri. In 1899, at the age of 25, Carter was offered a position working for the Egyptian Antiquities Service,EAS from which he resigned as a result of a dispute between Egyptian site guards and a group of drunk French tourists in 1905.

Tutankhamun's Tomb

Tomb of Tutankhamun

After several hard years, Carter was introduced, in 1907, to Lord Carnarvon, an eager amateur who was prepared to supply the funds necessary for Carter's work to continue. Soon, Carter was supervising all of Lord Carnarvon's excavations.

Lord Carnarvon financed Carter's search for the tomb of a previously unknown Pharaoh, Tutankhamun, whose existence Carter had discovered. After a few months of fruitless searching, Carnarvon was becoming dissatisfied with the lack of return from his investment and, in 1922, he gave Carter one more season of funding to find the tomb.

On 4 November 1922, after 15 years of searching and being funded, Carter found the steps leading to Tutankhamen's tomb (subsequently designated KV62), by far the best preserved and most intact pharaonic tomb ever found in the Valley of the Kings. He wired Lord Carnarvon to come, and on 26 November 1922, with Lord Carnarvon, Carnarvon's daughter, and others in attendance, Carter made the famous "tiny breach in the top left hand corner" of the doorway, and 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 at that point whether it was "a tomb or merely a cache", but he did see a promising sealed doorway between two sentinel statues. When Carnarvon asked him if he saw anything, Carter replied: "Yes, wonderful things".[1]

The next several weeks were spent carefully cataloguing the contents of the antechamber. On February 16, 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.

NB: Carter's own papers suggest that he, Lord Carnarvon & Lady Evelyn Herbert entered the tomb shortly after its discovery - without waiting for the arrival of Egyptian officials (as stipulated in their excavation permit). Some bizarre and demonstrably inaccurate theories have been offered about the exact extent of the excavators' rule-breaking; but it seems likely that it was (in reality) merely a case of impatient curiosity. They probably felt entitled to look because they had invested time, effort and money on the project for many years - it is widely accepted that their relationship with the government officials interested in their find was strained to the point where tacit non-cooperation became almost second nature to Carter.

While unwrapping the linens of the mummy, presumably looking for treasure, the skull of the ancient king fell away from the body. The impact from its fall out of the tomb made a dent in the skull. Egyptians believed a king could only be immortal if the body rested undisturbed, so some believe the name of the king must still be spoken today as a remembrance.

Later work & death

the extensive finds, Carter retired from archaeology and became a collector. He visited the United States in 1924, and gave a series of illustrated lectures in New York City which were attended by very large and enthusiastic audiences. He died in England in 1939 at the age of 64. The archaeologist's death, so long after the opening of the tomb, is the most common piece of evidence put forward by skeptics to refute the idea of a curse (the "Curse of the Pharaohs") plaguing the party that violated Tutankhamun's tomb.

Howard Carter is buried in Putney Vale Cemetery in West London. On his gravestone is written: "May your spirit live, May you spend millions of years, You who love Thebes, Sitting with your face to the north wind, Your eyes beholding happiness." (from the Wishing Cup of Tutankhamun)

File:Luxor, West Bank, home of Howard Carter, Egypt, Oct 2004.jpg
Carter's house in the Theban Necropolis

Howard Carter has been represented in a number of films, television programmes, etc.:

  • Egypt - a 2005 BBC One television series which featured the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb by Carter in the first two 60 minute episodes.[2]
  • In Search of the Pharaohs - a 30-minute cantata for narrator, junior choir and piano by composer Robert Steadman, commissioned by the City of London Freemen's School which uses extracts from Carter's diaries as its text.[citation needed]
  • A paraphrased extract from Howard Carter's diary of November 26 1922 is used as the plaintext for Part 3 of the encrypted Kryptos sculpture at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia.[3]
  • Carter was the loose inspiration for the alter ego of the comic book superhero Hawkman—"Carter Hall", an archaeologist digging in Egypt, introduced in Flash Comics #1 (1940).[citation needed]
  • Carter is a recurring character in the Amelia Peabody series of mystery novels by Elizabeth Peters; the discovery of Tutankhamon's tomb is fictionalized in Peters' Tomb of the Golden Bird (see that article for more info).
  • In the game Wheels of Salvation adventure game hosted on Miniclip.com, the player controls an Indiana Jones-like character named Dr. Carter.[4]
  • In the anime Lupin III (Shin Lupin III) Episode 007 "Tutankhamen's 3000-year Curse", Lupin manages to rob Tutankhamen's burial mask from a museum. In a sequence explaining the supposed curse of King Tutankhamen, Carter is seen excavating Tutankhamen's tomb. Lord Carnarvon's death is mentioned as well, though the narration places the excavation and death of Carnarvon both in 1922 and Carter's death in 1923, a year after Carnarvon's.[citation needed]
  • In the 1992 PC murder mystery game The Dagger of Amon Ra, a character named Pippin Carter, ostensibly Howard's cousin, is also a world-reknowned archaeologist, famous for discovering the Temple of Amon Ra in 1926 and the aformentioned dagger within.

References

  1. ^ http://www.crystalinks.com/tutstomb.html
  2. ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/10_october/17/egypt_carter_eps.shtml
  3. ^ http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/06/19/cracking.the.code/index.html
  4. ^ Miniclip.com

Further reading

  • James, T.G.H. Howard Carter: The Path to Tutankhamun. London: Kegan Paul International, 1992 (hardcover, ISBN 0710304250); London: Tauris Parke, 2001 (paperback, ISBN 1-86064-615-8)
  • Reeves, Nicholas; Taylor, John H. Howard Carter: Before Tutankhamun, London: British Museum Press, 1992 (hardcover, ISBN 0714109525); New York: H. N. Abrams, 1993 (hardcover, ISBN 0810931869)
  • Vandenberg, Philipp. The Forgotten Pharaoh: The Discovery of Tutankhamun. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1980 (hardcover, ISBN 0340246642)
  • Winstone, H.V.F. Howard Carter and the Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun. Manchester: Barzan Publishing, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN 1905521049; paperback, ISBN 1905521057)
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