Am I recording? You are listening to Stuff About Things, an art history podcast. Okay, let's vango. Hello and welcome to Stuff About Things, an Art History Podcast. My name is Lindsay, and I thank you very much for joining me for part two of the story of the discovery of King Tut's tomb. If you heard that last sentence and thought, excuse me, part two of what now? It would probably be a good idea for you to pause this episode and listen to part one of the story first. In part one, I talked about who King Tut was, the importance and primary purpose of Egyptian burial practices, and I recounted the early story of Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon's search for what was surely impossible to find. I did leave you on a bit of a cliffhanger, but let's face it, it isn't a cliffhanger if you know what happens in the story. And I'm not deluded, I know that more people probably want to hear about the actual discovery of the tomb here in part two, but I think that part one will tell you part of this story that you haven't heard before, and it also sets the stage for what happens in this episode, which starts in Egypt in the winter of 1922. When we last saw Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon, Lord Carnarvon was telling the peasant Carter that after 18 years of fruitless excavations in Egypt, he could not afford to keep bankrolling Carter's digs. At this point, all Lord Carnarvon was doing was pouring money into making literal holes in limestone debris. Carter begged Carnarvon for just one more chance, promising that if he didn't find anything, they could go their separate ways, knowing that they did the best they could and left no hunches unheeded. Carnarvon does agree, more as an act of goodwill than anything, and he says he'll pay for just one more season. Ultimately, though, he doesn't bother going back to Egypt himself that year, because he can't bear the thought of getting his hopes up yet again. There is, after all, nothing left to find in the Valley of the Kings. Or at least, that's what everyone said. Carter returns to Egypt in October of 1922 with a desperate determination and a new lady in his life. Oulala. That lady is a pet canary. Happy Valentine's Day. Now I'm not sure why Carter bought a bird, much less brought it to Egypt with him, but hey, it'll play into the story later, so we might as well just bring it up now. With the canary back at his bungalow, Carter returns to excavating in the Valley of the Kings for what is probably the last time, at least under Carnarvon's patronage. For this final season, Carter chooses to dig in a very tricksy spot within the valley that several people, including Carter himself, have attempted to excavate before, but for some reason or another found it way too difficult and abandoned ship. But this was basically the only place that Carter hadn't properly excavated. So naturally it was as good a place as any to begin this final hurrah. And hurrah, indeed it was. The final excavation began on November 1st, 1922. Just three days into a six-month dig, one of the workers finds something. A single slab of limestone that could not be naturally occurring. It had clearly been carved using tools and placed in the ground. The worker sends for a foreman who gets Carter, and over the course of the next day, Carter and his team uncover more steps. 16 of them in total. They follow the steps down until they hit wood. It's a door. And once they have it freed from the rubble and the sand, Carter sees that not only is this a door, but it's a door bearing the seals of the valley's ancient guardians. And those seals are unbroken, signaling that no one has opened this door in thousands of years. This is it. This is what Carter has been looking for for 19 years. An unspoiled tomb. Now we all know what he finds inside, but at this point, Carter doesn't. It could be nothing, but it also could be everything. If this were a fictional story, I as a reader would have been so annoyed at this plot line. 18 years in ultimatum, and then you just happen to find something like a few days into what is supposed to be the final dig. Nah. That's just like that's so neat, it's practically anticlimatic. But that is what actually happened here. Just days into this final dig, Carter found something big. But he can't, in good faith, open the door and break those seals without his patron, Lord Carnarvon. That just wouldn't be right. Also, Carnarvon, like, has all the permits and whatever. It's probably illegal as well. So Carter orders the workers to refill the steps with rubble to make it look like they found nothing at all. Now, can you imagine being one of those workers? Like, I'm getting paid 15 cents a day to dig up something, and now you're telling me to refill it? Hell no. But of course, the workers are excited too, so they repack the stairwell while Carter rushes off to send a telegram to Lord Carnarvon in England. Carnarvon was at dinner when he receives the message, which read, At last have made a wonderful discovery in the valley. Magnificent tomb with seals intact. Recovered, same for your arrival. Congratulations. Side note: the sentence fragments necessitated by telegrams were definitely the precursors of shorthand texting. And Lord Carnarvon is like G2G, and he starts making plans to get his butt to Egypt as fast as humanly possible. But this is the 1920s, so as fast as humanly possible means it takes him two weeks. But he does have some lovely company in the form of his daughter, Evelyn, who definitely wants in on this adventure. Now Carter can't do anything with the excavation until Lord Carnarvon gets there. So he has to wait, which must have been excruciating. Like, excruciating. I can only imagine his excitement when he finally got word that Carnarvon and Evelyn had landed in Cairo and were making their way down to Luxor, a 500-mile journey down the Nile. In anticipation of their arrival, Carter uncovers the stairs and entryway once more. And on November 24th, 1922, weeks after he first discovered it, Carter approaches the door with Lord Carnarvon and Evelyn and he prepares to open it. As he does that, he notices that the lower portion of the door looks like it has been repaired at some point in time, and the panic sets in. Did Carter just call his patron here for nothing? Is he about to find yet another despoiled tomb, emptied thousands of years ago by thieves in the night? Carter dismantles the door, which reveals an empty passageway that was littered with broken vase fragments and debris. But there is another door at the end of that passageway, and on that door is an unbroken seal bearing a name. Pharaoh Tootin Common. At this point, Carter and Carnarvon probably should have stopped and called someone. Like, I don't know who they would call, but this feels like the kind of thing that you call someone about. Like, I don't know. The government, the antiquities service? I don't know, someone. But instead, Carter creates a small opening in the door and he sticks a candle through it, you know, to make sure there isn't any poisonous gas that could kill them all. Good thinking. And when he's sure that they won't be asphyxiated by nasty tomb air, Carter sticks his head through the opening. As the story goes, Carnarvon asked Carter if he could see anything, and Carter responded, yes, wonderful things. Carter would later write about that moment and what he saw inside the room, saying, quote, 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. Evelyn and Lord Carnarvon also get a look before Carter orders his laborers to install like a heavy-duty iron door on the entry of the passageway and to get some armed guards to protect the tomb. Carter then leaves to send a boatload of telegrams to call for reinforcements. That is, at least, the official version of events, according to Carter. I will get into the unofficial and much more damning story much later in the episode. Carter calls for reinforcements, and a slew of museum professionals and archaeologists rushed to Egypt to be part of this insane discovery. A discovery that no one in their right mind could have imagined. One of the people who was there to see the tomb before anything had been brought out of it described the experience as an impossible scene from a fairy tale. Carter also called a photographer to document the opening of the tomb and to help catalog all of the items that were found within. So there are photographs of all of this going down. As you will be able to see in photographs, the second doorway led to an antechamber that was filled with stuff. Filled. There were vases and tables and chairs and sculptures and a thousand other things, probably literally. While he was examining the antechamber, Carter found evidence of two other rooms, one that would become known as the annex, and another room, the one that Carter believed was the burial chamber of the Pharaoh. But before he could enter either of those rooms, everything in the antechamber had to be cataloged and removed, not only to make way for further excavations, but to preserve the objects. That room hadn't been opened in over 3,000 years, and the act of opening it had caused the environment within the tomb to change. At one point, someone who was helping to catalog the items in the tomb got freaked out because he swore that he saw a statue's eyes moving and glinting in the half-light. On closer inspection, though, he realized that the pearlescent pigment of the statue was flaking off on its own accord due to the sudden atmospheric change. If they wanted to properly preserve these objects, they had to move and fast. And by fast I mean that it took them 10 weeks to properly document, draw to scale, and remove every item from the antechamber. According to the official story, it was only then that Carter would proceed to break down the wall that led to the next room. With the help of a sledgehammer, it took 10 minutes. Because that seems like the best way to do things, you know, after weeks and weeks of painstaking scientific work to catalog everything, Carter finally got to use his sledgehammer. Once again, those who peered into the room were met by what looked like a solid wall of gold. This was indeed the burial chamber of King Tut, but by the time the wall comes down, it's already late February of 1923, and there is very little time left in the season before the heat will shut everything down. That is, if something else doesn't do it first. Something like, I don't know, a curse. The discovery of King Tut's tomb was a story heard around the world, but one could argue that it is an event that never should have happened. In the previous episode, I did talk a little bit about ancient Egyptian burial practices and the reasons behind them. The disturbance of one's tomb equated to the disturbance of one's afterlife, especially if the body was compromised in some way. According to ancient Egyptian beliefs, Howard Carter and his crew were doing just as much spiritual damage as your run-of-the-mill grave robbers. It didn't matter that they were Egyptologists. From a practical perspective, Howard Carter was a professional tomb raider, and he had just disturbed what had undoubtedly been a very comfortable afterlife for our boy Tut. According to the legend, King Tut struck back. Remember Carter's canary, the golden lady he brought with him to Egypt for the season? The canary was lauded by locals as being the bringer of good luck, an omen of good fortune, amazing fortune, it seems. It is only natural that if Carter's excavation of King Tut's tomb did release a curse upon them all, the canary would be the first to go. And it was. In fact, it was the first of several casualties struck down by the alleged curse of the mummy. The story has it that soon after Carter discovered and opened King Tut's tomb, a cobra entered his bungalow near the valley and ate Carter's canary. And that was a strange thing because cobras weren't all that common in Luxor, especially not during winter. And was it simply a coincidence that the cobra had been a symbol of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs for centuries? Had King Tut claimed his first victim? If the canary was the first and only casualty, I don't actually think that this curse business would have progressed much further than local legend. But the canary wasn't the only one to perish around the time that Carter found the tomb. There was another casualty, a more famous casualty, a man named George Edward Stanhope Molina Herbert, also known as Lord Carnarvon. Yes, you heard that correctly. Lord Carnarvon was allegedly struck down by the curse of the Pharaoh. After the excitement of finding and clearing the tomb over the course of 10 weeks, Lord Carnarvon went to Aswan for a few days, just about a 150-mile boat ride up the Nile River. But sometime around his departure for Aswan, Carnarvon made a foe of one of the world's most wretched creatures. A mosquito. That's right, mosquito. Evil creatures. The mosquito must have thought Carnarvon looked very tasty and bit him on the cheek. Now there's no word on whether or not the mosquito survived that encounter. In reality, the mosquito bite itself probably didn't do anything. I mean it was just a bug bite, and you know, as long as you take care of those, they're usually fine. But Carnarvon accidentally nicked the bite while shaving, resulting in an infected wound. Carnarvon came down with a fever and was quite sick, but in the end he was like, I'm fine, don't worry, I got this. But he did not have this, and he was not fine. In fact, he was eventually admitted to a hospital in Cairo where his infection made him an easy target for pneumonia. Lord Carnarvon succumbed to his illness on April 5th, 1923, almost five months to the day that he heard that Carter had made a magnificent discovery in the valley. Lord Carnarvon never did get to see the mummy of Tutankhamun uncovered, but he hadn't escaped the mummy's curse, or so it seems. To make matters all of the more ominous, it was said that all of the lights in Cairo went out at the exact same moment of Lord Carnarvon's death. And thousands of miles away in England, Carnarvon's beloved terrier, Susie, let out a howl and dropped dead. Was Susie the third victim of the curse? Of course, I don't actually believe in a mummy's curse, though I wouldn't blame King Tut's soul for being super pissed that it had been disrupted. I mean, I get pissed. Disrupted when I'm taking like a two-hour nap. So I don't know what I would do if awoken after 3,000 years. But these kinds of stories, they always surround big ticket news items, and the media was desperate to milk this discovery for all it was worth. Remember, this was not a great time in world history. There had just been a massive war. Europe was still recovering, and there was serious tension between England and its colonial holdings. People needed an escape. It's more fun to focus on potential curses than on very real human problems. Which isn't to say that the deaths of the Canary or Carnarvon or Susie and whoever else died as part of the quote unquote curse, but they were certainly events that were easy to turn into myth. Other casualties of the so-called curse would follow poor Susie, but all of them were only tangentially related to the opening of the tomb and its subsequent study. If King Tut's curse was going to strike someone down, you would think it would be Howard Carter, though you could argue that Tut's revenge on Carter was just slower than all the rest. Sure, whatever. We'll get to that a little bit later. The death of Lord Carnarvon was devastating, not only because he had been Carter's patron for 19 years, but because the permit to dig was in his name. This brings us to some of the more maddening aspects of King Tut's tomb, which was the bureaucratic bickering over who owned the contents. These negotiations were complicated to begin with, but they were also fraught with political tension and the growing hostility between the Egyptians, who wanted independence, and the English, who maintained protectorate status over the country. This last point about Egyptians wanting to control their own political fate was a particularly sore issue, especially regarding King Tut's tomb. That's because before his death, Lord Carnarvon agreed to let the Times, an English newspaper, have exclusive rights to the story on King Tut's tomb. He even went so far as to set up an embargo that meant all other newspapers, including Egyptian ones, could only publish aspects of the story after the Times had done so first. So the Egyptians, who all knew this stuff was going on, couldn't actually report on a massive event happening in their own country until the English did it first. Not a great look for our boys, Carnarvon and Carter. Then there was the question of who owned what in the tomb. The permit that, you know, permitted Lord Carnarvon and Carter to dig in the Valley of the Kings came with rules. One of those rules was that if the excavation uncovered an intact tomb, the Egyptian government had exclusive ownership of everything discovered in the find. If the tomb had already been despoiled in some way, then the treasures were split 50-50 between the permit holder and the government. I have no idea why the rules changed depending on the status of the tomb. I honestly don't. But the difference between the two options was huge, especially where King Tut's tomb was concerned. Even Carter and Carnarvon before he died, obviously he wasn't like a ghost in this situation, even they could not agree on what should be done with what they believed was their half of the treasure. Carnarvon was already making plans to have some things transported back to England, while Carter claimed that he wanted all of the items to stay together in a single museum collection, specifically that of the museum in Cairo. At one point, their debate got so heated that Carter swore he would never talk to Carnarvon again. They did make up somewhat before Carnarvon's death, but still, 'twas not a good situation. After Carnarvon's death, Howard Carter had to scramble to convince Lady Carnarvon, whose name was Amira, a very pretty name indeed, to renew the dig permit that was set to expire at the end of this season. And of course she did, but it was now under her name. However, my home girl Amira also renewed the contract that allowed the Times first dibs on information. And Carter was like, what? You win some, you lose some. Carter must not have been that upset though, because he allowed a Times reporter by the name of Arthur Merton to become an official member of the excavation team, and the Egyptian government was pissed. I love that word. PSD. Because this story is like the perfect plot line of a Hollywood movie, matters came to a head at the most dramatic time during the next excavation season. The previous year, Carter had taken a sledgehammer to the wall separating the antechamber from the burial chamber, revealing what seemed to be a solid wall of gold. But there hadn't been any time to start unpacking the contents of that tomb. So in late 1923 and early 1924, Carter started the real work on the burial chamber, which he Was convinced would yield a fully intact burial of the Pharaoh Tutin Common. The burial chamber was a fairly small room that was dominated by a big golden shrine, which is a fancy way of saying a big sacred box. And we are talking big. It was so big that it essentially took up the entire room. When Carter and his team managed to dismantle that shrine, they found another one, and in that shrine there was a third one. And yep, you guessed it, there was also a fourth shrine. This is your quintessential Russian nesting doll situation, but you know, Egyptian burial style. Spoiler alert, there were also several more layers to go. Carter systematically dismantles these four shrines, peeling away layer upon layer of sacred protection, and inside that fourth and final shrine, Carter found a sarcophagus made of pure quartz stone. The lid of that sarcophagus was cracked, probably the result of an accident when it was being installed some 3,000 years earlier. And they think that because the crack had been mended, but the overall structural integrity of the lid was still compromised. That made it super difficult for Carter to remove the lid without causing further damage. In fact, Carter and his team had to create their own system of pulleys and levers that would allow them to raise the lid high enough so that they could see what was underneath. Keep in mind that this lid weighs 3,000 pounds. Literally, it weighs 3,000 pounds and it has a crack in it. On February 12th, 1924, Carter gives the signal and the stone lid is raised inch by inch until it hovers a few feet above the sarcophagus. And everyone has their breaths held, and they're waiting and they're waiting and they're waiting, and then all of a sudden the lid comes off and what? A heap of discolored linen. Carter carefully peels back the linen coverings inside and reveals a golden face with wide open eyes. It is the first of three coffins, all three of which were fashioned to look human. An incorruptible outer shell of the body that Carter knew must be inside. When Carter and his posse exit the tomb to celebrate with champagne and tea, he receives a message from the Egyptian Antiquities Service. Carter can no longer allow the wives of his colleagues into the tomb. No more women are allowed on the premises. Now I didn't really look that far into why women weren't allowed on the premises, because I didn't want to be inspired to go into a feminist rage. Not today. But I do want to give credit to all of the dudes who were like, nah, my wife is allowed to experience this by my side, or I'm out. Also, I'm imagining wives being like, Harold, if you go in there without me, you're going to have to buy your own sarcophagus, because I'm gonna murder you. Carter also refuses to bow to what he believes is retribution for allowing a reporter from the Times to go on the dig. So what does Carter do? He's got a bit of a temper. He padlocks the iron gate to the tomb and he takes the only key with him. Howard Carter leaves the excavation site, even as a 3,000-pound, structurally dubious sarcophagus lid is suspended in mid-air above the coffin of Tutan Common. Ruthless. Without going into excessive detail, the next year is a bit of a shit show. Excuse my language, but it's true. The Egyptian government demand that Carter open the door to the tomb, and he refuses. So the government breaks it down and takes control over the site. Meanwhile, Carter, never one to keep his temper in check, starts to change his tune about where objects from the tomb should wind up. Initially, he wanted to see them united in the Cairo Museum as part of Egyptian cultural heritage. Now he's saying that the contents of the tomb, quote, belong to the world, which, in the museum business, is a pretty standard response when institutions don't want to give something back to the country of their origin. But that's a different topic for a different day. Carter eventually realizes that he has zero leverage here, so he teams up with Lady Carnarvon to make a deal with the Egyptian government. This deal would at least allow the Carnarvon family to recoup the money that they put into the dig and properly compensate all of the museums who aided in the process. Also, Carter would be allowed to return to the dig. This is all in return for Lady Carnarvon relinquishing all rights to the treasure. However, all of the negotiations break down at the exact moment that the contract is to be signed, because some creep that Carter brought with him let out a racist slur. An uproar ensues, and the government issues a major go f yourself to both Carter and Lady Carnarvon. The Egyptian government bans them and any member of the Carnarvon family from ever entering the Valley of the Kings. No joke, Howard Carter was literally banned from the site where he had uncovered what was surely one of the greatest discoveries in all of archaeology. After many more months of back and forth, things do eventually get settled and resolved, and Carter is finally allowed to return to the tomb. In addition, the Carnarvon family is granted 3,600, 3,600, that'd be like nothing, 36,000 pounds to pay for the expenses incurred by the family for the excavation of the tomb. And that's a lot of money, especially for 1925. From here on out, the Egyptian government pays for the cost of excavation and retains exclusive ownership over anything that was discovered in the tomb. Carter finally returns to work. In his absence, the working team had removed the sarcophagus lid, but they hadn't yet lifted the lid of the coffin inside. That coffin had silver handles that were undoubtedly used to lower the lid onto the baste 3,000 years ago, and Carter and his team used those same handles to raise the coffin lid back up. This revealed a second coffin that was even more magnificent than the previous one, though to a non-Egyptologist they do look quite similar. The most magnificent of the coffins was the third and final one, on account of it being made of solid gold. Later, when it was weighed, the coffin tipped the scale at over 226 pounds. In today's exchange rate for gold, the raw materials of that coffin alone equate to 4.7 million dollars, though of course the coffin itself is priceless. This was also the last layer that Carter had to penetrate before revealing at long last what he had been waiting for for 19 years. Carter had known that he would find King Tut's mummy inside of the tomb, but it must have been a relief when he was proven right. King Tut's mummy lay within the golden coffin, the head covered in the now famous golden mask, the one that many of us probably think of when we envision the boy King. The rest of the mummy, however, didn't look right. As Carter himself said, quote, the mummy was in a terrible state. Which, like, what did you expect? But what Carter was referring to was a very dark, kind of gluey substance that had been poured over the body before the coffin had been sealed. Unfortunately, there was still moisture present in the coffin when the burial attendants closed the lid, and over the course of 3,000 years, whatever had been poured over the body had turned into a blackened, sort of tar-like substance. The mummy was literally stuck to the floor of the coffin, and Carter could not think of a way to get it out. Now I like to think of this as King Tut's final screw you to the guy who had disturbed his burial. But eventually, the mummy did come loose and was transported to a nearby tomb in the valley. It was there in November of 1925 that a professor of anatomy from the Egyptian University in Cairo and a slew of other professionals began to remove its mummy wrappings. This in itself was like an excavation, as the wrappings revealed jewels and amulets intended to protect the body within, even as the doctors and archaeologists were literally undoing all of those protective efforts, and they continued until the fragile remains of King Tut were laid bare. This, of course, was all very exciting from a scientific standpoint, but it also caused a great deal of moral outrage. This was, after all, a human body, and Carter and his team were stripping that body not only of its burial environment, but of its dignity. Carter stated that he understood the emotions that surrounded the event, but in the end, the progress of Egyptology and scientific examination had to be privileged over the rights of a 3,000-year-old corpse. Now I personally see both sides of this argument, caught as I am between my very human desire to learn more and the ugly feeling that comes with knowing that learning comes at a price, and that price is being a voyeur to something that ancient Egyptians never wanted us to see. The autopsy of the mummy provided very few clues about how Tut died, which greatly frustrated Carter. As a professional, however, he knew that future advancements might one day be able to solve the mystery, though in 2019 we're kind of still waiting. Once the autopsy had been completed, Carter re-wrapped the mummy in fresh linen and placed it back into the quartz coffin in the tomb, which is where the mummy has remained for the most part since its discovery. As medical advancements have been made, the mummy has been re-exhumed and subject to a series of x-rays, CT scans, and other kinds of testing, the most recent round of which, to my knowledge, was in 2014. And each new round of tests has provided new insights into the life and death of the boy who became Pharaoh at 9 and died at 19. Much like the debates surrounding the Shroud of Turin, it seems that we might never know for sure how Tut died, whether from a chariot crash, a murder, an infection, or any other possibility. That might be one secret that Tut is allowed to keep. As far as I know, the Pharaoh's body does continue to reside in his otherwise empty tomb. He was at least provided that dignity. It took Howard Carter nearly 10 years to properly empty and catalog all of the objects found in King Tut's tomb, all 5,398 of them. Among the most precious of the finds were King Tut's coffins and his death mask, the latter of which was 26 pounds of pure gold. There were also guardian statues, ritual figures, full-size sailing boats, golden couches, and as many jewels as a niffler could ever want. In case you didn't get that, that was a Harry Potter reference. Other items were more practical, including a beautiful pair of beaded sandals whose beading literally crumbled under the gentlest of touches, with the thread having decayed over thousands of years ago. As will surprise literally no one. What interested people most about this discovery was the literal treasures, those things that glittered with gold and were encrusted with jewels. But there were also items in the tomb that gave us great insight into the life that King Tut led and the losses that he may have experienced himself. Archaeologists counted no less than 130 different canes, walking sticks, and staffs that suggested that whoever buried Tut expected him to carry his disability into the afterlife. But the most shocking of all were the mummies of two stillborn children who shared Tut's tomb. Now we don't actually know if those are King Tut's children, but their presence certainly suggests that they were. And this all goes to show that not all treasure is silver and gold. After two decades of searching and another of painstaking excavation, Howard Carter left Egypt for England. He had every intention of returning to Africa, but he was soon hit by an illness that prevented him from ever working or adventuring as he once had. The great Egyptologist died in 1939 at the age of 64. Quite fittingly, Carter's gravestone is inscribed with the words that he found on a small cup in King Tut's tomb. May your spirit live, may you spend millions of years, you who love Thebes, sitting with your face to the north wind and your eyes beholding happiness. Howard Carter's story had ended. Stories, though, are never without their biases. In much of this story, as I have told it, Howard Carter has been the hero. A flawed and temperamental man, yes, but the hero of the story nonetheless. A man who was driven as much by his passion as his professionalism. His version of events, the so-called official version, would later be challenged. In the 1960s and the 1970s, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was preparing to host what would be a blockbuster exhibition of the treasures of King Tut's tomb, including the famous Golden Death mask. The lead organizer and later director of the museum, Thomas Hoving, prepared for the exhibition and did some research. It was during that research that he started to question the official record of events, as Carter had told them. Things just weren't matching up. Carter's own published timeline and descriptions of findings did not match the photographs taken by the photographer Harry Burton, who had accompanied Carter and photographed virtually everything following the discovery of the tomb. That led Hoving to an excavation of his own, not through limestone and sand, but through unpublished documents relating to the dig. The more that Hoving looked into it, the more certain he became that Carter, Carnarvon, and Evelyn had all lied about what happened the night that they first glimpsed inside the tomb. They all claimed that they took a quick look through a small hole, shut that back up, and called all of the appropriate parties. It has always seemed unbelievable to me that Carter and his patron resisted the urge to break down that door and relish in their discovery, that they could even manage to wait one more day to explore that tomb. Well, it doesn't seem to be as unbelievable as I thought. Huving found unpublished documents that suggested that they didn't wait at all. Instead, Hoving believes that the group did enter the tomb that first night. They walked around it, they looked for other rooms. But why would they lie about entering the tomb? There's the question of what objects they might have disturbed when entering and walking around it, what objects they moved to check to see if there were other doors or walls that could lead to other chambers. And they introduced new variables into a room that had not been touched for thousands of years. There's also the possibility that Howard Carter wanted to make it look as if the tomb had been entered previously, that it had been, quote unquote, despoiled in some way since King Tut was closed inside. Why? Why on earth would he want to do that? If the tomb had been entered, then by contractual agreement, Lord Carnarvon would get half of everything in the tomb. Now I don't want to believe that Howard Carter essentially planted evidence of a break-in, and I don't actually think that. But I do think he entered the tomb alongside his patron to behold their find. Evidence of people in the tomb, of it being entered and therefore despoiled, would later come in handy when issues of ownership got contentious. There is, however, the additional evidence that Lord Carnarvon and Carter removed artifacts from the tomb that night that bore no inscriptions and could therefore not be traced back to the tomb. After all, the Egyptian government could not miss what they didn't know existed. Several of those uncatalogued items have wound up in American museums, and the institutions currently in possession of them are hesitant to do any more digging, pun intended, of where those objects had come from. Because if the items were somehow traced back to King Tut's tomb, Egypt could make the claim, and rightly so, that they should be returned. Now this all sounds shady and it is, but we also need to remember that technically, the original door that Carter found at the bottom of those initial 16 stairs had been repaired, suggesting that someone had entered the passageway after it had been originally sealed. That alone was arguably enough to prune that the tomb had been despoiled, and therefore Lord Carnarvon owned half of its contents. Now, whether or not you think it's ethical, Lord Carnarvon and Carter believed that half of that tomb was theirs to do with as they pleased. So what if they started a little early? Regardless of which version of events is true, Howard Carter and his discovery of King Tut's tomb would be a staple in the annals of Egyptology, as well as the imaginations of children, some of whom will never be able to let go of the idea that maybe, just maybe, there is more magic and mystery in this world just waiting to be discovered. That was a long one. And much more detailed than I anticipated getting, but you know, curiosity happens. The discovery of King Tut's tomb is one of my favorite stories, and it's only natural that it's continuing to inspire the imaginations of contemporary audiences. Take, for instance, the delightfully overdramatic miniseries on the BBC called Tutin Common, that I definitely watched over a few glasses of wine. The wine may or may not be necessary depending on how you feel about Max Irons and a mustache, and the wildly inaccurate but delightfully salacious subplot about Howard Carter doing a little digging with various ladies, including Lord Carnarvon's daughter, Evelyn. Ooh, Carter, you nasty. As for TV, how about a fun fact? The Carnarvon family home is High Clear Castle, which will look very familiar to fans of the show Downton Abbey. The Carnarvon family home was the primary filming location for that TV show. I also happened to know that the house is open for tours because I've been there. And while we were touring the house and grounds, everyone was all like Downton Abbey this, Downton Abbey that. But I was straight up walking around thinking, I bet there's some hidden nooks and crannies in this place where Lord Carnarvon hid some treasure. Alas, I found none that I'll tell you about. If you are looking for a rip-roin good time, I also must recommend watching the 1999 cinematic masterpiece, The Mummy, starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weiss. The story has absolutely nothing to do with Tutin Common and is in no way factual, but it is my favorite movie of all time. And no, I am not kidding, that's no joke, I'm serious. I have seen that movie hundreds, if not thousands, of times. I owned it on VHS when it first came out, I now have it on DVD, and I was delighted to see that it's now streaming on Netflix. As I told my best friend Drew, I think that movie is Brendan Fraser's finest work. But she disagreed she thought it was George of the Jungle, which, you know, will beg to differ. On that note, that is where I will end this two-part series on the discovery of King Tut's tomb and venture back into our normal routine for closing out the episodes. Specifically by taking a little gander into Gus Corner. The Gus Man is doing very well. I will see him again in a few weeks, and I'm super pumped. But in the meantime, I have received reports that he has wormed his way back into partial furniture privileges, but we'll see how long that lasts. Mom, if you're listening to this, and I think that you will be, please give him the scratches for me. Since I posted the last episode, Gus has managed to infiltrate three more works of art in between all of his snoozels and his scratches and his walkies. He's been a very busy boy. These include Surah's Sunday on the Grand Jot, Raphael's Sistine Madonna, and MC Escher's lithograph of hand with a reflecting sphere. Gus and I both hope that you enjoy those. As always, recommended sources, links, and related images will all be posted on the podcast's website, stuffaboutthingspodcast.com. You can also follow the podcast on all of the usual social media platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
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SPEAKER_00A big thanks to the providers of my royalty free music, freemusicarchive.org and hooksounds.com. The song you hear at the beginning of the episode is a version of Box Brandenburg Concerto number four by Kevin McLeod, and the jaunty tune is one called Success Stream. As for me, I will talk to you all in about a month. If not sooner, maybe. Maybe. Thank you so much for sticking with me through these two episodes on King Tut's tomb. I really appreciate it. I will talk to you all soon, and I hope that you take the time to look at something beautiful today.