Howard Carter

The Tomb of Tutankhamun Howard Carter

"What he writes has the stamp of first-hand knowledge and the grace of a sympathetic style. The world owes a debt of gratitude that the accident of the discovery of the tomb brought to it so painstaking a workman as the author-one who was willing to sacrifice the golden possibility of haste and fame to the slow accumulation of scientific knowledge."-The New York Times "Let me try and tell the story of it all. It will not be easy, for the dramatic suddenness of the initial discovery left me in a dazed condition, and the months that have followed have been so crowded with incident that I have hardly had time to think." Among the hundreds of books written about ancient Egypt and Tutankhamun, you won't find an equal to archaeologist Howard Carter's powerful book about his discovery. His great work in many ways remained unfinished. He left us, however, this remarkable document of discovery. The book is Carter's personal story of the greatest adventure of his life-one that has not been surpassed in a century of archaeology. In 1904, retired American lawyer, Theodore Davis, famously declared that The Valley of the Kings in Thebes had given up all of its secrets, leaving nothing more to be discovered. He relinquished his exclusive rights to dig in The Valley. But as Howard Carter states in this volume, "The history of The Valley has never lacked the dramatic element." Some 18 years later, Carter made the richest archaeological discovery in history within yards of where Davis had dug. The world immediately became obsessed with everything Tutankhamun. From architecture, to household goods, to fashion, a early 20th-century surge in fascination with ancient Egypt took hold across the globe. This is not a dry scientific treatment of the excavation or the artifacts. What he imparts with this book is a sense of excitement, wonder, and mystery set expertly into a concise context of history and Egyptology, captivating layperson and specialist alike, young or old.