November 26, 2019 • 5 mins
Archaeologists entered the tomb of King Tutankhamun on this day in 1922. There's more to the story in the September 15, 2010 episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, history fans, if you want a double dose of history,
here's a rerun for today, brought to you by Tracy V. Wilson.
Welcome to this Day in History Class from how Stuff
Works dot com and from the desk of Stuff you
Missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore
the past one day at a time with a quick
look at what happened today in history. Hello, and welcome
(00:24):
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and it's November.
Archaeologist opened Kinghaman's tomb on the Stay in n He's
also known as King Tut and he was born around
thirty two b c. And ruled Egypt for nine years.
British archaeologist Howard Carter and his team found the stairs
(00:45):
down into the tomb in the Valley of the Kings
about three weeks earlier. There had been numerous excavations in
this area at the end of the nineteenth century, and
a lot of archaeologists thought that everything notable that could
be found had already been found. A lot of these
excavations had also been at burial sites that had already
been plundered by grave robbers long before. But Tuton Common's
(01:09):
reign came at a turbulent time in Egyptian history. His father,
i'm in Hotep the fourth was also known as Akanatn
because of his worship of the sun god ought in
and only that god Acnat, and tried to totally change
Egyptian cultural and religious life, and then after his death,
Egypt basically tried to put everything back the way it
(01:31):
had been before. That meant that after Tuton Common died,
he wasn't very well remembered because of his father's legacy
and his place within that legacy and the efforts to
undo all of it later. Pharaoh's basically wrote him out
of history, but that may have offered his tomb some
protection from looters. It wasn't very well documented, so people
(01:54):
didn't know to go and rob it. When he discovered
the plastered door to the tomb, which was still sealed,
Howard Carter ordered everything to be filled back in, and
he sent a message to his patron, George Herbert, the
fifth Earl of Carnarvon, who was paying for this whole expedition,
and told him quote a wonderful discovery in the valley,
(02:15):
a magnificent tomb with seals intact. They all waited for
him to get there, to actually see the thing that
he was paying to be excavated opened up for the
first time. They were joined by both British and Egyptian observers,
and what they found was exactly what they hoped was
behind that door, an intact tomb, still filled with its
(02:36):
original grave goods, including jewelry and statues and beads and
baskets and musical instruments, just thousands of objects, some of
them very ornate and valuable. This tomb of Tuton Common
is actually the smallest one in the Valley of Kings,
possibly because he died suddenly at a very young age,
but it's also possible that he was buried in a
(02:59):
two that was being planned for the man who wound
up being his successor. It's not totally clear regardless, though,
because it had not been plundered like all these other
grave sites had, it turned out to be a major,
major fine in spite of its small size. The door
to the burial chamber itself was open to the following February,
(03:20):
which also led the team to the treasury adjacent to it.
It took Carter almost a decade to catalog everything that
he had found there. Today, most of the tomb's contents
are in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, which is also
where the beard of the mask of King Tutenhaman was
accidentally broken off in that made headlines because it had
(03:43):
been clumsily reattached and later had to be repaired and restored.
The Grand Egyptian Museum, which is still under construction as
of this recording, is planned to exhibit every object of
the tomb, some of which have never been on display
before now. In the decades since this tomb was discovered,
a number of teams have tried to find any still
(04:06):
unearthed areas of the tomb, with speculation going back and
forth about whether or not there are hidden chambers that
have not been found yet, with the most recent announcement
coming in mayen that no, there are not. That means
one of the things they had thought they might find
there is probably not there, which is the tomb of
never t d who was one of the other wives
(04:28):
of Tuton Common's father Akonatin. You can learn a bit
more about this in the septemberisode of Stephie miss in
History Class called Who was King tut Anyway, thanks to
ksey p Graham and Chandler Mayze for their audio work
on this show. You can subscribe to This Day in
History Class on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, and wherever else
(04:49):
you get your podcasts, and you can tune in tomorrow
for another of this month's assassinations.
Hey, history fans, if you want a double dose of history,
here's a rerun for today, brought to you by Tracy V. Wilson.
Welcome to this Day in History Class from how Stuff
Works dot com and from the desk of Stuff you
Missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore
the past one day at a time with a quick
look at what happened today in history. Hello, and welcome
(00:24):
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and it's November.
Archaeologist opened Kinghaman's tomb on the Stay in n He's
also known as King Tut and he was born around
thirty two b c. And ruled Egypt for nine years.
British archaeologist Howard Carter and his team found the stairs
(00:45):
down into the tomb in the Valley of the Kings
about three weeks earlier. There had been numerous excavations in
this area at the end of the nineteenth century, and
a lot of archaeologists thought that everything notable that could
be found had already been found. A lot of these
excavations had also been at burial sites that had already
been plundered by grave robbers long before. But Tuton Common's
(01:09):
reign came at a turbulent time in Egyptian history. His father,
i'm in Hotep the fourth was also known as Akanatn
because of his worship of the sun god ought in
and only that god Acnat, and tried to totally change
Egyptian cultural and religious life, and then after his death,
Egypt basically tried to put everything back the way it
(01:31):
had been before. That meant that after Tuton Common died,
he wasn't very well remembered because of his father's legacy
and his place within that legacy and the efforts to
undo all of it later. Pharaoh's basically wrote him out
of history, but that may have offered his tomb some
protection from looters. It wasn't very well documented, so people
(01:54):
didn't know to go and rob it. When he discovered
the plastered door to the tomb, which was still sealed,
Howard Carter ordered everything to be filled back in, and
he sent a message to his patron, George Herbert, the
fifth Earl of Carnarvon, who was paying for this whole expedition,
and told him quote a wonderful discovery in the valley,
(02:15):
a magnificent tomb with seals intact. They all waited for
him to get there, to actually see the thing that
he was paying to be excavated opened up for the
first time. They were joined by both British and Egyptian observers,
and what they found was exactly what they hoped was
behind that door, an intact tomb, still filled with its
(02:36):
original grave goods, including jewelry and statues and beads and
baskets and musical instruments, just thousands of objects, some of
them very ornate and valuable. This tomb of Tuton Common
is actually the smallest one in the Valley of Kings,
possibly because he died suddenly at a very young age,
but it's also possible that he was buried in a
(02:59):
two that was being planned for the man who wound
up being his successor. It's not totally clear regardless, though,
because it had not been plundered like all these other
grave sites had, it turned out to be a major,
major fine in spite of its small size. The door
to the burial chamber itself was open to the following February,
(03:20):
which also led the team to the treasury adjacent to it.
It took Carter almost a decade to catalog everything that
he had found there. Today, most of the tomb's contents
are in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, which is also
where the beard of the mask of King Tutenhaman was
accidentally broken off in that made headlines because it had
(03:43):
been clumsily reattached and later had to be repaired and restored.
The Grand Egyptian Museum, which is still under construction as
of this recording, is planned to exhibit every object of
the tomb, some of which have never been on display
before now. In the decades since this tomb was discovered,
a number of teams have tried to find any still
(04:06):
unearthed areas of the tomb, with speculation going back and
forth about whether or not there are hidden chambers that
have not been found yet, with the most recent announcement
coming in mayen that no, there are not. That means
one of the things they had thought they might find
there is probably not there, which is the tomb of
never t d who was one of the other wives
(04:28):
of Tuton Common's father Akonatin. You can learn a bit
more about this in the septemberisode of Stephie miss in
History Class called Who was King tut Anyway, thanks to
ksey p Graham and Chandler Mayze for their audio work
on this show. You can subscribe to This Day in
History Class on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, and wherever else
(04:49):
you get your podcasts, and you can tune in tomorrow
for another of this month's assassinations.
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