It is probably the most famous archaeological discovery of all time, and the most significant in helping uncover the mysteries of Ancient Egypt.
In this episode, we'll discuss the thrilling Discovery of Tutankhamen – a story of adventure, geopolitical conflict, and curses.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:22] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the discovery of the Egyptian pharaoh, Tutankhamun.
[00:00:30] It’s not only probably the most famous archaeological discovery of all time, but it is also a fabulous story, with adventure, geo-political conflict, curses, and more.
[00:00:43] So, let’s not waste a minute, and get right into the story of the Discovery of Tutankhamun.
[00:00:50] In June of 1922, a wealthy English aristocrat was sitting at home, mulling over a problem.
[00:01:02] For the past 15 years, he had been financing the excavation of various sites in the Valley of The Kings, in Egypt.
[00:01:12] It had cost him dearly - he had ploughed the modern equivalent of over €25 million into the project - but so far, it had not resulted in any major discoveries.
[00:01:28] He decided to cut his losses, and sent a telegram summoning his chief archaeologist, a man named Howard Carter, to return to England.
[00:01:41] Carter returned, and made the trip to the aristocrat’s country residence, a 300-room mansion to the south west of England. If you have watched the TV series “Downton Abbey”, yes the house in that show was the house owned by the aristocrat in question, George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, better known as the 5th Earl of Carnarvon.
[00:02:09] The Earl had bad news for Carter. He was pulling the plug, he was not willing to spend any more money. The project was over.
[00:02:22] Carter protested, “My Lord, just one more season, I promise”. He even offered to pay for it himself.
[00:02:31] He must have had a way with words, as he managed to get his wealthy benefactor to change his mind. Reluctantly, Lord Carnarvon agreed. “OK, but only one season, no more”.
[00:02:47] Carter returned to Egypt, arriving at the Valley of The Kings in late October. He got to work straight away.
[00:02:56] On November the 5th, a servant rushed into Lord Carnavan’s study back in England.
[00:03:04] “My Lord, a telegram from Carter."
[00:03:06] As Carnavan opened the message, he saw the words he had been waiting 15 years for: “At last have made wonderful discovery in valley; a magnificent tomb with seals intact ... congratulations.”
[00:03:24] There was no time to waste. Lord Carnavan immediately set off, arriving on November the 23rd.
[00:03:33] By the time Carnavan arrived at the site, Carter and his team had found a doorway with seals and signs above it, seals that bore the name of a pharaoh whose tomb had never been found: Tutankhamun.
[00:03:51] A few days later, having opened the door and cleared their way through the rubble, Howard Carter stood with his wealthy benefactor beside him, ready to open the tomb.
[00:04:04] He made a small hole, held out his candle, and peered through.
[00:04:10] Howard Carter’s diary recalls the entire incident, and I’m just going to read you a piece from it now:
[00:04:18] “It was sometime before one could see, the hot air escaping caused the candle to flicker, but as soon as one's eyes became accustomed to the glimmer of light the interior of the chamber gradually loomed before one, with its strange and wonderful medley of extraordinary and beautiful objects heaped upon one another.
[00:04:43] There was naturally short suspense for those present who could not see, when Lord Carnarvon said to me: `Can you see anything?'. I replied to him: Yes, it is wonderful.”
[00:04:58] This is probably the most famous exchange in the history of archaeology, and it would result in the most famous archaeological discovery in Egypt and debatably the whole world. The discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun.
[00:05:15] But before we get into what happened next, and what these wonderful things Carter saw actually were, let me go back a few years to set the scene a little more clearly.
[00:05:28] In fact, first we need to go back more than a few years, we need to go back almost 5,000 years to ancient Egypt and the time of the pharaohs.
[00:05:40] The Ancient Egyptians, as you may know, were great believers in the afterlife. They believed that after death a person moved to the afterlife, a life that was quite similar to real life, so you needed a lot of the same worldly things: chariots, gold, that kind of stuff.
[00:06:05] The rulers of Ancient Egypt, the pharaohs, were buried in great tombs under the ground.
[00:06:12] The size of the tomb typically depended on how long the pharaoh had lived for. In a tradition that might sound a little creepy and unsettling to us, but apparently wasn’t for an Egyptian pharaoh, as soon as you became a pharaoh, work started on your burial chamber and continued for as long as you lived.
[00:06:37] Clearly, if you lived a long life, your burial chamber could be vast, filled with all manner of precious goods and treasures. If your life was cut short, well, your tomb would be smaller as there wouldn’t have been much time to finish it.
[00:06:55] These tombs were first built under the pyramids, but later on, in an effort to conceal their locations, they shifted to an area of Egypt called The Valley of the Kings, a rocky valley to the other side of the Nile from Luxor, about 500 kilometres south of Cairo.
[00:07:17] Because of all of the treasures that were typically kept inside the tombs, they had to be well hidden. They weren’t marked, and were normally dug into cliffs and concealed behind different tunnels, false doors, and that kind of stuff.
[00:07:35] Over time, many of these tombs were found and emptied completely; all that remained was an empty tomb. There was nothing more to take.
[00:07:47] Fast forward to the 18th and 19th centuries, and there was an increasing interest in Ancient Egypt, especially among Europeans, and even more specifically, among the French and the British.
[00:08:02] You may remember the story of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone from episode 141. Discoveries like this, and an increasing understanding of Egypt’s rich cultural history, ignited fresh interest in the country.
[00:08:20] And it is here that I must properly introduce you to the protagonist of our story, or at least one of the protagonists, a young Englishman called Howard Carter.
[00:08:34] Carter came from a wealthy family by most people's standards. He was born in 1874, in Kensington, in London, and his father was a well-known artist.
[00:08:48] He didn’t spend much time at school, but showed some of the same artistic talents as his father.
[00:08:56] However, it wasn’t art that he would be famous for; after going to a family friend’s house and seeing some ancient Egyptian relics, he developed an intense interest and curiosity for all things Ancient Egyptian.
[00:09:14] He set off for Egypt at the first opportunity, when he was just 17 years old. He had no formal training in archaeology but he learned on the job, and soon developed a name for himself as a thoughtful and meticulous archaeologist.
[00:09:33] There wasn't much money to be made in archaeology, and Carter kept afloat by selling his paintings to wealthy European tourists.
[00:09:43] Sometime in 1907, he was to meet a wealthy tourist who would change his life, and allow him to focus full time on his true passion.
[00:09:56] That wealthy tourist was Lord Carnavan, the aristocrat we met at the start of the episode.
[00:10:03] Now, Carnavan was more than just an aristocrat with a cheque book. He too was passionate about Ancient Egypt.
[00:10:14] The pair struck up a friendship, united in particular in their interest in finding the final resting place of a relatively unknown and minor Egyptian king: Tutankhamun.
[00:10:29] Now, how did they know that Tutankhamun existed? Well, he was written about, and there was some evidence that his tomb might be somewhere in the Valley of The Kings.
[00:10:42] But all efforts to locate his resting place had, up to then, proved fruitless.
[00:10:51] Carnavan was impressed with Carter, and he agreed to finance the continued search for the tomb of the pharaoh.
[00:10:59] Now, he wasn't doing this only out of the goodness of his own heart. The people financing these archaeological digs usually did so because they would take part of the treasures back home to their personal collection.
[00:11:15] Anyway, Carter hired a team and started digging, while Lord Carnavan paid the bills.
[00:11:23] This all started in 1907. It had to stop for a few years during World War I, when Carter was called up to work as a courier and translator for the British army.
[00:11:37] Normality returned in 1917, and Carter was able to return to work, relentlessly scouring every last inch of the valley for the tomb of King Tutankhamun.
[00:11:51] 5 years went by, yet Tutankhamun was proving as elusive as ever; there simply was no sign of him.
[00:12:02] And this brings us to where we left our story.
[00:12:06] An Egyptian worker had reportedly discovered some stairs that looked like they led down to a tomb.
[00:12:15] Some reports say the worker had put down a jug of water, while others recall that he was digging.
[00:12:23] Whatever happened, stairs have been located, with signs above them bearing Tutankhamun's name.
[00:12:31] A telegram has been sent to Lord Carnavan, who immediately dropped everything and set off for the Valley of the Kings. And Carter has just made a small hole and peered through, describing what he saw as "wonderful things".
[00:12:52] Wonderful things is perhaps even an understatement for what he found.
[00:12:58] When he entered the tomb, he found three rooms in total: the first room would come to be known as the antechamber, and contained objects such as a bed and a chariot, objects that King Tutankahmun would need in the afterlife.
[00:13:17] The second contained the sarcophagus itself, a majestic tomb of 25 kilograms of solid gold that held the king’s mummified body.
[00:13:30] And the third room is known as the treasury, and contained more objects as well as chests containing Tutankahmun’s organs, and two foetuses, which are believed to be the pharaoh’s stillborn children.
[00:13:47] Now, this description really hasn’t done justice to the wonders that were found in the tomb, and it would take us hours to go through all of the different beautiful objects and their significance, and really, you need to see them and see a picture of them to appreciate the true wonder.
[00:14:07] So, we are actually going to skip over most of the detail about what was found inside the tomb, and talk about three other curiosities about its discovery: the curse of Tutankhamun, the impact of the discovery on Egyptian identity, but first I want to talk about the Tutankhamun, the man himself.
[00:14:33] Or in fact, it might be more appropriate to call him a boy than a man, as it’s believed that he died when he was around 19 years old.
[00:14:43] If you remember what I said about preparations starting for a burial tomb as soon as you become a pharaoh, well, one of the reasons that King Tutankhamun’s tomb is comparatively small and was hard to find is that he died so young; there simply wasn’t enough time to prepare a large and intricate tomb.
[00:15:06] We know that he died young, firstly because his body was literally still in the tomb, in mummified form, and archaeologists could see from his relatively small size and underdeveloped bones and teeth that he was a young man when he died.
[00:15:24] What’s more, there were other clues in the tomb, such as board games, which a youthful ruler might have enjoyed playing in the afterlife.
[00:15:35] As to how and why he died so young, well, this is something that archaeologists are not so united about.
[00:15:45] One theory is that he died from malaria, another that he was run over by a chariot, and a later theory even put it that he was murdered with a blow to the head.
[00:15:59] We will, in all likelihood, never know for sure, despite the number of clues that were found in the tomb, and the fact that his body was preserved exceptionally well for someone who died 3,500 years ago.
[00:16:14] Now, moving on, you might have heard something about the curse of Tutankhamun, rumours that there was some kind of magic spell that would be placed on anyone who disturbed the burial place of the Egyptian pharaohs.
[00:16:30] I should start by saying that there was no “official” curse, there was no sign or writing found anywhere near the tomb that said anything like that. But, as more and more Egyptian tombs were opened in the 19th century, and mummified bodies found inside, there was an increasing number of accounts of unnatural and spooky events happening to those who had disturbed the tombs.
[00:16:59] This clearly made for excellent newspaper stories, and there was a growing belief in something that came to be called “The Curse of The Pharaohs”.
[00:17:10] So, how does Tutankahmun tie into this?
[00:17:14] Well, in a few ways.
[00:17:17] Firstly, there was one account of a messenger being sent to Carter’s house after the discovery of the tomb. When the messenger arrived, he found that a cobra, the snake that’s the symbol of the Egyptian monarchy, had killed Carter’s pet canary, his pet bird, and was holding it in his mouth.
[00:17:42] Was this the Egyptian king breaking into Carter’s house, in retaliation for Carter breaking into his?
[00:17:49] It was strange, to say the least.
[00:17:53] And secondly, and much more gravely, only a couple of months after opening the tomb, Lord Carnavan, the man who had financed it all, was bitten on his cheek by a mosquito.
[00:18:08] Nothing unusual there. But later on, when he was shaving, he cut the mosquito bite, the cut got infected, he got blood poisoning which developed into pneumonia, killing him at the age of 56.
[00:18:26] As this happened, there was a media frenzy, with reports of this curse being put on those who had broken into Tutankhamun’s tomb, and it only being a matter of time before fate caught up with the rest of them. The author of the Sherlock Holmes novels, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, joined in the frenzy and proclaimed that it was an evil spirit that killed Lord Carnavan, and would in all likelihood kill the rest of them.
[00:18:59] But, sorry to disappoint you, this simply didn’t happen. Of the 58 people who were there when the tomb was opened, only 8 of them died within 12 years of the tomb being opened, which, let’s remember we are still in the 1920s here, it's not such bad going.
[00:19:19] Now, the final point I want to touch on today is the political implications of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb and its effect on the Egyptian sense of identity.
[00:19:32] As you’ll have gathered by now, the discovery of the tomb was a British-led and British-financed discovery. This is not to discount the many Egyptians who worked on the excavations, but the point is that it was led by Howard Carter, an Englishman, and the entire project financed by the Earl of Carnarvan, another Englishman.
[00:19:57] The entire process of the discovery was also not reported live in the Egyptian newspapers, but in a British newspaper, The Times.
[00:20:09] Lord Carnavan had sold the rights to the story to The Times, so Egyptians keen to find out what was going on in the Valley of The Kings had to wait for a copy of The Times to arrive from London before they got up to speed on what was happening in their own country.
[00:20:28] This was somewhat of a kick in the teeth for the Egyptians.
[00:20:34] Egypt had been under British rule from 1882, but, crucially, had achieved independence in February of 1922, 9 months before the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun.
[00:20:49] And there they were, the newly independent Egyptians getting their news about their most long-sought king, news about the glory of their past, from a foreign newspaper, and what’s more, a newspaper from a country that had occupied and ruled the country for the past 40 years.
[00:21:11] All this being said, the discovery of Tutankhamun was a huge boost to Egypt.
[00:21:18] Firstly, it was a sign to the world of the rich cultural heritage and history of the country.
[00:21:25] Secondly, it helped unite the different religions and ethnicities of Egypt behind this idea of all Egyptians being descendants of this incredibly sophisticated and advanced civilisation of ancient Egypt, a people that was destined not to be ruled by any external forces.
[00:21:46] Whether you were a Muslim, a Christian or a Jew, you could unite behind your Egyptian identity rather than whatever other group you identified with.
[00:21:57] And, importantly, unlike many other archeological discoveries, all of the objects that were found in the tomb remained in Egypt. There were some suggestions of small, tiny, objects being removed by some members of the British excavation team, but everything significant was clearly numbered and documented, and is now property of the Egyptian state.
[00:22:25] And ever since, Egypt has used the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun rather cleverly. It was opened up to the public in 1924, and you can still visit it today.
[00:22:39] In the 1970s, Egypt sent a collection of 50 objects from Tutankhamun’s tomb, including the famous gold mask, on a tour of Europe and North America. This did wonders for Egyptian soft power, and encouraged a new generation of tourists to come and visit the wonders of Egypt for themselves.
[00:23:03] So, to conclude, Tutankhamun “the pharaoh” was a relatively minor king, he was a boy when he became king, and still only a boy when he died.
[00:23:15] This minor status was a major reason it took so long to find his final resting place and when the tomb was finally discovered in 1922, modern Egypt was a shadow of its former glory.
[00:23:31] So perhaps it is ironic that it would be Tutankhamun, the boy king, who would do more than any other pharaoh to showcase to the world, the glory and splendour of ancient Egypt.
[00:23:46] OK then, that is it for today's episode on the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun.
[00:23:54] If I were you, I would definitely spend some time looking up some of the things that we talked about in this episode, from the gold mask to the size of the tomb itself, it really is quite amazing.
[00:24:06] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:24:10] Do you have a particular interest in Ancient Egypt?
[00:24:13] Have you ever been to Egypt? Have you visited the Valley Of The Kings, or even been to King Tutankhamun’s tomb?
[00:24:20] I would love to know, so you know where to go, you can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:24:32] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:24:37] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:22] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the discovery of the Egyptian pharaoh, Tutankhamun.
[00:00:30] It’s not only probably the most famous archaeological discovery of all time, but it is also a fabulous story, with adventure, geo-political conflict, curses, and more.
[00:00:43] So, let’s not waste a minute, and get right into the story of the Discovery of Tutankhamun.
[00:00:50] In June of 1922, a wealthy English aristocrat was sitting at home, mulling over a problem.
[00:01:02] For the past 15 years, he had been financing the excavation of various sites in the Valley of The Kings, in Egypt.
[00:01:12] It had cost him dearly - he had ploughed the modern equivalent of over €25 million into the project - but so far, it had not resulted in any major discoveries.
[00:01:28] He decided to cut his losses, and sent a telegram summoning his chief archaeologist, a man named Howard Carter, to return to England.
[00:01:41] Carter returned, and made the trip to the aristocrat’s country residence, a 300-room mansion to the south west of England. If you have watched the TV series “Downton Abbey”, yes the house in that show was the house owned by the aristocrat in question, George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, better known as the 5th Earl of Carnarvon.
[00:02:09] The Earl had bad news for Carter. He was pulling the plug, he was not willing to spend any more money. The project was over.
[00:02:22] Carter protested, “My Lord, just one more season, I promise”. He even offered to pay for it himself.
[00:02:31] He must have had a way with words, as he managed to get his wealthy benefactor to change his mind. Reluctantly, Lord Carnarvon agreed. “OK, but only one season, no more”.
[00:02:47] Carter returned to Egypt, arriving at the Valley of The Kings in late October. He got to work straight away.
[00:02:56] On November the 5th, a servant rushed into Lord Carnavan’s study back in England.
[00:03:04] “My Lord, a telegram from Carter."
[00:03:06] As Carnavan opened the message, he saw the words he had been waiting 15 years for: “At last have made wonderful discovery in valley; a magnificent tomb with seals intact ... congratulations.”
[00:03:24] There was no time to waste. Lord Carnavan immediately set off, arriving on November the 23rd.
[00:03:33] By the time Carnavan arrived at the site, Carter and his team had found a doorway with seals and signs above it, seals that bore the name of a pharaoh whose tomb had never been found: Tutankhamun.
[00:03:51] A few days later, having opened the door and cleared their way through the rubble, Howard Carter stood with his wealthy benefactor beside him, ready to open the tomb.
[00:04:04] He made a small hole, held out his candle, and peered through.
[00:04:10] Howard Carter’s diary recalls the entire incident, and I’m just going to read you a piece from it now:
[00:04:18] “It was sometime before one could see, the hot air escaping caused the candle to flicker, but as soon as one's eyes became accustomed to the glimmer of light the interior of the chamber gradually loomed before one, with its strange and wonderful medley of extraordinary and beautiful objects heaped upon one another.
[00:04:43] There was naturally short suspense for those present who could not see, when Lord Carnarvon said to me: `Can you see anything?'. I replied to him: Yes, it is wonderful.”
[00:04:58] This is probably the most famous exchange in the history of archaeology, and it would result in the most famous archaeological discovery in Egypt and debatably the whole world. The discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun.
[00:05:15] But before we get into what happened next, and what these wonderful things Carter saw actually were, let me go back a few years to set the scene a little more clearly.
[00:05:28] In fact, first we need to go back more than a few years, we need to go back almost 5,000 years to ancient Egypt and the time of the pharaohs.
[00:05:40] The Ancient Egyptians, as you may know, were great believers in the afterlife. They believed that after death a person moved to the afterlife, a life that was quite similar to real life, so you needed a lot of the same worldly things: chariots, gold, that kind of stuff.
[00:06:05] The rulers of Ancient Egypt, the pharaohs, were buried in great tombs under the ground.
[00:06:12] The size of the tomb typically depended on how long the pharaoh had lived for. In a tradition that might sound a little creepy and unsettling to us, but apparently wasn’t for an Egyptian pharaoh, as soon as you became a pharaoh, work started on your burial chamber and continued for as long as you lived.
[00:06:37] Clearly, if you lived a long life, your burial chamber could be vast, filled with all manner of precious goods and treasures. If your life was cut short, well, your tomb would be smaller as there wouldn’t have been much time to finish it.
[00:06:55] These tombs were first built under the pyramids, but later on, in an effort to conceal their locations, they shifted to an area of Egypt called The Valley of the Kings, a rocky valley to the other side of the Nile from Luxor, about 500 kilometres south of Cairo.
[00:07:17] Because of all of the treasures that were typically kept inside the tombs, they had to be well hidden. They weren’t marked, and were normally dug into cliffs and concealed behind different tunnels, false doors, and that kind of stuff.
[00:07:35] Over time, many of these tombs were found and emptied completely; all that remained was an empty tomb. There was nothing more to take.
[00:07:47] Fast forward to the 18th and 19th centuries, and there was an increasing interest in Ancient Egypt, especially among Europeans, and even more specifically, among the French and the British.
[00:08:02] You may remember the story of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone from episode 141. Discoveries like this, and an increasing understanding of Egypt’s rich cultural history, ignited fresh interest in the country.
[00:08:20] And it is here that I must properly introduce you to the protagonist of our story, or at least one of the protagonists, a young Englishman called Howard Carter.
[00:08:34] Carter came from a wealthy family by most people's standards. He was born in 1874, in Kensington, in London, and his father was a well-known artist.
[00:08:48] He didn’t spend much time at school, but showed some of the same artistic talents as his father.
[00:08:56] However, it wasn’t art that he would be famous for; after going to a family friend’s house and seeing some ancient Egyptian relics, he developed an intense interest and curiosity for all things Ancient Egyptian.
[00:09:14] He set off for Egypt at the first opportunity, when he was just 17 years old. He had no formal training in archaeology but he learned on the job, and soon developed a name for himself as a thoughtful and meticulous archaeologist.
[00:09:33] There wasn't much money to be made in archaeology, and Carter kept afloat by selling his paintings to wealthy European tourists.
[00:09:43] Sometime in 1907, he was to meet a wealthy tourist who would change his life, and allow him to focus full time on his true passion.
[00:09:56] That wealthy tourist was Lord Carnavan, the aristocrat we met at the start of the episode.
[00:10:03] Now, Carnavan was more than just an aristocrat with a cheque book. He too was passionate about Ancient Egypt.
[00:10:14] The pair struck up a friendship, united in particular in their interest in finding the final resting place of a relatively unknown and minor Egyptian king: Tutankhamun.
[00:10:29] Now, how did they know that Tutankhamun existed? Well, he was written about, and there was some evidence that his tomb might be somewhere in the Valley of The Kings.
[00:10:42] But all efforts to locate his resting place had, up to then, proved fruitless.
[00:10:51] Carnavan was impressed with Carter, and he agreed to finance the continued search for the tomb of the pharaoh.
[00:10:59] Now, he wasn't doing this only out of the goodness of his own heart. The people financing these archaeological digs usually did so because they would take part of the treasures back home to their personal collection.
[00:11:15] Anyway, Carter hired a team and started digging, while Lord Carnavan paid the bills.
[00:11:23] This all started in 1907. It had to stop for a few years during World War I, when Carter was called up to work as a courier and translator for the British army.
[00:11:37] Normality returned in 1917, and Carter was able to return to work, relentlessly scouring every last inch of the valley for the tomb of King Tutankhamun.
[00:11:51] 5 years went by, yet Tutankhamun was proving as elusive as ever; there simply was no sign of him.
[00:12:02] And this brings us to where we left our story.
[00:12:06] An Egyptian worker had reportedly discovered some stairs that looked like they led down to a tomb.
[00:12:15] Some reports say the worker had put down a jug of water, while others recall that he was digging.
[00:12:23] Whatever happened, stairs have been located, with signs above them bearing Tutankhamun's name.
[00:12:31] A telegram has been sent to Lord Carnavan, who immediately dropped everything and set off for the Valley of the Kings. And Carter has just made a small hole and peered through, describing what he saw as "wonderful things".
[00:12:52] Wonderful things is perhaps even an understatement for what he found.
[00:12:58] When he entered the tomb, he found three rooms in total: the first room would come to be known as the antechamber, and contained objects such as a bed and a chariot, objects that King Tutankahmun would need in the afterlife.
[00:13:17] The second contained the sarcophagus itself, a majestic tomb of 25 kilograms of solid gold that held the king’s mummified body.
[00:13:30] And the third room is known as the treasury, and contained more objects as well as chests containing Tutankahmun’s organs, and two foetuses, which are believed to be the pharaoh’s stillborn children.
[00:13:47] Now, this description really hasn’t done justice to the wonders that were found in the tomb, and it would take us hours to go through all of the different beautiful objects and their significance, and really, you need to see them and see a picture of them to appreciate the true wonder.
[00:14:07] So, we are actually going to skip over most of the detail about what was found inside the tomb, and talk about three other curiosities about its discovery: the curse of Tutankhamun, the impact of the discovery on Egyptian identity, but first I want to talk about the Tutankhamun, the man himself.
[00:14:33] Or in fact, it might be more appropriate to call him a boy than a man, as it’s believed that he died when he was around 19 years old.
[00:14:43] If you remember what I said about preparations starting for a burial tomb as soon as you become a pharaoh, well, one of the reasons that King Tutankhamun’s tomb is comparatively small and was hard to find is that he died so young; there simply wasn’t enough time to prepare a large and intricate tomb.
[00:15:06] We know that he died young, firstly because his body was literally still in the tomb, in mummified form, and archaeologists could see from his relatively small size and underdeveloped bones and teeth that he was a young man when he died.
[00:15:24] What’s more, there were other clues in the tomb, such as board games, which a youthful ruler might have enjoyed playing in the afterlife.
[00:15:35] As to how and why he died so young, well, this is something that archaeologists are not so united about.
[00:15:45] One theory is that he died from malaria, another that he was run over by a chariot, and a later theory even put it that he was murdered with a blow to the head.
[00:15:59] We will, in all likelihood, never know for sure, despite the number of clues that were found in the tomb, and the fact that his body was preserved exceptionally well for someone who died 3,500 years ago.
[00:16:14] Now, moving on, you might have heard something about the curse of Tutankhamun, rumours that there was some kind of magic spell that would be placed on anyone who disturbed the burial place of the Egyptian pharaohs.
[00:16:30] I should start by saying that there was no “official” curse, there was no sign or writing found anywhere near the tomb that said anything like that. But, as more and more Egyptian tombs were opened in the 19th century, and mummified bodies found inside, there was an increasing number of accounts of unnatural and spooky events happening to those who had disturbed the tombs.
[00:16:59] This clearly made for excellent newspaper stories, and there was a growing belief in something that came to be called “The Curse of The Pharaohs”.
[00:17:10] So, how does Tutankahmun tie into this?
[00:17:14] Well, in a few ways.
[00:17:17] Firstly, there was one account of a messenger being sent to Carter’s house after the discovery of the tomb. When the messenger arrived, he found that a cobra, the snake that’s the symbol of the Egyptian monarchy, had killed Carter’s pet canary, his pet bird, and was holding it in his mouth.
[00:17:42] Was this the Egyptian king breaking into Carter’s house, in retaliation for Carter breaking into his?
[00:17:49] It was strange, to say the least.
[00:17:53] And secondly, and much more gravely, only a couple of months after opening the tomb, Lord Carnavan, the man who had financed it all, was bitten on his cheek by a mosquito.
[00:18:08] Nothing unusual there. But later on, when he was shaving, he cut the mosquito bite, the cut got infected, he got blood poisoning which developed into pneumonia, killing him at the age of 56.
[00:18:26] As this happened, there was a media frenzy, with reports of this curse being put on those who had broken into Tutankhamun’s tomb, and it only being a matter of time before fate caught up with the rest of them. The author of the Sherlock Holmes novels, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, joined in the frenzy and proclaimed that it was an evil spirit that killed Lord Carnavan, and would in all likelihood kill the rest of them.
[00:18:59] But, sorry to disappoint you, this simply didn’t happen. Of the 58 people who were there when the tomb was opened, only 8 of them died within 12 years of the tomb being opened, which, let’s remember we are still in the 1920s here, it's not such bad going.
[00:19:19] Now, the final point I want to touch on today is the political implications of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb and its effect on the Egyptian sense of identity.
[00:19:32] As you’ll have gathered by now, the discovery of the tomb was a British-led and British-financed discovery. This is not to discount the many Egyptians who worked on the excavations, but the point is that it was led by Howard Carter, an Englishman, and the entire project financed by the Earl of Carnarvan, another Englishman.
[00:19:57] The entire process of the discovery was also not reported live in the Egyptian newspapers, but in a British newspaper, The Times.
[00:20:09] Lord Carnavan had sold the rights to the story to The Times, so Egyptians keen to find out what was going on in the Valley of The Kings had to wait for a copy of The Times to arrive from London before they got up to speed on what was happening in their own country.
[00:20:28] This was somewhat of a kick in the teeth for the Egyptians.
[00:20:34] Egypt had been under British rule from 1882, but, crucially, had achieved independence in February of 1922, 9 months before the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun.
[00:20:49] And there they were, the newly independent Egyptians getting their news about their most long-sought king, news about the glory of their past, from a foreign newspaper, and what’s more, a newspaper from a country that had occupied and ruled the country for the past 40 years.
[00:21:11] All this being said, the discovery of Tutankhamun was a huge boost to Egypt.
[00:21:18] Firstly, it was a sign to the world of the rich cultural heritage and history of the country.
[00:21:25] Secondly, it helped unite the different religions and ethnicities of Egypt behind this idea of all Egyptians being descendants of this incredibly sophisticated and advanced civilisation of ancient Egypt, a people that was destined not to be ruled by any external forces.
[00:21:46] Whether you were a Muslim, a Christian or a Jew, you could unite behind your Egyptian identity rather than whatever other group you identified with.
[00:21:57] And, importantly, unlike many other archeological discoveries, all of the objects that were found in the tomb remained in Egypt. There were some suggestions of small, tiny, objects being removed by some members of the British excavation team, but everything significant was clearly numbered and documented, and is now property of the Egyptian state.
[00:22:25] And ever since, Egypt has used the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun rather cleverly. It was opened up to the public in 1924, and you can still visit it today.
[00:22:39] In the 1970s, Egypt sent a collection of 50 objects from Tutankhamun’s tomb, including the famous gold mask, on a tour of Europe and North America. This did wonders for Egyptian soft power, and encouraged a new generation of tourists to come and visit the wonders of Egypt for themselves.
[00:23:03] So, to conclude, Tutankhamun “the pharaoh” was a relatively minor king, he was a boy when he became king, and still only a boy when he died.
[00:23:15] This minor status was a major reason it took so long to find his final resting place and when the tomb was finally discovered in 1922, modern Egypt was a shadow of its former glory.
[00:23:31] So perhaps it is ironic that it would be Tutankhamun, the boy king, who would do more than any other pharaoh to showcase to the world, the glory and splendour of ancient Egypt.
[00:23:46] OK then, that is it for today's episode on the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun.
[00:23:54] If I were you, I would definitely spend some time looking up some of the things that we talked about in this episode, from the gold mask to the size of the tomb itself, it really is quite amazing.
[00:24:06] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:24:10] Do you have a particular interest in Ancient Egypt?
[00:24:13] Have you ever been to Egypt? Have you visited the Valley Of The Kings, or even been to King Tutankhamun’s tomb?
[00:24:20] I would love to know, so you know where to go, you can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:24:32] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:24:37] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:22] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the discovery of the Egyptian pharaoh, Tutankhamun.
[00:00:30] It’s not only probably the most famous archaeological discovery of all time, but it is also a fabulous story, with adventure, geo-political conflict, curses, and more.
[00:00:43] So, let’s not waste a minute, and get right into the story of the Discovery of Tutankhamun.
[00:00:50] In June of 1922, a wealthy English aristocrat was sitting at home, mulling over a problem.
[00:01:02] For the past 15 years, he had been financing the excavation of various sites in the Valley of The Kings, in Egypt.
[00:01:12] It had cost him dearly - he had ploughed the modern equivalent of over €25 million into the project - but so far, it had not resulted in any major discoveries.
[00:01:28] He decided to cut his losses, and sent a telegram summoning his chief archaeologist, a man named Howard Carter, to return to England.
[00:01:41] Carter returned, and made the trip to the aristocrat’s country residence, a 300-room mansion to the south west of England. If you have watched the TV series “Downton Abbey”, yes the house in that show was the house owned by the aristocrat in question, George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, better known as the 5th Earl of Carnarvon.
[00:02:09] The Earl had bad news for Carter. He was pulling the plug, he was not willing to spend any more money. The project was over.
[00:02:22] Carter protested, “My Lord, just one more season, I promise”. He even offered to pay for it himself.
[00:02:31] He must have had a way with words, as he managed to get his wealthy benefactor to change his mind. Reluctantly, Lord Carnarvon agreed. “OK, but only one season, no more”.
[00:02:47] Carter returned to Egypt, arriving at the Valley of The Kings in late October. He got to work straight away.
[00:02:56] On November the 5th, a servant rushed into Lord Carnavan’s study back in England.
[00:03:04] “My Lord, a telegram from Carter."
[00:03:06] As Carnavan opened the message, he saw the words he had been waiting 15 years for: “At last have made wonderful discovery in valley; a magnificent tomb with seals intact ... congratulations.”
[00:03:24] There was no time to waste. Lord Carnavan immediately set off, arriving on November the 23rd.
[00:03:33] By the time Carnavan arrived at the site, Carter and his team had found a doorway with seals and signs above it, seals that bore the name of a pharaoh whose tomb had never been found: Tutankhamun.
[00:03:51] A few days later, having opened the door and cleared their way through the rubble, Howard Carter stood with his wealthy benefactor beside him, ready to open the tomb.
[00:04:04] He made a small hole, held out his candle, and peered through.
[00:04:10] Howard Carter’s diary recalls the entire incident, and I’m just going to read you a piece from it now:
[00:04:18] “It was sometime before one could see, the hot air escaping caused the candle to flicker, but as soon as one's eyes became accustomed to the glimmer of light the interior of the chamber gradually loomed before one, with its strange and wonderful medley of extraordinary and beautiful objects heaped upon one another.
[00:04:43] There was naturally short suspense for those present who could not see, when Lord Carnarvon said to me: `Can you see anything?'. I replied to him: Yes, it is wonderful.”
[00:04:58] This is probably the most famous exchange in the history of archaeology, and it would result in the most famous archaeological discovery in Egypt and debatably the whole world. The discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun.
[00:05:15] But before we get into what happened next, and what these wonderful things Carter saw actually were, let me go back a few years to set the scene a little more clearly.
[00:05:28] In fact, first we need to go back more than a few years, we need to go back almost 5,000 years to ancient Egypt and the time of the pharaohs.
[00:05:40] The Ancient Egyptians, as you may know, were great believers in the afterlife. They believed that after death a person moved to the afterlife, a life that was quite similar to real life, so you needed a lot of the same worldly things: chariots, gold, that kind of stuff.
[00:06:05] The rulers of Ancient Egypt, the pharaohs, were buried in great tombs under the ground.
[00:06:12] The size of the tomb typically depended on how long the pharaoh had lived for. In a tradition that might sound a little creepy and unsettling to us, but apparently wasn’t for an Egyptian pharaoh, as soon as you became a pharaoh, work started on your burial chamber and continued for as long as you lived.
[00:06:37] Clearly, if you lived a long life, your burial chamber could be vast, filled with all manner of precious goods and treasures. If your life was cut short, well, your tomb would be smaller as there wouldn’t have been much time to finish it.
[00:06:55] These tombs were first built under the pyramids, but later on, in an effort to conceal their locations, they shifted to an area of Egypt called The Valley of the Kings, a rocky valley to the other side of the Nile from Luxor, about 500 kilometres south of Cairo.
[00:07:17] Because of all of the treasures that were typically kept inside the tombs, they had to be well hidden. They weren’t marked, and were normally dug into cliffs and concealed behind different tunnels, false doors, and that kind of stuff.
[00:07:35] Over time, many of these tombs were found and emptied completely; all that remained was an empty tomb. There was nothing more to take.
[00:07:47] Fast forward to the 18th and 19th centuries, and there was an increasing interest in Ancient Egypt, especially among Europeans, and even more specifically, among the French and the British.
[00:08:02] You may remember the story of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone from episode 141. Discoveries like this, and an increasing understanding of Egypt’s rich cultural history, ignited fresh interest in the country.
[00:08:20] And it is here that I must properly introduce you to the protagonist of our story, or at least one of the protagonists, a young Englishman called Howard Carter.
[00:08:34] Carter came from a wealthy family by most people's standards. He was born in 1874, in Kensington, in London, and his father was a well-known artist.
[00:08:48] He didn’t spend much time at school, but showed some of the same artistic talents as his father.
[00:08:56] However, it wasn’t art that he would be famous for; after going to a family friend’s house and seeing some ancient Egyptian relics, he developed an intense interest and curiosity for all things Ancient Egyptian.
[00:09:14] He set off for Egypt at the first opportunity, when he was just 17 years old. He had no formal training in archaeology but he learned on the job, and soon developed a name for himself as a thoughtful and meticulous archaeologist.
[00:09:33] There wasn't much money to be made in archaeology, and Carter kept afloat by selling his paintings to wealthy European tourists.
[00:09:43] Sometime in 1907, he was to meet a wealthy tourist who would change his life, and allow him to focus full time on his true passion.
[00:09:56] That wealthy tourist was Lord Carnavan, the aristocrat we met at the start of the episode.
[00:10:03] Now, Carnavan was more than just an aristocrat with a cheque book. He too was passionate about Ancient Egypt.
[00:10:14] The pair struck up a friendship, united in particular in their interest in finding the final resting place of a relatively unknown and minor Egyptian king: Tutankhamun.
[00:10:29] Now, how did they know that Tutankhamun existed? Well, he was written about, and there was some evidence that his tomb might be somewhere in the Valley of The Kings.
[00:10:42] But all efforts to locate his resting place had, up to then, proved fruitless.
[00:10:51] Carnavan was impressed with Carter, and he agreed to finance the continued search for the tomb of the pharaoh.
[00:10:59] Now, he wasn't doing this only out of the goodness of his own heart. The people financing these archaeological digs usually did so because they would take part of the treasures back home to their personal collection.
[00:11:15] Anyway, Carter hired a team and started digging, while Lord Carnavan paid the bills.
[00:11:23] This all started in 1907. It had to stop for a few years during World War I, when Carter was called up to work as a courier and translator for the British army.
[00:11:37] Normality returned in 1917, and Carter was able to return to work, relentlessly scouring every last inch of the valley for the tomb of King Tutankhamun.
[00:11:51] 5 years went by, yet Tutankhamun was proving as elusive as ever; there simply was no sign of him.
[00:12:02] And this brings us to where we left our story.
[00:12:06] An Egyptian worker had reportedly discovered some stairs that looked like they led down to a tomb.
[00:12:15] Some reports say the worker had put down a jug of water, while others recall that he was digging.
[00:12:23] Whatever happened, stairs have been located, with signs above them bearing Tutankhamun's name.
[00:12:31] A telegram has been sent to Lord Carnavan, who immediately dropped everything and set off for the Valley of the Kings. And Carter has just made a small hole and peered through, describing what he saw as "wonderful things".
[00:12:52] Wonderful things is perhaps even an understatement for what he found.
[00:12:58] When he entered the tomb, he found three rooms in total: the first room would come to be known as the antechamber, and contained objects such as a bed and a chariot, objects that King Tutankahmun would need in the afterlife.
[00:13:17] The second contained the sarcophagus itself, a majestic tomb of 25 kilograms of solid gold that held the king’s mummified body.
[00:13:30] And the third room is known as the treasury, and contained more objects as well as chests containing Tutankahmun’s organs, and two foetuses, which are believed to be the pharaoh’s stillborn children.
[00:13:47] Now, this description really hasn’t done justice to the wonders that were found in the tomb, and it would take us hours to go through all of the different beautiful objects and their significance, and really, you need to see them and see a picture of them to appreciate the true wonder.
[00:14:07] So, we are actually going to skip over most of the detail about what was found inside the tomb, and talk about three other curiosities about its discovery: the curse of Tutankhamun, the impact of the discovery on Egyptian identity, but first I want to talk about the Tutankhamun, the man himself.
[00:14:33] Or in fact, it might be more appropriate to call him a boy than a man, as it’s believed that he died when he was around 19 years old.
[00:14:43] If you remember what I said about preparations starting for a burial tomb as soon as you become a pharaoh, well, one of the reasons that King Tutankhamun’s tomb is comparatively small and was hard to find is that he died so young; there simply wasn’t enough time to prepare a large and intricate tomb.
[00:15:06] We know that he died young, firstly because his body was literally still in the tomb, in mummified form, and archaeologists could see from his relatively small size and underdeveloped bones and teeth that he was a young man when he died.
[00:15:24] What’s more, there were other clues in the tomb, such as board games, which a youthful ruler might have enjoyed playing in the afterlife.
[00:15:35] As to how and why he died so young, well, this is something that archaeologists are not so united about.
[00:15:45] One theory is that he died from malaria, another that he was run over by a chariot, and a later theory even put it that he was murdered with a blow to the head.
[00:15:59] We will, in all likelihood, never know for sure, despite the number of clues that were found in the tomb, and the fact that his body was preserved exceptionally well for someone who died 3,500 years ago.
[00:16:14] Now, moving on, you might have heard something about the curse of Tutankhamun, rumours that there was some kind of magic spell that would be placed on anyone who disturbed the burial place of the Egyptian pharaohs.
[00:16:30] I should start by saying that there was no “official” curse, there was no sign or writing found anywhere near the tomb that said anything like that. But, as more and more Egyptian tombs were opened in the 19th century, and mummified bodies found inside, there was an increasing number of accounts of unnatural and spooky events happening to those who had disturbed the tombs.
[00:16:59] This clearly made for excellent newspaper stories, and there was a growing belief in something that came to be called “The Curse of The Pharaohs”.
[00:17:10] So, how does Tutankahmun tie into this?
[00:17:14] Well, in a few ways.
[00:17:17] Firstly, there was one account of a messenger being sent to Carter’s house after the discovery of the tomb. When the messenger arrived, he found that a cobra, the snake that’s the symbol of the Egyptian monarchy, had killed Carter’s pet canary, his pet bird, and was holding it in his mouth.
[00:17:42] Was this the Egyptian king breaking into Carter’s house, in retaliation for Carter breaking into his?
[00:17:49] It was strange, to say the least.
[00:17:53] And secondly, and much more gravely, only a couple of months after opening the tomb, Lord Carnavan, the man who had financed it all, was bitten on his cheek by a mosquito.
[00:18:08] Nothing unusual there. But later on, when he was shaving, he cut the mosquito bite, the cut got infected, he got blood poisoning which developed into pneumonia, killing him at the age of 56.
[00:18:26] As this happened, there was a media frenzy, with reports of this curse being put on those who had broken into Tutankhamun’s tomb, and it only being a matter of time before fate caught up with the rest of them. The author of the Sherlock Holmes novels, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, joined in the frenzy and proclaimed that it was an evil spirit that killed Lord Carnavan, and would in all likelihood kill the rest of them.
[00:18:59] But, sorry to disappoint you, this simply didn’t happen. Of the 58 people who were there when the tomb was opened, only 8 of them died within 12 years of the tomb being opened, which, let’s remember we are still in the 1920s here, it's not such bad going.
[00:19:19] Now, the final point I want to touch on today is the political implications of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb and its effect on the Egyptian sense of identity.
[00:19:32] As you’ll have gathered by now, the discovery of the tomb was a British-led and British-financed discovery. This is not to discount the many Egyptians who worked on the excavations, but the point is that it was led by Howard Carter, an Englishman, and the entire project financed by the Earl of Carnarvan, another Englishman.
[00:19:57] The entire process of the discovery was also not reported live in the Egyptian newspapers, but in a British newspaper, The Times.
[00:20:09] Lord Carnavan had sold the rights to the story to The Times, so Egyptians keen to find out what was going on in the Valley of The Kings had to wait for a copy of The Times to arrive from London before they got up to speed on what was happening in their own country.
[00:20:28] This was somewhat of a kick in the teeth for the Egyptians.
[00:20:34] Egypt had been under British rule from 1882, but, crucially, had achieved independence in February of 1922, 9 months before the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun.
[00:20:49] And there they were, the newly independent Egyptians getting their news about their most long-sought king, news about the glory of their past, from a foreign newspaper, and what’s more, a newspaper from a country that had occupied and ruled the country for the past 40 years.
[00:21:11] All this being said, the discovery of Tutankhamun was a huge boost to Egypt.
[00:21:18] Firstly, it was a sign to the world of the rich cultural heritage and history of the country.
[00:21:25] Secondly, it helped unite the different religions and ethnicities of Egypt behind this idea of all Egyptians being descendants of this incredibly sophisticated and advanced civilisation of ancient Egypt, a people that was destined not to be ruled by any external forces.
[00:21:46] Whether you were a Muslim, a Christian or a Jew, you could unite behind your Egyptian identity rather than whatever other group you identified with.
[00:21:57] And, importantly, unlike many other archeological discoveries, all of the objects that were found in the tomb remained in Egypt. There were some suggestions of small, tiny, objects being removed by some members of the British excavation team, but everything significant was clearly numbered and documented, and is now property of the Egyptian state.
[00:22:25] And ever since, Egypt has used the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun rather cleverly. It was opened up to the public in 1924, and you can still visit it today.
[00:22:39] In the 1970s, Egypt sent a collection of 50 objects from Tutankhamun’s tomb, including the famous gold mask, on a tour of Europe and North America. This did wonders for Egyptian soft power, and encouraged a new generation of tourists to come and visit the wonders of Egypt for themselves.
[00:23:03] So, to conclude, Tutankhamun “the pharaoh” was a relatively minor king, he was a boy when he became king, and still only a boy when he died.
[00:23:15] This minor status was a major reason it took so long to find his final resting place and when the tomb was finally discovered in 1922, modern Egypt was a shadow of its former glory.
[00:23:31] So perhaps it is ironic that it would be Tutankhamun, the boy king, who would do more than any other pharaoh to showcase to the world, the glory and splendour of ancient Egypt.
[00:23:46] OK then, that is it for today's episode on the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun.
[00:23:54] If I were you, I would definitely spend some time looking up some of the things that we talked about in this episode, from the gold mask to the size of the tomb itself, it really is quite amazing.
[00:24:06] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:24:10] Do you have a particular interest in Ancient Egypt?
[00:24:13] Have you ever been to Egypt? Have you visited the Valley Of The Kings, or even been to King Tutankhamun’s tomb?
[00:24:20] I would love to know, so you know where to go, you can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:24:32] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:24:37] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
