Howard Carter (May 9, 1874 – March 2, 1939) was an English archaeologist and Egyptologist. He is most famous as the discoverer of KV62, the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt.
Howard Carter was born in 1874 in Kensington, London, the youngest son of eight children. His father, Samuel Carter, was an artist. His mother was Martha Joyce (Sands) Carter. Carter grew up in Swaffham, in northern Norfolk, and had no formal education. His father trained him in the fundamentals of drawing and painting.
Carter did much work in Egypt, starting in 1891 at the age of 17 where he worked copying inscriptions and paintings. He worked on the excavation of Beni Hasan, the gravesite of the princes of Middle Egypt, c. 2000 BC. Later he came under the tutelage of William Flinders Petrie.
He is also famous for finding the remains of Queen Hatshepsut tomb in Deir el Babri. In 1899, at the age of 25, Carter was offered a position working for the Egyptian Antiquities Service, from which he resigned as a result of a dispute between Egyptian site guards and a group of drunken French tourists in 1905.
After several hard years, Carter was introduced, in 1907, to Lord Carnarvon, an eager amateur who was prepared to supply the funds necessary for Carter's work to continue. Soon, Carter was supervising all of Lord Carnarvon's excavations.
Lord Carnarvon financed Carter's search for the tomb of a previously unknown Pharaoh, Tutankhamun, whose existence Carter had discovered. After a few months of fruitless searching, Carnarvon was becoming dissatisfied with the lack of return from his investment and, in 1922, he gave Carter one more season of funding to find the tomb.On November 4, 1922 Carter found Tutankhamun's tomb (subsequently designated KV62), by far the best preserved and most intact pharaonic tomb ever found in the Valley of the Kings. He wired Lord Carnarvon to come, and on February 16, 1923, Carter opened the burial chamber and first saw the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun. While unwrapping the linens of the mummy, presumably looking for treasure, the skull of the ancient king fell away from the body. The impact from its fall out of the tomb made a dent in the skull. Ancient Egyptians believed a king could only be immortal if the body rested undisturbed, so some believe the name of the king must still be spoken today as a remembrance.
After cataloguing the extensive finds, Carter retired from archaeology and became a collector. He died in England in 1939 at the age of 64. The archaeologist's death at this advanced age is the most common piece of evidence put forward by sceptics to refute the idea of a curse (the "Curse of the Pharaohs") plaguing the party that violated Tutankhamun's tomb.
Howard Carter is buried in Putney Vale Cemetery in West London.
His brother William Carter, (1863-1939) was an artist
Further reading
- T.G.H James, Howard Carter – The Path to Tutankhamun, London: Tauris Parke, 2001.
- Reeves, N. and Taylor, J.H., Howard Carter: Before Tutankhamun, London: British Museum Press, 1992.
- The History Of Howard Carter By Dr. Thomas Schwarz
External links
- The Search for Tutankhamun – from the Griffith Institute website, Howard Carter's records of the five seasons of excavations, financed by Lord Carnarvon, in the Valley of the Kings 1915–1922.
- Tutankhamun – The Anatomy of an Excavation
- Resources on Biblical Archaeology
- Grave of Howard Carter