Tomb of Tutankhamun

The air changes as you go down. Outside, the Valley of the Kings is bright and dry, with pale limestone cliffs and white heat coming off the stones. A few steps below ground, the light softens and the air feels heavier. The passage is narrow and plain, cut straight into the bedrock. It does not look like the entrance to the most famous tomb in the world. That plainness is part of its story.

This is the Tomb of Tutankhamun. Archaeologists call it KV62, which simply means the sixty-second tomb recorded in the Valley of the Kings. Its owner was a young pharaoh who ruled in the fourteenth century BCE. He came to the throne as a boy. He died young, probably still in his late teens. By the standards of ancient Egypt, he was a minor king with a short reign. Yet today, his name is better known than almost any other ruler of the ancient world.

To understand why, it helps to know what came just before him. His likely father was Akhenaten, the pharaoh who turned away from Egypt's traditional gods. Akhenaten promoted the worship of a single sun disc, called the Aten. The young king was first named Tutankhaten, a name that honoured that sun disc. Early in his reign, his name changed to Tutankhamun, honouring the old god Amun instead. That single change in a name marks a return to the old religion and the old priesthood.

Now, a surprise. Compared with the great royal tombs nearby, this one is small. It has only four modest rooms: an antechamber, a side room called the annex, the burial chamber, and a small room known as the treasury. Many scholars think the tomb may not have been planned for a king at all. It may have been adapted in a hurry after his sudden death. The tomb was cramped, quickly finished, and almost forgotten.

Forgetting saved it. Tomb robbers did break in during ancient times, probably not long after the burial. Officials discovered the damage and sealed the tomb again. Later, when workers cut the much larger tomb of Ramesses the Sixth into the cliff nearby, their debris and rough huts covered this entrance. Over the centuries, the location disappeared from memory. While almost every other royal tomb in the valley was emptied, this one stayed hidden under rubble.

In November 1922, the British archaeologist Howard Carter found a step cut into the rock. His patron was Lord Carnarvon, who had funded years of searching that had produced very little. Carter's workers cleared a staircase down to a sealed doorway. When he made a small opening and looked through by candlelight, he saw the glint of gold. The story goes that Carnarvon asked whether he could see anything. Carter's widely repeated answer was: wonderful things.

The antechamber was packed with objects. There were gilded couches, chariots, chests, statues, and boxes stacked against the walls. Carter and his team spent about ten years recording and removing everything. They photographed and numbered thousands of items before moving them. That patient method is one reason this discovery still matters to archaeologists. The famous gold mask, the coffins, and the treasures are no longer here. They are now in Cairo, in the Grand Egyptian Museum.

You may hear about the curse. Lord Carnarvon died in Cairo in 1923, just months after the tomb was opened. Newspapers quickly spread the idea that the dead king had taken revenge. It made a thrilling headline, but it is legend, not history. Howard Carter himself, the man who actually opened the tomb, lived for many more years. Most people who worked here lived long, ordinary lives.

Now look at the walls of the burial chamber. This is the only room in the tomb that was painted. The background is a warm golden yellow. On one wall, a figure wearing a leopard skin performs a ritual called the Opening of the Mouth. This ceremony was believed to restore the senses of the dead in the afterlife. The figure is Ay, the older official who became pharaoh after Tutankhamun. Painting himself here helped show that he was the rightful successor.

On another wall, find the rows of baboons. They come from a funerary text about the sun's journey through the night, the hours of darkness before dawn. Look closely at the paint, and you will notice small brown spots across many of the scenes. For years, people worried they were spreading. Conservators from the Getty Conservation Institute studied them closely. They found the spots were old microbial growth, now dead and no longer growing. Removing them would damage the paint, so they remain.

That conservation work, finished in the late 2010s, changed how you visit. It added a new ventilation system to control heat and moisture from visitors' breath. It also added barriers and a viewing platform to keep people away from the fragile walls. In the burial chamber, the large stone sarcophagus still sits where it was placed more than three thousand years ago. Few visitors realise how much of what they see here depends on careful daily control of the air.

Then comes the moment that stops many people. In the antechamber, inside a climate-controlled glass case, lies the mummy of Tutankhamun himself. Unlike almost all of the treasure, the king never left his valley. You can see the dark, fragile face and the thin outline of his body. Studies over the years have given scholars clues about his health and his early death. But many questions remain open. Standing here, he becomes less a legend and more a young man.

Before you climb back toward the light, take one more look around. Notice how close the walls are, how short the distance is from the entrance to the king. Then, as you step outside, look up at the cliffs above the valley. The bright stone and the open sky are the same view the burial workers saw. A small tomb, nearly forgotten, kept its secrets here for more than three thousand years.