If not the greatest archaeological find of the Twentieth Century, certainly the best known. King Tut – well, Tutankhamen really – was a little known and fairly unimportant Pharaoh historically, but his tomb is one of the best preserved ever found, and has been extremely influential in how we view Pharaonic Egypt.
Howard Carter and his sponsor, George Herbert, Lord Carnavon, had spent lots of money and nearly a decade searching for the tomb of the boy king, and Carnavon had started to lose hope. It seemed that there was no part of the Valley of Kings still to be explored, and 1922 was to be the last year he funded Carter. It turned out to be the last year he needed to. Carter found the tomb, and it was such a rich find that it took a decade to finish cataloging the tomb and removing the artifacts from it. Since their discovery, various collections of Tutankhamen artifacts have been almost constantly on tour around the world.
