page_title: KV62
section_title: Discovery of the tomb
hierarchical_section_title: KV62 / Discovery of the tomb
caption_attribution_description: Le jeune Hussein Abdel-Rassoul, porteur d'eau sur la fouille de Howard Carter et qui aurait été celui qui a découvert la première marche du tombeau de Toutânkhamon le 9 novembre 1922. Autour de son cou un collier provenant du trésor. Photographie de Harry Burton, reproduite lors de l'exposition "Toutânkhamon, le trésor du pharaon" mars-septembre 2019, Grande halle de la Vilette, Paris.
context_page_description: KV62 is the standard Egyptological designation for the tomb of young pharaoh Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, now renowned for the wealth of valuable antiquities that it contained. Howard Carter discovered it in 1922 underneath the remains of workmen's huts built during the Ramesside Period; this explains why it was largely spared the desecration and tomb clearances at the end of the 20th Dynasty, although it was robbed and resealed twice in the period after its completion.
  The tomb was densely packed with items in great disarray due to its small size, the two robberies, and the apparently hurried nature of its completion. It took eight years to empty due to the state of the tomb and to Carter's meticulous recording technique. The contents were all transported to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
  Tutankhamun's tomb had been entered at least twice not long after his mummy was buried, and well before Carter's discovery. The outermost doors were unsealed leading into the shrines enclosing the king's nested coffins, though the inner two shrines remained intact and sealed.
context_section_description: Theodore M. Davis's team uncovered a small site containing funerary artifacts with Tutankhamun's name and some embalming parts in 1907, just before his discovery of the tomb of Horemheb. Davis erroneously assumed that this site was Tutankhamun's complete tomb and concluded the dig. The details of both findings are documented in his 1912 publication The Tombs of Harmhabi and Touatânkhamanou; the book closes with the comment, "I fear that the Valley of the Kings is now exhausted."
  Lord Carnarvon employed British Egyptologist Howard Carter to excavate the site of KV62, and in 1922 Carter returned to a line of huts that he had abandoned a few seasons earlier. The crew cleared the huts and rock debris beneath, and their young water boy, Hussein Abdel-Rassoul, stumbled on a stone which turned out to be the top of a flight of steps cut into the bedrock. Carter had the steps partially dug out until the team found the top of a mud-plastered doorway. The doorway was stamped with indistinct cartouches (oval seals with hieroglyphic writing). Carter ordered the staircase to be refilled and sent a telegram to Carnarvon, who arrived on November 23, 1922 along with his 21-year-old daughter Lady Evelyn Herbert.
  The excavators cleared the stairway completely, which revealed clearer seals lower down on the door bearing the name of Tutankhamun. However, further examination showed that the door blocking had been breached and resealed on at least two occasions. Clearing the blocking led to a downward corridor that was completely blocked with packed limestone chippings, through which a robbers' tunnel had been excavated and anciently refilled. At the end of the tunnel was a second sealed door that had been breached and resealed in antiquity. Carter then made a hole in the door and used a candle to check for foul gases before looking inside. "At first I could see nothing," he wrote, "the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle flame to flicker, but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold – everywhere the glint of gold." After a pause, Carnarvon asked, "Can you see anything?" Carter replied, "Yes, wonderful things."
caption: Hussein Abdel-Rassoul wearing a large pectoral found in the tomb
exif: {}