On 4 November 1922, a water-boy in Carter’s team, Hussein Abdul Rasoul, discovered a flight of steps descending into the bedrock. Colourisation reveals the astonishing scale of the operation that was required. In December 1917, the meticulous Carter divided the valley up into a grid and began excavating each sector, right down to the bedrock. The politics of the time were to have a profound effect on Carter and Carnarvon. Egyptians were soon pushing for independence from Britain, which claimed Egypt as a protectorate. Carter became convinced that Tutankhamun’s tomb lay undiscovered in an ancient royal burial ground known as The Valley of the Kings, and in 1914 Carnarvon was granted a concession to start excavating there.īut the First World War intervened. Carnarvon and Carter both yearned to find what nobody had ever discovered before, a pharaoh’s tomb with its treasures still intact. Liz travels to Highclere Castle to meet the current Countess of Carnarvon.
Carter met two people who would change his life: British Egyptologist Flinders Petrie, who inspired him to be an archaeologist, and Lord Carnarvon, a keen amateur Egyptologist who hired Carter to help him. Colourisation brings him to life as he arrived in Egypt as a 17-year-old artist. Liz’s story begins in 1891, with an old black and white family photo of the young Carter. Many photos were taken using glass plate negatives, which have fantastic resolution and which, with colourisation, reveal detail not seen for a century.
It provided much-needed good news, following the Great War and the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1919, and we have been transfixed ever since.Ĭolourisation provides a fantastic insight into the artefacts themselves and the context that they were found in. Oxford University Egyptologist, Elizabeth Frood, is our guide to the discovery of the tomb on 4 November 1922 by British Egyptologist Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon.
A century after the world’s most exciting archaeological find - the tomb of Tutankhamun - we can witness the dramatic scenes of its discovery and marvel at its extraordinary treasures exactly as they were first seen - in colour.
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