What happened
On 4 November 1922, Howard Carter’s workmen uncovered a stairway in the Valley of the Kings. The tomb it led to, KV62, proved to be the nearly intact burial of Tutankhamun. On 26 November, peering in by candlelight, Carter reportedly answered the question of whether he could see anything by saying that he saw wonderful things. The burial chamber was officially opened in February 1923; the tomb held over 5,000 objects, including the gold mask and nested gold coffins, and cataloguing and clearance took about a decade.
Background
The excavation was funded by the British aristocrat Lord Carnarvon after years of fruitless searching. Most royal tombs had been robbed in antiquity, but the entrance of KV62 lay hidden under debris and workers’ huts, which preserved it.
Consequences
The discovery set off worldwide Egyptomania and became a landmark both in archaeology and in debates over where antiquities belong; the finds remained in Egypt. Lord Carnarvon died in April 1923 of an infected mosquito bite, feeding a media-invented myth of a curse of the pharaohs.