Mysteries of King Tut

It is one of the most iconic discoveries in all of archaeology—the treasure-filled tomb of the young Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, better known as King Tut. One hundred years ago today British archaeologist Howard Carter and an Egyptian excavation team found the boy king’s final resting place. Scholars have been studying the royal tomb and its owner ever since. 

From this work the broad outlines of the life and times of Tut have emerged. Many mysteries remain, however, including how the young pharaoh was related to Queen Nefertiti (herself a subject of debate), how influential he was as a ruler and how he died. Now new findings are emerging that could fill in some of the missing details. But as ever, debates rage over how to interpret them.

The key to Tut’s discovery was dogged perseverance. By November 4, 1922, Carter and his team had spent five futile years searching for an undiscovered royal tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. The prevailing wisdom said that everything the valley had to offer had already been found. Carter decided to spend what was to be his final field season digging beneath a group of huts that housed the ancient tomb builders. 

“We had almost made up our minds that we were beaten...,” he and archaeologist Arthur Cruttenden Mace wrote in The Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamen, their account of the expedition. “Hardly had we set hoe to ground in our last despairing effort than we made a discovery beyond our wildest dreams.”

Beneath those huts, the excavation team uncovered a step cut into the rock. Within days the team had dug out a steep staircase and a 30-foot-long passageway that ended in a door sealed with plaster and stamped with the royal necropolis seal. Carter waited to open the door until his benefactor George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, fifth earl of Carnarvon, who had funded his work in the valley for all those years, could travel to the site. 

The next day the team dug out a steep staircase and a door sealed with plaster and stamped with the royal necropolis seal. Carter waited to open the door until his benefactor George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, fifth earl of Carnarvon, who had funded his work in the valley for all those years, could travel to the site. On November 24, 1922, it was cleared to reveal a corridor, followed by a 30-foot-long passageway that ended in another door. On November 26, 1922, Carter broke open a small hole in the door and stuck a candle through, casting the first light into the chamber in nearly 3,300 years. 

The sight held him speechless as his eyes adjusted. “Details of the room emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold—everywhere the glint of gold,” Carter wrote in The Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamen. He was looking into the antechamber of the tomb of Tutankhamun, a ruler who sat his throne for only around 10 years but did so at a pivotal time in Egyptian history.  READ MORE...

King Tut"s Meteorite Dagger

Among the many items recovered from King Tut's tomb was a dagger made of iron, which is a material that was rarely used during Egypt's 18th dynasty. 

That iron likely came from a meteorite, and a recent paper published in the journal Meteorites and Planetary Science sheds further light on precisely how that iron dagger was forged, as well as how it came into Tut's possession.

Tutankhamen was the son of Akhenaten and ascended to the throne when he was just 8 or 9 years old. He wasn't considered an especially important pharaoh in the grand scheme of things, but the treasures that were recovered from his tomb in the 1920s are what led to his fame. 

Those treasures included the famous gold burial mask (pictured above), a solid gold coffin, thrones, archery bows, trumpets, a lotus chalice, and various pieces of furniture.

These became part of a global touring exhibition, which received worldwide press coverage during the 1960s and 1970s in particular. 

The mummy even inspired a couple of songs: Steve Martin's hit "King Tut" (which debuted on Saturday Night Live in 1978) and the lesser-known "Dead Egyptian Blues," by the late folk rock singer Michael Peter Smith (which contains the immortal line, "Your sarcophagus is glowing, but your esophagus is showing").  READ MORE...

Most Important Archaelogical Discoveries in 2021

Every year, we delve back through our coverage to find the most fascinating archaeological discoveries of the year, whether by a complete amateur, or as the result of years of careful study by a team of experts.

As always, archaeology news takes us around the globe and throughout the ages, from the earliest days of human history through to the contemporary era. Here are our picks for the 2021 archaeological stories worth revisiting.

Stonehenge Revelations

Stonehenge at sunrise in 2015. Photo by Freesally, public domain.

The ancient circle of stone monoliths on the U.K.’s Salisbury Plain is one of history’s most enduring mysteries. But while we may never fully understand this ancient structure, experts are learning more and more about it each year.

Thanks in no small part to the late Robert Phillips, a diamond cutter who made repairs to a fallen stone at the site in 1958, we now know that the massive monoliths are made from a nearly indestructible matrix of interlocking quartz crystals—which is why the monument has stood for millennia. Phillips drilled a three-and-a-half foot core sample during his work, which he was allowed to keep as a souvenir. He returned it in 2019, allowing scientists to conduct valuable testing on the stones, which are now protected under English heritage law and cannot be sampled.

This year also saw archaeologists discover a former stone circle in Wales that closely matches the dimensions of Stonehenge’s inner ring. That suggests that the site’s inner stone circle was originally erected 175 miles away and moved to Salisbury Plain—and carbon dating shows it was built 400 years before Stonehenge proper. If this all seems too unbelievable to be true, just wait: it perfectly matches a Stonehenge legend that Merlin stole the monument and moved it to England.

Original Flavor Pompeii—and a New Version in Egypt

The lost city discovered by archaeologists near Luxor in Egypt. Photo by Zahi Hawass, courtesy 

of the Center for Egyptology.


Do the discoveries ever seem to stop in Pompeii? A newly excavated thermopolium, a kind of Roman fast food restaurant, began welcoming visitors this summer. Archaeologists were able to identify the space in part because it was decorated with frescoes featuring some popular ingredients in Pompeii cuisine, such as roosters.

Other Pompeii finds this year included an intact chariot, slaves’ quarters, and evidence of thriving Greek theater scene.

But Pompeii isn’t the only ancient city found nearly intact. In fact, a smaller “mini” Pompeii was found hidden beneath vines in Verona by construction workers. And in Egypt, another wellspring of ancient treasures, 2021 saw what’s being hailed as the nation’s most significant discovery since Howard Carter uncovered King Tut’s golden tomb nearly a century ago: the abandoned city of Luxor.

The city was a royal metropolis outside the city of Thebes built by Tutankhamun’s grandfather, King Amenhotep III. His son, Akhenaten, appears to have abandoned the city when he started a new religion worshipping only the sun god, Aten.  READ MORE...