The 1922 Season

A

Alfred Lucas  The chemist who ran conservation in the improvised laboratory tomb, stabilizing objects as fragile as resin-blackened textiles for the journey to Cairo.

Ancient robberies  KV62 was entered at least twice soon after the burial, the thieves after oils, unguents, and portable gold; officials repaired and resealed the tomb, leaving the disorder Carter found. Attested reconstruction from the physical evidence.

Annex  The last, most chaotic chamber: overflow storage of oils, wine, food, and furniture, its contents tumbled by ancient robbers; the final room to be cleared.

Antechamber  The first room Carter entered: a jumble of dismantled chariots, gilded couches, and boxes, photographed and cleared piece by piece before the Burial chamber was opened.

Antiquities Service  The Egyptian government department (then under French direction, Pierre Lacau) controlling excavation, division of finds, and the emptying of the tomb — Carter’s constant counterpart and frequent adversary.

Arthur Callender  Engineer and long-time associate whom Carter summoned as his right hand for the excavation. Practical and unflappable, “Pecky” Callender managed the heavy work of the Clearance: shoring, lifting, lighting, and the safe removal of the tomb’s largest objects.

B

Burial chamber  The only decorated room of KV62, almost filled by four nested gilded shrines around the Sarcophagus. Its sealed wall was ceremonially opened in February 1923.

C

Clearance  The ten-season labor (1922–1932) of conserving, recording, and removing more than 5,000 objects from the four small rooms.

Concession  The licence from the Egyptian Antiquities Service granting an excavator the exclusive right to dig a site; Carnarvon held the Valley Concession from 1915.

The “curse”  The newspaper legend, fed by Carnarvon’s death in 1923, that the tomb punished its openers. No curse inscription exists in KV62, and the excavation team’s longevity refutes the arithmetic. The legend is attested as a legend; the glossary states its debunking plainly.

E

Egyptology  The modern discipline, barely a century old in 1922, born from the decipherment of Hieroglyphs in 1822 — the epilogue stands exactly one hundred years after Champollion.

G

Gold mask  The beaten-gold funerary mask over the mummy’s head and shoulders, inlaid with glass and stone — now the most recognizable object from the ancient world. Attested; scholarly arguments that parts were made for a predecessor are flagged interpretation.

H

Harry Burton  The Metropolitan Museum photographer whose glass-plate record of the excavation, some 3,400 images, is itself a monument of archaeology.

Howard Carter  British archaeologist who, after three decades in Egypt as artist, inspector, and excavator, located the largely intact tomb of Tutankhamun in November 1922 and spent the next decade recording and clearing it.

I

In situ  “In place”: the discipline of recording every object exactly where it lay — photograph, number, plan — before moving it; the method that made KV62 a scientific landmark rather than a treasure hunt.

K

KV62  The Valley of the Kings designation of Tutankhamun’s tomb: four small chambers at the valley floor, hidden under later workmen’s huts and flood debris — the only substantially intact royal tomb ever found there.

L

Lady Evelyn Herbert  Lord Carnarvon’s daughter, one of the first four people to enter Tutankhamun’s tomb in November 1922. Her presence at her father’s side through the discovery season made her one of the few eyewitnesses to the opening as it actually happened.

Lord Carnarvon  George Herbert, fifth Earl of Carnarvon: the collector and patron who financed Carter’s search under his excavation Concession, and who died in Cairo months after the opening.

N

Necropolis seal  The jackal-over-nine-captives stamp of the royal cemetery administration, found intact on KV62’s blocked doorways — proof the tomb had been officially resealed in antiquity.

P

Pierre Lacau  Director of the Egyptian Antiquities Service during the discovery, the French official who oversaw excavation rights and the fate of the finds. His insistence that the tomb’s contents remain in Egypt, resisted by Carter and Carnarvon’s estate, marked a turning point in who owns an ancient past.

T

Theodore Davis  The American who held the Valley Concession before Carnarvon and gave it up declaring the Valley “exhausted” — a few meters of rubble short of KV62. Attested; the famous words are Davis’s own, published in his 1912 excavation volume.

Treasury  The chamber beyond the Burial chamber, guarded by the black Anubis shrine, holding the canopic equipment — and two small coffins containing mummified fetuses — almost certainly Tutankhamun’s stillborn daughters.

V

Valley of the Kings (in 1922)  By the twentieth century a mapped, numbered, tourist-visited valley believed fully explored — the setting that made an intact royal tomb seem impossible.

W

Winter Palace Hotel  The Luxor hotel on the Nile corniche that served as the excavation’s social headquarters, where the discovery was announced on its notice board.

“Wonderful things”  Carter’s reply, by his own account, when Carnarvon asked what he could see through the first breach by candlelight. Attested as Carter’s published account; the exact words vary between his notes and the book.