Tutankhamun tomb discovery: open the tomb step by step

Howard Carter found the first step of tomb KV62 on November 4, 1922, peered into the antechamber on November 26, opened the burial chamber on February 16, 1923, and lifted the golden mask in October 1925. Clearing more than 5,000 objects took until 1932. It remains the most intact royal tomb ever found in Egypt.

The Tutankhamun coloring book follows the king the same way, in order: the boy crowned at nine, the restoration of the old gods, the wars on the borders, the sudden death, the forgotten tomb and, on its last scenes, Carter’s discovery.

Tutankhamun was a pharaoh of Egypt’s 18th Dynasty who came to the throne around 1332 BC at about nine years old and died around eighteen. He undid the religious revolution of Akhenaten, restored the old gods and the temples of Amun, and was then struck from the official king lists. Before 1922 he was almost forgotten.

He was born Tutankhaten, a name honoring the sun disc his father’s court worshipped. Within a few years of taking the throne he changed it to Tutankhamun and moved the court away from Akhenaten’s city of Amarna.

His death is still debated. Scans of the mummy show a broken leg and signs of malaria, and the old theory of a blow to the head has lost ground. Later pharaohs erased the Amarna kings from history, which is partly why robbers and builders lost track of his tomb.

Those chapters fill the first half of the Tutankhamun coloring book: the coronation, the restoration and the armies marching against Nubians and Hittites, each with a caption that tells you the context.

Carter had searched the Valley of the Kings for Lord Carnarvon since 1917 and found almost nothing. Carnarvon agreed to pay for one last season. On November 4, 1922, Carter’s team cleared the ground below workmen’s huts near the tomb of Ramesses VI and uncovered a step cut into the rock: the top of a staircase.

By the next day the workers had cleared twelve steps and the upper edge of a blocked doorway, plastered and stamped with seals. Carter did not break it.

Instead he filled the stairway back in, posted guards and, on November 6, sent Carnarvon a telegram: at last have made wonderful discovery in Valley; a magnificent tomb with seals intact; re-covered same for your arrival. A later story credits a water boy with spotting the first step, but Carter’s own account names no one.

On November 26, 1922, Carter reached a second sealed door at the end of a corridor, made a small hole, and held up a candle. Carnarvon asked whether he could see anything. Carter’s famous answer, in the words he published, was yes, wonderful things. Gold glinted from every corner of the room beyond.

Carnarvon and his daughter, Lady Evelyn Herbert, had arrived in Luxor on November 23. On the 24th the full staircase was cleared and the seals on the first door read Tutankhamun.

There was a worry. Parts of the first door had been opened and resealed in antiquity, so robbers had entered. They had been caught quickly, and most of what they disturbed was still in the tomb.

The antechamber, officially opened on November 29, 1922, was crammed with the king’s belongings: three gilded couches shaped like animals, dismantled chariots, boxes of clothes and jewels, and two life-size statues of the king in black and gold guarding a sealed wall. Behind that wall lay the burial chamber.

A small door led off to the annex, stacked to the ceiling in a chaotic jumble of food, oils, furniture and games left by the robbers. It would be the last room cleared.

Carter’s team photographed and numbered every object where it lay before anything moved. Harry Burton’s glass-plate photographs of these rooms are still the best record of a royal tomb as it was found.

The empty tomb of Seti II became a laboratory to conserve finds, and moving a single couch could take weeks. That patience is why the Tutankhamun collection survives intact.

The burial chamber was officially opened on February 16, 1923, before an audience of officials. Behind the guarded wall stood a gilded shrine almost filling the room, and inside it three more shrines, nested like boxes, around a stone sarcophagus. Carter could not lift the sarcophagus lid until February 12, 1924.

Carter, Carnarvon and Lady Evelyn had almost certainly crept into the chamber in secret soon after the first opening, through a small hole they later disguised. Carter never admitted it.

Next to the burial chamber lay the room Carter called the treasury. Its doorway was guarded by a black jackal of Anubis on a gilded shrine, and behind him stood the canopic shrine that held the king’s organs.

Work then stopped for most of 1924 in a dispute with the Egyptian authorities over access and the press. When it resumed, the coffins came next.

Inside the sarcophagus lay three coffins, one inside another. The two outer ones were gilded wood; the innermost, opened in October 1925, was solid gold and weighs about 110 kilograms. On October 28, 1925, Carter lifted its lid and saw the golden mask, about 10 kilograms of gold, glass and stone, on the mummy’s head and shoulders.

The mask shows the king with the striped nemes headdress, the vulture and cobra on his brow, and eyes of quartz and obsidian. The stripes are inlaid with blue glass imitating lapis lazuli.

The mummy itself was in poor condition, glued to the coffin by the resins poured over it. Its examination began on November 11, 1925, and it was returned to his tomb, where it still lies today in a climate-controlled case.

When you color it, keep it simple: two golds, a warm one and a cool one, and a single deep blue for the stripes. Leave white paper where the light hits the brow.

No. Lord Carnarvon died in Cairo on April 5, 1923, of blood poisoning after an infected mosquito bite, and newspapers shut out of the story invented a pharaoh’s curse to sell copies. Carter himself, who opened every door, lived until 1939. Studies of the people present found no higher death rate.

The legend grew because the press had little else. Carnarvon had sold exclusive rights to The Times, so rival papers filled their columns with omens and warnings that no inscription in the tomb contains.

The curse sold, and still sells. But the real story is better: a boy king erased from history, and a tomb that survived because the world forgot him.

Almost all of Tutankhamun’s treasures are now in the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza, which opened its galleries with the complete collection shown together for the first time. The mummy stays in tomb KV62 in the Valley of the Kings, and the tomb itself is open to visitors on a separate ticket.

Seeing the objects in order, from chariots to the mask, is the closest you can get to standing in Carter’s candlelight. If that trip is a dream for someone you know, our gifts for ancient Egypt lovers has ideas that cost less than a flight.

At home, the story lands better when your hands are busy. Read why history comes alive when you color it, and why coloring helps you learn history and remember it.

Tutankhamun’s story only makes sense in order: the boy king, the restored gods, the sudden death, three thousand years of sand, then a single step in 1922. Color it that way and you will remember every door.

For a second chapter of Egypt, Cleopatra’s coloring book picks up thirteen centuries later with the last of the pharaohs. Families teaching at home can pair both; see our guide to history coloring books for homeschool, and our tips on how to print a coloring book PDF.