Have We Learned King Tut’s Lessons?

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IIn 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his team stumbled upon a staircase descending amid rubble and debris near the 12th-century BC tomb of King Ramesses VI in Luxor, Egypt. This day – November. On November 4, 1922, 103 years ago, they discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamun. Later that month, on November 26, Carter and another Egyptologist named Lord Carnarvon, who funded the research, entered the tomb’s surprisingly intact inner sanctum, occupied by the teenage king’s three-millennium-old golden sarcophagus, surrounded by priceless treasures.

Carter, with his co-author Authur Cruttenden Mace, later recalled the revelation of his entry into the burial chamber, in a 1923 book: “At first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle flame to flicker, but soon, as my eyes adjusted to the light, the details of the room inside slowly emerged from the mist, strange animals, statues and gold – everywhere the shine of gold.

What followed was not atypical of the unfortunate way in which archeology was practiced a century ago. Some of the untold wealth and history hidden in the 14th century BC tomb of King Tut, which had managed to elude the grasp of grave robbers for over 3,000 years, was summarily looted and transported to the United Kingdom and beyond, some apparently by Carter himself.

There had long been suspicions that Carter had helped himself to some of the ancient treasures from King Tutankhamun’s tomb, even though the discovery itself was still being excavated. In 1924, the Egyptian government and the archaeologist disagreed over control of the tomb and its contents, and Carter and his team stopped work in protest until an agreement was reached. In short, Carter agreed to transfer most of the artifacts to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, on the Nile, from Luxor, then got back to work late that year.

But rumors of misdeeds continued to circulate for decades as artifacts believed to be from King Tutankhamun’s tomb were discovered in museums around the world. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired 19 objects in the 1920s and 1940s and returned them to Egypt in 2010, saying in a statement that the treasures “can be attributed with certainty to the tomb of Tutankhamun.”

Read more: »An archaeological assessment»

In 2022, a letter sent to Carter in 1934 from Sir Alan Gardiner, a philologist responsible for translating hieroglyphics on Carter’s team, was revealed. In it, Gardiner mentioned an amulet Carter had given him, saying he had shown it to Rex Engelbach, the director of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo at the time. Engelbach told Gardiner that the amulet was “undoubtedly stolen from Tutankhamun’s tomb.” Gardiner always chastised Carter: “I deeply regret having been placed in such an embarrassing position.”

The letter strongly suggested that Carter had looted at least some of the treasures from King Tutankhamun’s tomb. Other archaeological digs from the same era were plagued by similar accusations of theft. In 2019, Egypt unsuccessfully requested the return of a stone statue of King Tut that ultimately sold for nearly $6 million at auction at Christie’s in London that year. Zahi Hawass, an Egyptian archaeologist, claimed that the statue was stolen property. “It appears that this sculpture was looted [Luxor’s] Karnak Temple,” he said ABC News before the item is sold. “Christie’s would have no proof of ownership.” And the Egyptians have been demanding the repatriation of the famous Rosetta Stone for years. This key deciphering tool, which still resides in the British Museum, was claimed by the United Kingdom in 1801, when Napoleon Bonaparte signed away his rights after French soldiers removed it from its discovery site near the town of Rashid, Egypt, a few years earlier.

And that’s just Egypt. There are countless other examples across the world of rich cultural material heritage extracted and exported by colonial entities.

But at least for King Tut, most of his riches are at home. Earlier this month, the billion-dollar, 120-acre Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza opened its main galleries, where visitors can see more than 5,000 artifacts from the tomb on display. These include his famous golden funerary mask and his golden chariot.

We may be a long way from archeology as it was practiced a century ago, but many artifacts have yet to return to their rightful place. It is certainly more common for archaeologists and anthropologists to consult with indigenous communities and take other precautions in the treatment of any artifacts or remains they unearth. Hopefully, continued efforts to repatriate artifacts to the cultures to which they belong and the spread of more sensitive and collaborative approaches to telling humanity’s ancient stories will help us relegate the bad old days of archeology to the distant past.

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Main image: Credit: Mark Fischer / Wikimedia

• Bob Grant

  Published on November 4, 2025

  Bob Grant is the associate editor of Nautilus.