Page "Howard Carter" Paragraph 9

On 4 November 1922, Howard Carter's excavation group found the steps leading to Tutankhamun's tomb ( subsequently designated KV62 ), by far the best preserved and most intact pharaonic tomb ever found in the Valley of the Kings.

He wired Carnarvon to come, and on 26 November 1922, with Carnarvon, Carnarvon's daughter, and others in attendance, Carter made the " tiny breach in the top left hand corner " of the doorway, and was able to peer in by the light of a candle and see that many of the gold and ebony treasures were still in place.

He made the breach into the tomb with a chisel his grandmother had given him for his seventeenth birthday.

He did not yet know at that point whether it was " a tomb or merely a cache ", but he did see a promising sealed doorway between two sentinel statues.

When Carnarvon asked " can you see anything?

", Carter replied with the famous words: " Yes, wonderful things.