"I think he did miraculously," he said, adding that modern archaeologists are still benefiting from Carter's rigor.Ĭarter not only had all of the 5,000-plus artifacts in King Tut's tomb photographed, he also used his training as an artist to sketch them. Howard Carter was meticulous in his methodology, agreed Egyptologist David Silverman. He knew the hills, he knew the paths, he knew what happened when rainstorms hit the area"-allowing him to identify the most likely sites for finding long-buried tombs. "Carter really worked himself into the lives of ancient Egyptian necropolis workmen. "He didn't simply look for the door of a tomb, but rather he went at it in a way that we would probably characterize today as a form of landscape archaeology. He did all the necessary background work," he added. (Take an interactive tour of Tut's tomb.)
When talking about the tomb discovery, "everyone likes to use the phrase 'stumble upon,' and that always ticks me off a little bit," said Yale University Egyptologist John Darnell.Ĭarter spent decades as an archaeological excavator exploring burial sites in ancient Thebes (now Luxor) before finding the roughly 3,000-year-old resting place of Tutankhamen, Darnell pointed out. The King Tut find brought Carter overnight-and lasting-fame, but it was anything but a stroke of luck, experts say. Around the world Wednesday, searchers were stumbling upon a gilt- and sepia-toned artifact of the Internet age-a Google doodle heralding the 138th birthday of Howard Carter, the British archaeologist who discovered the ancient Egyptian tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in 1922.
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