Weeks after discovering the antechamber, Carter and his team formally opened the sealed inner chamber before a small crowd of dignitaries. Behind the wall stood an enormous gilded shrine nearly filling the room, encasing the sarcophagus of the boy king who died around 1323 BC. The discovery became one of the most sensational archaeological events of the 20th century, sparking global 'Egyptomania.'
Howard Carter had discovered the tomb's entrance in November 1922, but the formal, ceremonial breaking of the sealed wall between the antechamber and burial chamber took place on February 16, 1923, before an audience that included Egyptian officials, journalists, and Carter's patron Lord Carnarvon. As Carter chiseled through the plastered doorway, workers held their breath; inside, the beam of an electric torch revealed something no living person had seen: a wall of gold.
What emerged was a shrine of gilded wood, so large it nearly touched the chamber's walls on every side, one of four nested shrines protecting the pharaoh's quartzite sarcophagus and nested coffins, the innermost made of solid gold. The room's opulence, undisturbed since roughly 1323 BC, offered proof that even a minor, short-lived pharaoh who died around age 18 or 19 could be buried with treasures beyond imagination.
The find ignited a media sensation across Europe and America, fueling a decorative arts craze known as Egyptomania that influenced fashion, architecture, and film for years. It also fed lurid tabloid speculation about a 'pharaoh's curse' after Lord Carnarvon died of an infected mosquito bite just months later, a coincidence the press could not resist.
Key people: Howard Carter, Lord Carnarvon, Tutankhamun