Author Description

Everyone is familiar with the extremely famous king Tutankhamun, his tomb harboring untold riches, its discovery in 1922, and the so-called curse of Tutankhamun, after Lord Carnarvon, patron of the excavations, died suddenly from a mysterious illness. But who has ever heard the fascinating story of how the tomb of Tutankhamun was looted twice in the six months following the funeral of the young king? Like a police investigation, the clues (left behind by the robbers and the royal officials whose duty was to close and seal back the tomb) gradually found in each room by English Egyptologist Howard Carter, who discovered the tomb, will help to piece together chapter by chapter, the story behind the looting. Who were the thieves? When and how did they strike? How do we know they benefited from the complicity of the medjays, the Egyptian policemen in charge of patrolling the Valley of the Kings? What did they take away? How do we know that, the second time, they got caught? And what fate awaited such robbers accused of desecrating a royal tomb? So many intriguing questions with clear-cut answers. The book will be the opportunity to uncover another unpleasant side of the story – the atrocities that Howard Carter and his team exacted on the royal mummy. In light of confidential reports, forgotten denunciations and supporting photographs, the mistreatment and outrageous autopsy of the mummy of Tutankhamun will be revealed. In this book illustrated with about seventy photographs, many of which have never been published before, French Egyptologist Amandine Marshall reveals the other side of the story of what happened in the most famous tomb in Egypt: the first time, in the 14th century BCE, shortly after the king’s funeral; and the second time, in 1925 CE, when the mummy emerged from the shadows into the light.