‘KING TUT’ – A CENTURY OF MYTH AND MYSTERY

One hundred years ago, in November 1922, the archaeologist Howard Carter was leading a team in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings when a workman found some steps under some rubble.

Those steps led to Tutankhamun’s tomb, the final resting place of the

14th Century BC pharaoh (below). The teenage king had been buried with all manner of treasures. In Carter’s words, there was ‘everywhere the glint of gold’.

The discovery – which, as Nicholas Reeves writes in his new edition of The Complete Tutankhamun (Thames & Hudson, £40 ★★★★★), has ‘yet to be matched’ – was immediately the centre of a media storm. Who was this boy king? Why had he been buried with such treasures? Was the tomb cursed? (Lord Carnarvon, who financed the dig, died while the tomb was still being opened.)

More recent discoveries about ‘King Tut’, though, have highlighted the drama of his actual life, with DNA analysis suggesting that Tutankhamun’s mother might have been his father’s sister – or even his own half-sister.

Three new books mark the centenary of the tomb’s discovery: Reeves’s The Complete Tutankhamun, Tutankhamun And The Tomb That Changed The

World, by Bob Brier (OUP, £21.99 ★★★★★), and Joyce Tyldesley’s Tutankhamun: Pharaoh, Icon, Enigma (Headline, £22 ★★★★★).

Reeves’s book is a beautifully illustrated look at Tutankhamun’s rule in Egypt’s 18th Dynasty, the story of the tomb’s opening, and a comprehensive study of all the treasures found.

Brier stresses the ‘space-age technologies’ that have given the world new insights into the tomb, from CAT-scans to a scientific study of the 35 pairs of shoes buried there. He also writes about how the excavation influenced Egyptian nationalism and global politics.

Tyldesley’s highly readable biography tells the tale of Tutankhamun’s life, followed by the story of his chaotic, dramatic afterlife of excavation. In these books, the importance of discovering the truth – rather than the myths, rumours and scandals of the past century – comes to the fore.