On 25 November 1922 Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon revealed to an astonished world one of the most fabulous archaeological finds of all time -- the tomb of Tutankhamen. The royal burial chamber, standing almost exactly as it was left some 3,300 years ago, was crammed with treasures of both extraordinary beauty and priceless value, dating from the height of Egyptian civilization.
It was possible to recapture and publish the intricate details and splendid proportions of the art of ancient Egypt when permission was granted, a few years ago, to remove the burial treasures from their museum cases and photograph them under studio lighting with a fast modern colour-reversal process. This volume contains thirty-two of the magnificent photographs taken by F.L. Kenett on that occasion, together with more than a hundred monochrome illustrations.
These illustrations support an excellent text by the leading French Egyptologist, Madame Desroches-Noblecourt, in which she describes the discovery of the tomb, its contents, and the light it has shed on the short reign of the boy-king and on Egyptian history and culture in general.
About the Author
Christiane Desroches Noblecourt is honorary curator of Egyptian antiquities at the Louvre where she had a long and illustrious career as a curator and researcher. With UNESCO, she spent twenty years preserving endangered Egyptian temples. She organized exceptional exhibitions on Tutankhamen and Ramses II, and organized and directed the renovation of the Valley of the Queens. She has written dozens of books about Egypt and has been widely translated.
