Howard Carter died in 1939, seventeen years after discovering Tutankhamun's tomb. The treasure he found has been all over the world, but usually rests in a museum in Cairo, right? Nothing more to know?
Ha! Of course there's tons more to know! But we're just now going to find out how much more, and what that 'more' is.
Turns out that since Carter died, only about a third of his carefully written research notes--including over 3500 cards, 1000 photographs, 60 maps, notes from chemist Alfred Lucas, and hundreds of pages from Carter's own journals and diaries--have ever been made public. Carter spent ten years cataloguing his find--there were about 5400 objects in the tomb, after all. But he died before he could publish all that stuff.
Carter's notes have been locked up in the Griffith Institute, a temperature-controlled underground lab/library/archive at Oxford University. Read all about it here at Archaeology News Net. The article is a reprint from the New Zealand Herald of August 9, 2010.
In 1993, a gentleman named Jaromir Malek became the caretaker of Carter's notes, and two years later he and began working with Jonathan Moffett, the chief IT guy at the Ashmolean Library. (I'm sure both men have far more impressive titles.) Fighting a sparse budget for years, they are now near the day when most of the archive will not only be available, but will be online.
In fact, 98% of it IS online. Wow.
I just always assumed that as King Tut's tomb was so well publicized, everyone knew all about it. Wrong! Everyone just got so entranced by the Big Gold Shiny Things (understandable) that they've never bothered to really study the many mundane and ordinary (ordinary to ancient Egyptians, that is) items in the tomb. Now it's all online and available. (The other 2% will be up within three months.) HERE.
Maybe the most valuable link I've ever made.
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