Why Carter walked past Tutankhamun's tomb for five years

In the Valley of the Kings, a meter-thick layer of Eighteenth-Dynasty flash-flood mud and Twentieth-Dynasty workmen's huts hid Tutankhamun's sunken staircase just twelve feet below the entrance to Ramesses the Sixth's tomb. Even after earlier excavations turned up royal seals and mummification leftovers nearby, Howard Carter paused digging at those huts to avoid blocking tourists until one final season in November 1922 exposed sixteen steps cut into the bedrock. Before Lord Carnarvon acquired the excavation concession in 1914, Theodore Davis and Edward Ayrton had uncovered twelve embalming jars in Pit 54, seal impressions on Tomb 55, and gold foil and chariot pieces in Pit 58, yet Davis still declared the valley exhausted. Starting in late 1917, an Egyptian workforce of fifty to one hundred men, dozens of boys, and four foremen-Ahmed Gerigar, Gad Hassan, Hussein Abu Awad, and Hussein Ahmed Said-cleared tens of thousands of tons of rock down to the bedrock. When the crew dismantled the huts on November 4, 1922, they uncovered the top step; Carter's diary credits the workmen clearing the hut, while Luxor oral tradition and accounts by Zahi Hawass and Lee Keedick credit twelve-year-old water boy Hussein Abdel-Rassoul. Beyond two patched ancient breaches and a refilled robbers' tunnel in the descending corridor, the four-room burial cataloged as Tomb 62 held 5,398 items that took nearly ten years to clear and conserve. Chapters: 00:00 The Clues Everyone Misread 03:07 Five Seasons of Empty Rock 05:31 The Step Beneath the Huts 08:48 Behind the Patched Doorway Subscribe to Discover Epoch for surprising history, overlooked people, and the archaeological evidence behind famous discoveries. #Tutankhamun #AncientEgypt #History