Tutankhamun's Tomb Is Weirder Than You Think

In 1922 Howard Carter peered through a small hole in a sealed doorway and saw a room that had already been robbed, then resealed, long before he arrived. We follow Carter's excavation from the first step of the staircase to the gold coffin inside the innermost shrine, using his diary, the excavation records and the Cairo Museum's inventory. Along the way we meet Ankhesenamun, whose letters to the Hittite king Suppiluliuma I survive in the archive at Hattusa, and ask what the Hittite account of her prince Zannanza really proves. We also look at the mummy itself, with the 1968 study by Ronald Harrison, the 2005 CT scans and the 2010 DNA work, and at the workers of Deir el-Medina, whose strike is recorded on the Turin Strike Papyrus. The popular story says Tutankhamun's tomb was untouched and cursed, and that everyone who entered it died young. The evidence parts with that story on both counts. The tomb was entered at least twice in antiquity, and the people who went inside, including Carter and the men who cleared the rooms, mostly lived long lives. The death of Lord Carnarvon in 1923 was reported as a curse, but it came from an infected mosquito bite. What remains open is how the boy king died, and why a tomb built to keep him ready for judgment was so easy to break into. CHAPTERS 0:00 A Candle Meets a Sealed Door 0:10 Howard Carter's Doorway in 1922 0:47 A Heart Left in the Chest 1:02 The Curse Everyone Repeats 1:35 Tutankhamun's Short Reign 2:34 Jackal Seals Over Nine Captives 3:28 Wonderful Things Through a Hole 4:18 A Decade of Cataloguing Treasure 5:10 Goods for a King's Afterlife 6:46 Thieves Who Entered Twice 8:03 Nested Shrines of Gold Leaf 8:26 A Coffin of Solid Gold 10:08 The Widow's Letter to Hattusa 11:28 A Prince Who Never Arrived 13:17 Lord Carnarvon's Mosquito Bite 15:10 Workers Who Lived Long Lives SOURCES Carter, H. and Mace, A. C. 1923. The Tomb of Tut.ankh.Amen, Vol. 1. London: Cassell. Bryce, T. 1998. The Kingdom of the Hittites. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hawass, Z. et al. 2010. Ancestry and Pathology in King Tutankhamun's Family. Journal of the American Medical Association 303(7): 638-647. Dodson, A. 2014. Amarna Sunset: Nefertiti, Tutankhamun, Ay, and the Egyptian Counter-Reformation. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. Reeves, C. N. 1990. The Complete Tutankhamun. London: Thames & Hudson. Do you think Ankhesenamun's letter to the Hittite king was a desperate act or a shrewd one, and what would you have advised her to do? Subscribe for a new strange civilization every week:    / @weirderthanhistory   All footage and photographs in this video are real: archaeological film, museum photos and maps. No AI-generated pictures or video. #AncientEgypt #Tutankhamun #EgyptianHistory