100 years ago, in 1907, the first clues to King Tut’s tomb were discovered, credited to two English archaeologists working for Theodore Davis, the rich American ‘digger’.

Davis declared he had ‘found’ Tut’s tomb and there was nothing more to discover in the Valley of the Kings! A big disappointment to Howard Carter, though he was not convinced and spent 15 more years searching for King Tut.

Note from Tut:

Carter touched something that belonged to me...
and then he was mine.
He knew then that I had lived.
He saw something in the North Palace at Akhetaten.
He saw my name ....
...when he first came to Egypt with Petrie to copy in ink and in watercolors the things that were uncovered ...
...back in 1890 when Carter was only 17.

René: Sir Flinders Petrie hired the young Howard Carter in London to work in his diggings at Amarna, the city once called Akhetaten. The esteemed Sir Flinders who introduced the scientific method of reclaiming the past.

Carter, the son of a local watercolorist specializing in family pets and prized animals of farmers and squires, had been recommended by a Lady to the curator of the British Museum. Carter continued to work for Petrie in Egypt through most of the 1890s until hired as an Inspector by the Antiquities Service.

Tut:
Carter faded away after he finished stripping and cataloguing my House of Eternity.
What was not there in my House of Eternity - is just as important as what was included. And just as important: what was taken during the first two intrusions, as well as the third and the final one, the fourth, the official opening of my tomb.

For instance the so-called “Lotus Head”.
It is I being born from the opening bud of a lotus.
But where did he really find it?

René: There is no record of the Lotus Head until inspectors found it carefully wrapped and hidden in a wine crate with no attached label or number in the nearby tomb that was being used as a storeroom.

Records were kept of the remnants of pots and boxes with partial cartouches of Akhenaten and SmenkhKare found in the rubble of the stairs, a scarab of Thutmoses III, a fragment with the name of Amenhotep III.

Carter later claimed he had found the lotus head there and had neglected to record it. Yet Carter kept careful notes and diagrams and had photos of all that he found in and outside Tutankhamen’s House of Eternity.

But there is no mention of that fabulous head.
The Lotus Child.

Where did Carter really find it?
How long did he have it?