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| British archaeologist Howard Carter earned a reputation as the 20th-century bard of ancient Egypt through his discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922. |
Discoveries of a lifetime
By: Steven Winn
Special to The Examiner
06/23/09 8:08 PM PDT
SAN FRANCISCO — The clock was running out on Howard Carter in 1922. After excavating in the Valley of the Kings for 20 years, the 48-year-old English archaeologist had persuaded his frustrated patron, Lord Carnarvon, to fund one last search for the tomb of Tutankhamun.
On Nov. 4, 1922, one of Carter’s workers was setting a water jug down in the sand when his hand brushed a stone step. It was the top of a 16-step stairway that led downward through the parched earth to a tomb that held history’s best-preserved record of the Egyptian mindset and ardor for the afterlife.
The de Young’s “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” tells the story of Carter’s remarkable discovery in 20 transfixing prints by Harry Burton, the Metropolitan Museum of Art photographer who was there to see it all happen.
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