"A guide to an exhibition of some of the artifacts found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, discussing the life and death of the young king, daily life in ancient Egypt, and ancient Egyptian religion and funerary practices." --

"Tutankhamun has fascinated the world ever since Howard Carter's spectacular discovery of his treasure-filled tomb in the Valley of the Kings in 1922. Egypt's leading Egyptologist, Zahi Hawass, here tells the story of this golden king, a short-lived pharaoh who came to the throne of Egypt as a child and died before the age of twenty, and of the royal dynasty that bred him. The reader meets Tutankhamun's grandparents, the Sun King Amenhotep III and his beautiful wife Tiye as well as the boy-king's 'heretic' father, Akhenaten, his stepmother Neferiti, and his half-sisters, the sun-kissed princesses of Amarna. Tutankhamun lived and died during one of the most fascinating periods in Egyptian history; this book provides a window into this extraordinary time of turmoil and treasure." "The Golden Age of Tutankhamun is illustrated, primarily with photographs of objects from the traveling exhibit. "Tutankhamun and the Golden Beyond: Treasures from the Valley of the Kings," which takes objects from Cairo's Egyptian Museum collections to Switzerland and Japan. Many of these photographs were taken by National Geographic photographer Kenneth Garrett, supplemented by archival photographs from the era of the tomb's discovery, a fascinating period of transition - in archaeology as much as politics - between the age of colonialism and the dawn of Egyptian nationalism."--BOOK JACKET.

'It is a story full of drama, with the Nile, the pyramids and the Valley of the Kings as backdrop. That A World Beneath the Sands is also a subtle and stimulating study of the paradoxes of 19th-century colonialism is a bonus indeed.' - Tom Holland, GuardianWhat could be more exciting, more exotic or more intrepid than digging in the sands of Egypt in the hope of discovering golden treasures from the age of the pharaohs? Our fascination with ancient Egypt goes back to the ancient Greeks. But the heyday of Egyptology was undoubtedly the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This golden age of scholarship and adventure is neatly book-ended by two epoch-making events: Champollion's decipherment of hieroglyphics in 1822 and the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon a hundred years later.In A World Beneath the Sands, the acclaimed Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson tells the riveting stories of the men and women whose obsession with Egypt's ancient civilisation drove them to uncover its secrets. Champollion, Carter and Carnarvon are here, but so too are their lesser-known contemporaries, such as the Prussian scholar Karl Richard Lepsius, the Frenchman Auguste Mariette and the British aristocrat Lucie Duff-Gordon. Their work - and those of others like them - helped to enrich and transform our understanding of the Nile Valley and its people, and left a lasting impression on Egypt, too. Travellers and treasure-hunters, ethnographers and epigraphers, antiquarians and archaeologists: whatever their motives, whatever their methods, all understood that in pursuing Egyptology they were part of a greater endeavour - to reveal a lost world, buried for centuries beneath the sands.

A comprehensive study of the iron objects found in Tutankhamun’s tomb that include daggers, quivers, arrows, and an elaborately decorated bow case A century after Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon’s sensational discovery in 1922 of the virtually intact tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, the boy-king and his treasures continue to fascinate people all over the world. Although nearly 5,400 objects accompanied the young pharaoh on his journey to the afterlife, many of them have not been investigated in detail. Iron from Tutankhamun’s Tomb analyzes iron artifacts from the tomb in depth for the first time. This group consists of small iron chisels set into wooden handles, an Eye of Horus amulet, a miniature headrest, and the blade of a richly decorated golden dagger. The most important of these were placed in close proximity to the king’s mummy, emphasizing the high value attributed to this rare material in late Bronze Age Egypt—a time when iron smelting was not yet known in the land of the Nile. Written by a research team of archaeologists, scientists, and conservators, this comprehensive study explores in fascinating detail the context and meaning of these artifacts, while establishing for the first time that Tutankhamun’s iron came from meteorites. They complete their examination with the results of chemical analyses, offering in the process a rich overall understanding of iron and its significance in ancient Egypt.

Through this fascinating story we experience the adventure, the painstaking work, the magic, the excitement and the awe through the eyes of the "tomb raider" himself, archaeologist Howard Carter. This book tells the story of one of the greatest archeological discoveries ever, the discovery of the intact tomb of the 18th Dynasty Pharaoh, Tutankhamun (colloquially known as "King Tut" and "the boy king"), in November 1922.

Penned by a scholar who was personally involved in research into the enigmatic young pharaoh, this fully illustrated study reviews our knowledge about the life, death, and burial of Tutankhamun. Zahi Hawass places the king in the broader context of Egyptian history, unravelling the intricate and much debated relationship between various members of the royal family, and the circumstances surrounding the turbulent Amarna period.

Beautiful color photos of the breathtaking tomb of Tutankhamun and the magnificent objects buried with the young pharoah.