Howard Carter was a British archaeologist and Egyptologist who became world-famous after discovering the intact tomb (designated KV62) of the 18th Dynasty Pharaoh, Tutankhamun in November 1922.

Howard Carter was born in Kensington on 9 May 1874,  His father trained and developed Howard's artistic talents.
 

he came to Egypt while he was only 17, Carter was innovative in improving the methods of copying tomb decoration. In 1892, he worked under the tutelage of Flinders Petrie for one season at Amarna, the capital founded by the pharaoh Akhenaten. From 1894 to 1899, he worked with Édouard Naville at Deir el-Bahari, where he recorded the wall reliefs in the temple of Hatshepsut.

In 1899, Carter was appointed to the position of Chief Inspector of the Egyptian Antiquities Service (EAS). He supervised a number of excavations at Thebes . In 1904, he was transferred to the Inspectorate of Lower Egypt. Carter was praised for his improvements in the protection of, and accessibility to, existing excavation sites , and his development of a grid-block system for searching for tombs. The Antiquities Service also provided funding for Carter to head his own excavation projects.

Carter resigned from the Antiquities Service in 1905 after a formal inquiry into what became known as the Saqqara Affair, a noisy confrontation between Egyptian site guards and a group of French tourists. Carter sided with the Egyptian personnel


 

In 1914 Lord Carnarvon received the concession to dig in the Valley of the Kings, Carter again employed to lead the work. However excavations and study were soon interrupted by the First World War,He enthusiastically resumed his excavation work towards the end of 1917.

By 1922 Lord Carnarvon had become dissatisfied with the lack of results after several years of finding little. He informed Carter that he had one more season of funding to make a significant find in the Valley of the Kings. 

On 4 November 1922, Carter's excavation group found steps that Carter hoped led to Tutankhamun's tomb (subsequently designated KV62), and he wired Lord Carnarvon to come to Egypt. On 26 November 1922, Carter made a "tiny breach in the top left hand corner" of the doorway, with Carnarvon, his daughter Lady Evelyn Herbert, and others in attendance, using a chisel that his grandmother had given him for his 17th birthday. He was able to peer in by the light of a candle and see that many of the gold and ebony treasures were still in place. He did not yet know whether it was "a tomb or merely a cache", but he did see a promising sealed doorway between two sentinel statues. Carnarvon asked, "Can you see anything?" Carter replied with the famous words: "Yes, wonderful things!"

 

Carter's house in the Theban Necropolis, in 2009

The next several months were spent cataloguing the contents of the antechamber under the "often stressful" supervision of Pierre Lacau, director general of the Department of Antiquities of Egypt. On 16 February 1923, Carter opened the sealed doorway and found that it did indeed lead to a burial chamber, and he got his first glimpse of the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun. The tomb was considered the best preserved and most intact pharaonic tomb ever found in the Valley of the Kings, and the discovery was eagerly covered by the world's press,which helped to cement Carter's reputation with the British public.

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Towards end of February 1923 a rift between Lord Carnarvon and Carter, probably caused by a disagreement on how to manage the supervising Egyptian authorities, temporarily closed excavation. Work recommenced in early March after Lord Carnarvon apologised to Carter. Later that month Lord Carnarvon contracted blood poisoning while staying in Luxor near the tomb site. He died in Cairo on 5 April 1923.Lady Carnarvon retained her late husband’s concession in the Valley of the Kings, allowing Carter to continue his work.

Carter’s painstaking cataloguing of the thousands of objects in the tomb continued until 1932, most being moved to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. There were a number of breaks in the work, including one lasting nearly a year in 1924-25, caused by to a dispute over what Carter saw as excessive control of the excavation by the Egyptian Antiquities Service. The Egyptian authorities eventually agreed that Carter should complete the tomb’s clearance.

Despite being involved in the greatest archaeological find of his time, Carter received no honour from the British government however in 1926, Carter received the Order of the Nile, third class, from King Fuad I of Egypt.

After the clearance of the tomb had been completed, Carter retired from archaeology 

In 1924 he had toured Britain, as well as France, Spain and the United States, delivering a series of illustrated lectures. Those in New York City and other US cities were attended by large and enthusiastic audiences . 

Carter died at his London flat  , aged 65 from Hodgkin's Disease.


The house of Howard Carter at the west bank of Luxor , near the valley of kings , has been turned to a museum .