A review by redhairedashreads
Tutankhamun and the Tomb That Changed the World by Bob Brier

5.0

 

This was an in depth look at Tutankhamun and how the discovery of his tomb changed the world. This book is broken into three parts that break down the different parts of Tut’s discovery and legacy: history of the tomb, Tut finally revealed, and Tut’s legacy.

This starts by giving us the history of Howard Carter and what led up to him discovering the tomb, the long excavation of the tomb, and the tension and issues between Carter and the Egyptian Government. I found this part to be very interesting because while I know the basics of how Carter discovered the tomb, I didn’t realize how revolutionary he was in excavating, preserving, and documenting the process of clearing a royal tomb. I also never realized how much tensions and problems there were between Carter and the Egyptian government surrounding this discovery. 

This goes over recent (pre-2022) discoveries surrounding Tut that involved x-raying his body, scanning Tut’s tomb for another hidden room, and DNA sequencing that led to identifying some of his family members' mummies. There are also multiple chapters about recent discoveries from items from Tut’s tomb due to all of his items being moved and conserved for the new Egyptian museum. 

 

While Carter was way ahead of his times in clearing and documenting this tomb, we also see a lot of disregard in other areas, such as with the mummy of Tutankhamun. It amazed me how he didn’t care to damage the body of Tut as long as it came out of the coffins and he got the items that were wrapped up with him. We are also finding as the years pass that he gave things from Tut’s tomb to others and kept some for himself even when he wasn’t supposed to, all because he felt like he deserved it since he discovered the tomb.

Part three is about Tutankhamun’s legacy with the main one being pushing the Egyptians to fight against colonialism in Egypt, and enact strict laws about Egyptian cultural artifacts. This is why Egyptian artifacts belong to Egypt now and not the country/ person who finds them. While I knew Tut was one of the most well known things about Egypt, I never realized that his discovery is what pushed the government to fight to keep their treasuries and to enact strict policies on archeologists. 

While this is a few years old now, I still think this is a great resource to learn about the discovery of the boy king and how he changed the world. I highly recommend this audiobook.