1881–1925 CE · cache discovery and excavation milestones · Africa · Science
The Deir el-Bahari royal-mummy cache entered official archaeology in 1881. Tutankhamun’s tomb was found in 1922 and his mummy examined in 1925 through work involving Egyptian excavators and officials as well as Howard Carter’s team.
Atlas dossier · Industrial & Imperial AgeFree device narration · synchronized English captions · transcript available
Why it matters
The Abd el-Rassul family’s relationship to the Deir el-Bahari cache preceded official removal in 1881. Tutankhamun’s tomb was found in 1922 through an Egyptian excavation workforce as well as Carter and Carnarvon. Naming only a European director erases the labour and state institutions that made excavation possible.
Library of Congress: Tutankhamun research collection ↗The 1925 examination of Tutankhamun’s mummy closes the selected range. Unwrapping, imaging and display produced knowledge but also physically altered and objectified human remains. Public interpretation should distinguish a tomb photograph from an ancient event and foreground dignity, conservation and Egyptian stewardship.
Library of Congress: Tutankhamun death-mask photograph ↗A visual presentation accompanying this entry. Read each image’s attribution to distinguish archival records, later depictions and reconstructions.
Harry Burton’s 1924 photograph from the documentation of Tutankhamun’s tomb; Griffith Institute, album 5, photograph 470.
Tutankhamun tomb photographs, Volume 5 — Harry Burton; Public Domain Mark 1.0; 1924 publication outside the maximum U.S. term; via Griffith Institute / Wikimedia Commons. Resized, cropped and converted to WebP for Atlas display.
Source and reuse terms ↗ · Read the licence ↗Interpretation note
This dossier distinguishes the event’s basic chronology from later arguments about meaning, responsibility and legacy. When comparing religious, national, Indigenous or scholarly interpretations, consult the primary and institutional sources above alongside peer-reviewed historical work.
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