Today we associate it with relaxation and refinement, ritual and religion, even industry and investment. And the varied uses of wine are nothing new. After grapes arrived in Egypt, over 5,000 years ago, wine made major, lasting – and often surprising – impacts on its society and culture. The earliest vineyard remains in Egypt date from the fourth millennium BC. The oldest wine jar yet discovered was made c3000 BC – and jars continue to be found.

Following the introduction of grape cultivation from the Levant sometime before 3000 BC, grapes became the main ingredient fermented to make irep (wine), which was typically red. For lengthy periods, wine made from the fruit (dates) or sap of palm trees was more affordable, and other fruits such as figs and pomegranates were also fermented with sugar to make wine.

Wine was both a staple and a valuable commodity to be bought and sold. Vineyards were largely owned by nobles who could also enjoy wine on an everyday basis, while ordinary people typically drank it only during festivals, or might receive it as a work bonus.

Scenes of the grape harvest appear in several tombs, the earliest from the Old Kingdom in the third millennium BC. Some tomb depictions show the whole winemaking process from harvesting, treading and pressing to fermentation. In these illustrations, wine is most often presented in a small round cup.

• Read more | Life in Ancient Egypt: what was it like?

Over time, Egyptian wine began to be exported, particularly after Alexandria, founded in the fourth century BC by Alexander the Great, became a global trading hub. Recently discovered wine amphorae – bottles with two small looped handles – demonstrate that wine from around Lake Mareotis (or Mariout), lying immediately south of Alexandria, reached destinations on the Strait of Sicily and as far as the coast of what’s now southern France near Marseille. Several classical writers, including the Roman poets Horace and Virgil, mentioned Mareotic wine; the Greek writer Athenaeus described it as “pleasant [and] fragrant”. Cleopatra is said to have carried Mareotic wine on her fleet.

God of wine

Wine wasn’t just a pleasant drink in ancient Egypt – it was linked to significant episodes in foundational mythology.

In a pivotal tale, green-faced Osiris (below) – one of the most significant gods in the ancient Egyptian pantheon – was murdered by his jealous brother, Set, who locked him in a coffin and threw it into the Nile. Osiris’s blood infused the river with rich minerals, and caused the annual flooding that underpins the Egyptian soil’s fertility – an event that, to the ancient population, was nothing short of divine.

According to Greek and Roman historians, excess soil washed into the Nile turned the river a reddish colour. In the ancient myth, though, it was Osiris’s blood that was not only turning the waters red but also irrigating and nourishing crops.

In the story, Osiris’s remains were found by his wife, Isis, who carefully put his body parts back together. He returned to life, and impregnated her with the god Horus. Naturally, Osiris’s death and resurrection led him to become associated with rejuvenation, paralleling the cycle of the land from one harvest to the next – including the renewing grapevine.

In the Temple of Edfu, built 237–57 BC on the site of an earlier monument between Luxor and Aswan, one inscription reveals how the local “vineyard flourishes” when the “inundation” of the Nile takes place and the land “bears fruit with more grapes than [the sand of] the riverbanks”. Because wine production depended on the annual flooding, Osiris became closely connected with the drink – especially red wine, which closely resembles soil and blood.

In the Pyramid Texts – the oldest funerary texts, dating to the third millennium BC – Osiris, earlier venerated as the god of agriculture and resurrection, is described as the “lord of wine in flood”. He was regarded by Egyptians as the originator and teacher of viticulture and winemaking.

Drunken deities

Considered the blood of the gods, red wine was a common offering in temples. Osiris, in particular, was honoured through annual offerings of grain and wine. Because red wine wasn’t always affordable, barley wine (essentially a kind of beer) was often substituted.

In everyday life, Egyptians referred to wine as the ‘eye of Horus’, the divine child of Osiris and Isis. One ritual involved pouring wine into a depression on the temple altar, also called the Eye of Horus – a reference to the injury he sustained during the battle with his uncle Set, god of violence. In that episode, Horus’s eye lost its blood, so filling the altar depression with wine represented rejuvenation.

In another myth, when the rule of sun god Ra was coming to an end, he sent his daughter Hathor – in the form of Sekhmet, a lion-headed warrior – to destroy the mortals who’d conspired against him. Sekhmet got carried away, and looked set to destroy all of humanity, so Ra and the other gods devised a strategy to stop her. They poured red-dyed beer, or wine, to create lakes throughout the land. Believing that these pools were filled with blood, Sekhmet quaffed them, became intoxicated and fell asleep. In another version of the tale, her wrath was quelled using the power of music, dance and wine.

Recalling this story, at a new year Festival of Drunkenness people celebrated and re-enacted the god’s plan that saved humanity, while also being sure to appease the wrathful goddess.

Other deities were honoured with wine, not least Shesmu, god of the wine press. Texts from the third millennium BC record a feast during which grapes were pressed as the people sang that god’s name. Because red wine looked similar to blood, Shesmu came to be associated with punishment for serious crimes. In coffin texts and one discovered papyrus, Shesmu fills his wine press not with grapes but with the heads of criminals, then squeezes them into agonising oblivion for their unforgivable sins.

Pharaoh's finest

In ancient Egyptian texts, the pharaoh is variously described as a “winegrower” and “brewer”, as well as the “cupbearer” to the gods. And around 400 scenes depicting wine offerings are found in temples from the Greco-Roman period, especially near wine-producing locations. These show pharaohs using wine to get closer to the gods and to bless the lands.

For example, in the Temple of Dendera, on the Nile north of Luxor, an illustration alongside the inscription “good wine, I pour it on the ground” shows a cup being tilted downwards, its liquid flowing out in zigzags. And the Temple of Abydos to the west features a clear depiction of Pharaoh Seti I making an offering to Osiris.

The grapevine – which grows fresh leaves and appears renewed each year – was an important item in funerary rituals, too, increasing a deceased person’s chances of resurrection. When a pharaoh was laid to rest, their tomb was filled with enough wine to take into the afterlife, either in real jars or in the form of wall paintings. Wine was placed in tombs as early as the fourth millennium BC – for example, in the resting place of Scorpion I (c3250 BC).

• Read more | Howard Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun: was the tomb really cursed?

Among the 5,398 items found in the tomb of Tutankhamun were jars of wine inscribed with the winemaker’s name and the year of production, indicating a sophisticated wine culture. These included eight jars of the most exclusive variety, shedeh.

Analysis of the residues in these vessels revealed that they’d contained both red and white wines. Some wines, oils and foods were stored in the annex but, notably, two wine jars were placed alongside Tutankhamun’s body in the burial chamber. The red wine was placed to the west of his remains, while the white wine was set to the east, suggesting that this placement was an essential part of the burial ritual and held huge symbolic value, representing regeneration and rebirth.

Doctoring drinks

Wine was an ingredient in medicinal recipes from the fourth millennium BC. Evidence from papyri reveals that its uses varied widely: in treating infections, as an anaesthetic, applied to wounds as an antiseptic, mixed with herbs to create a sedative. As Greek influence in Egypt increased, the theories of Hippocrates (c460–c375 BC) spread – including that wine was a useful cooling agent for fevers, and that it could be used to nourish the body, purge sadness and help urine flow.

Wine jars retaining residues of herbs and balms have been discovered. Medicinal plants were added to create infused wines, or elixirs: fenugreek to treat fevers and indigestion, honey to make an antibiotic, mandrake as a narcotic and, under the instruction of a priest, opium as a sedative.

Coriander-infused wine was consumed by women to ease menstrual pain. Wine was mixed with water to make cleansing vaginal douches, with myrrh sometimes added as an antiseptic. It was even used in a kind of pregnancy test referenced in a papyrus dating from 1550 BC, which explains how a doctor should mix a urine sample with wine. A reaction between the fermented liquid and the urine’s chemical compounds would indicate that a baby was on the way.

Wine also became a key component of the embalming process, which was believed to guarantee a better afterlife. After most internal organs had been scooped out of a cadaver in preparation for mummification, it was cleansed thoroughly with a mixture of water and wine. The retained organs – stomach, intestines, liver and lungs – were also washed with wine ready for dehydration. This inhibited bacterial growth, slowing decomposition.

Wine-powered wonders

After the Ptolemies moved Egypt’s capital to Alexandria in the late fourth century BC, the state began organising grandiose festivals – demonstrations of power and wealth. These aimed to deter potential invaders and boosted the economy, with traders travelling to the city from far and wide during festival season.

We have a fascinating first-hand account by Callixenus of Rhodes, who likely lived in the second or third century BC and whose original writing – now lost – was quoted by the Greek writer Athenaeus a few centuries later. He described a magnificent and highly choreographed festival featuring performances by sileni, the drunken followers of Dionysus, Greek god of wine. An incredible float pulled by 300 men carried a wine press measuring 11 by 7 metres, dispensing local wine to the cheering crowds.

Such mechanical innovations were possible thanks to scholars at the city’s Great Library. Third-century BC inventor Ctesibius of Alexandria even devised singing statues. One of these, which depicted Arsinoë II (who co-ruled Egypt with her brother and husband Ptolemy II) as the goddess Aphrodite, played music as wine flowed out. He may also have created a hydraulic pump to transfer wine.

Working in the first or second century AD, Heron (or Hero) of Alexandria produced more such innovations; his Pneumatica contained no fewer than 16 wine-related inventions. He created the first vending machine, which dispensed measured amounts of liquid when a coin was inserted, and a self-filling wine bowl. He also invented a vessel with multiple spouts that alternately poured water and wine, or a mixture. So in Alexandria, water could indeed be turned into wine.

This article was first published in the May 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine

Generations of schoolchildren have been taught that ancient Egyptians treated the remains of high-status individuals to preserve them for the afterlife. Yet this idea is shaped by modern – which is to say modern western – cultural expectations of what the dead should look like, linked to the fact that the first Europeans to investigate ancient Egyptian mummies in the 18th century were themselves interested in embalming techniques.

These researchers were keen to preserve their own dead just as they had been in life – so they looked as if they had simply fallen asleep. Even today, people take comfort from this approach.

The ancient Egyptians, however, did not intend their dead to be seen by the living, and were apparently less concerned with preserving the transitory appearance of a human during their lifetime. Rather, they focused on transforming the body into an enduring and perfect effigy resembling one of their immortal gods.

• Read more | How to make an Egyptian mummy in 6 steps

None of the gory details of mummification are depicted in Egyptian art. Instead, our knowledge comes from the Greeks and Romans, both morbidly fascinated by mummies, who left accounts of a practice they thought weird. They describe how mummification dehydrated the body, made it hard and brittle. Once anointed with scented oils, the body resembled the expensive woods from which sculptures of the gods were carved.

In ancient texts, Egyptian deities are said explicitly to have flesh of gold, bones of iron or silver and hair of lapis lazuli, a blue semi-precious stone. So those who could afford it might be supplied with a gilded mask and a blue-painted hair covering to emulate these divine features. The facial appearance of a mummy mask is the product of the shaping of plaster and linen on an idealised and reusable mould – so was never intended to be an accurate likeness of the deceased.

In inscriptions, the dead are often referred to in divine terms, with men and women alike given the designation Osiris, the god of rebirth. From around 300 BC, women alone were referred to as Hathor, also known as the ‘Golden One’, the afterlife goddess par excellence. For the wealthy, therefore, mummification was about transformation in order to achieve immortality – not about preserving the body in the form of that person while alive.

FALSE: the brain was always removed from a mummy’s body

The ancient Egyptian concept of post-mortem judgment is illustrated by a scene in the funerary composition known as the Book of the Dead, first written on papyrus during the 16th century BC. This depicts the heart of the deceased being weighed on a set of scales against a feather representing Maat – the concepts of truth, order and justice.

It is often assumed that, for this reason, the heart had to be kept in place in the body during mummification, while the other internal organs might be removed and placed in containers that became known to early Egyptologists as canopic jars.

• Read more | 10 things you (probably) didn't know about ancient Egypt

But what of the brain? According to popular perception, this wasn’t even afforded the respect of being placed in a jar. Instead, so we’ve been led to believe, it was always removed and discarded. As many schoolchildren can recount, this was achieved by breaking through the ethmoid bone to penetrate the skull cavity with a metal instrument, then spooning brain matter piecemeal out through the nostrils.

This procedure is often explained both by a perceived need to reduce the rate of putrefaction and by the assumption that the Egyptians did not understand higher brain function, believing that intelligence and consciousness resided in the heart. However, ancient medical texts describe treatment of head injuries that shows an understanding of the effects of damage to the brain casing, while the vulnerability of the head is also a major concern of religious texts.

Physical examinations and X-ray and CT scans of mummified bodies have shown that, in fact, the brain was often left untouched. In addition, more often than not, the heart was removed – sometimes prompting headlines about the apparently exceptional and unintended ‘loss’ of a heart. In short, neither of these ‘rules’ of pharaonic funerary practice is as neat and tidy as has often been assumed.

FALSE: ancient Egyptians mummified their pets to accompany them into the afterlife

The people of ancient Egypt were widely believed to have been great animal lovers. Greek and Roman visitors to the Nile Valley viewed what they saw as excessive devotion to these creatures as yet another of the Egyptians’ odd traits. This is why, for example, the Greek historian Herodotus recorded that, when a cat in an Egyptian household died, everyone in that household shaved off their eyebrows.

However, keeping a relatively domesticated feline to control vermin is not quite the same as coddling a pet cat. In pharaonic Egypt, animal forms were a means of expressing and communicating with the divine. Only in rare cases were they viewed as worthy of specific veneration.

• Read more | Why were cats so important in ancient Egypt?

A single living bull was the focus of several religious cults throughout Egypt, notably at the site of Saqqara, near the prominent city of Memphis in the north, where a succession of sacred Apis bulls were kept over many centuries. Asked if he wanted to visit the bull on a tour of his newly conquered territory in 30 BC, the future Roman emperor Augustus declined, saying he was “accustomed to worship gods, not cattle”.

Pet ownership was limited to a few apparently domesticated animals given personal names. The most famous example belonged to a prince named Thutmose, who had a stone sarcophagus created for a cat named Ta-miu (literally, ‘the she-cat’) in the 14th century BC. However, this was highly unusual and there is no evidence that Ta-miu was buried with the prince.

In fact, the tens of millions of mummified animals known from ancient Egypt were almost all raised for slaughter as wrapped gifts to the gods. Depending on the sacred animal of the intended divine recipient, you could give a cat, a crocodile, a fish, a falcon or even a shrew. Each was an appropriate offering, even in cases where the mummified bundle didn’t actually contain any animal inside. Most important was that the mummy was associated with, or in the image of, one of the gods.

FALSE: people were buried with all of their possessions

Ancient Egyptian ideas about the afterlife seem to offer an exception to the rule that ‘you can’t take it with you’. Tutankhamun’s relatively small – but hugely famous – tomb in the Valley of the Kings was found stuffed full of objects, many of them covered with gold. But this was not stockpiling bullion just for the sake of it. Every item found in the tomb was there for a very specific reason: to help transform the king into, and maintain his status as, a god in the afterlife.

Tutankhamun was provided with more than 140 linen loincloths – essentially, ancient underwear – not because this set was expected to last him for eternity but because these items had likely touched his skin. Considered a semi-divine being while alive, items with which he had come into contact were thought to be sacred. The same special treatment was given to linen cloth that had wrapped statues of gods during temple rituals.

Tutankhamun’s tomb even contained a plain reed staff, richly embellished with gold and bearing an inscription saying the king had “cut with his own hand” this reed from a thicket.

• Read more | Howard Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun

Bearing this in mind, a royal tomb had more in common with caches of temple equipment used in rituals. They earned their place in the tomb not because the king planned to use them in the afterlife, but because they were considered too religiously charged to discard. The king would, after all, be a full-blown deity in the beyond, so presumably wouldn’t need material trappings such as undergarments and a walking stick.

What’s more, these objects may have had magical value, and could have been buried to prevent personal items of the king from falling into impure hands. Presumably the much larger tombs of longer-lived kings contained even more stuff – items they had used during their lives rather than things they’d need to navigate their way through eternity.

There’s another factor we need to bear in mind when considering the treasures of Tutankhamun’s tomb: it was far from the norm. Egyptian royalty was exceptional in almost every way and even the richest courtiers did not receive the same treatment in burial as kings. Although they might try to emulate their ruler, a noble person’s own burial provisions were much more restricted. Most ancient Egyptian tombs contain very few, if any, grave goods. The vast majority of the population were likely buried with a few simple items.

TRUE: Victorians used mummified remains as paint, and mummified cats were used as fertiliser

The Egyptian dead have been used for purposes they could never have imagined – and would probably have feared. Indeed, many modern treatments of mummified remains make tomb robbery seem the preferred option.

For a mummy left untouched for thousands of years, a museum was in some ways a stable destination – if not one where it could be guaranteed to stay intact. Scientific examination of mummies has included dissection, in some cases resulting in various parts of one body being placed into hundreds of sample jars across several institutions. Other desecrations have been rather more commercial.

• Listen | Joyce Tyldesley answers your questions on the mysteries surrounding religion in ancient Egypt

Pulverised Egyptian mummified bodies and bandages were used to produce a deep earthy brown pigment favoured by artists of the 19th century. ‘Mummy brown’ paint was commonly found in artist’s studios and was being produced as recently as 1964. Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones was so horrified upon discovering the origin of the pigment that he gave one tube of the paint a respectful burial in his garden.

Linen wrappings – presumably the least discoloured ones – were reportedly shredded and pulped for use in paper mills in the US in the mid-19th century. Around the same time, mummified bodies were burned as fuel for the railway system in Egypt. This practice was observed by Mark Twain, who reported that, because of the lack of trees in Egypt and the high price of coal, mummified bodies were “purchased by the ton or by the graveyard” to power locomotives.

Mummified humans were not the only victims. The remains of an estimated 180,000 mummified cats from near the site of Beni Hassan in Middle Egypt were shipped to the port of Liverpool in early 1890. Used as ballast on both the SS Pharos and SS Thebes, 19.5 tonnes of unwrapped felines (the linen bandages had been put to other uses) were sold to farmers as fertiliser, with a few being donated to a Liverpool museum.

In fact, the word ‘mummy’ is derived from mūmiyā, an Arabic/Persian term for a black mineral substance, often referred to as bitumen, which occurred naturally in Iran and was thought to have curative properties. This was likened to a black, resinous goo applied to the bodies of the ancient Egyptian dead – or at least to the bodies of those who could afford to have such an expensive concoction poured over them. Later recipes for the substance may have contained traces of bitumen, showing a certain circularity in the association.

Most alarmingly, the confusion between curative mineral and mummification resin led to the active acquisition and atomisation of ancient Egyptian corpses for consumption as medicine in the Middle Ages and later. Mumia was even sold as a treatment for sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis. Suffice to say that medicated cannibalism never really did anyone any good.

TRUE: ancient Egyptians placed curses on tombs

Almost all Egyptian tombs had two parts: a sealed section for the burial itself and an open area that was intended for the eternal commemoration of the deceased. There was a constant tension between keeping the burial secure and seeking attention from visitors.

In a culture that placed importance on the transformation of the deceased by material means, it was to be expected that the wealthy would invest considerable resources in the burial of their dead. It therefore comes as no surprise that the practice of robbery in elite cemeteries is known from the earliest periods.

One kind of deterrent was architectural – but another was metaphysical. Although commonly depicted in Gothic fiction and Hollywood films, actual evidence for curses placed on tombs is rather limited. Some texts concern the ritual integrity of the outer (open) part of the tomb and are concerned with preventing the reuse of valuable architectural elements – presumably because that would compromise the monumental presence of the deceased in the space where they hoped to be remembered.

• Read more | How many people are supposed to have died from the curse of Tutankhamun's tomb?

However, a small number of tombs from around 2500 BC are inscribed with explicit threats to would-be stone robbers. A typical example warns: “As for anyone who will do anything evil against this [tomb]… the crocodile is against them in the water, the snake is against them on the land.”

These threats also appear on other monuments, warning anyone who might erase the name on a statue or stela (commemorative slab) that their action will have consequences. The belief seems to have been that retribution would come from a higher, divine power, not from the dead themselves. And curses do not generally relate to harm of the mummified body.

In various funerary texts, allusions are made to the dead prevailing over unspecified enemies. A particularly evocative example in a version of chapter 172 of the Book of the Dead asserts of the deceased: “Your fingers are picks of gold and their nails are knives of flint in the faces of those who would harm you.”

This rather chilling threat echoes examples of magic cast by the living against one’s enemies – threats that were largely uttered aloud. Curses against tomb robbers may have also been spoken and therefore only rarely entered the written record.

FALSE: traps were built into ancient Egyptian tombs to deter robbers

Egyptian tombs were intended to stand for eternity. The houses of the living were made from mud-bricks and, many of them standing on or near the Nile floodplain, frequently needed to be repaired or rebuilt. Elite tombs, however, were mostly cut from rock or built from stone, set back into or towards the cliffs. Such a tomb was commonly referred to as a ‘house of eternity’.

A small number of examples featured actively defensive architecture. Blind passages were constructed inside some pyramids to confuse would-be robbers. From the earliest tomb structures, built around 3000 BC, portcullis slabs were lowered after the burial, part of the mechanics of sealing the tomb.

• Read more | Guidebook to the ancient Egyptian afterlife

Deep shafts in many tombs in the Valley of the Kings served both a magical purpose – to connect the tomb to the Underworld – and acted as a practical way of protecting the inner parts of the tomb from the periodic flash floods that afflicted the valley.

None of these devices was designed to be triggered by intruders, despite what Hollywood might suggest. Rather, they were simply ways of keeping a burial safe. Tomb robbers were, however, clever – and may have acquired their knowledge of such security features by being members of the communities responsible for creating and closing burials. Many thieves simply tunnelled around obstructions, and expended great effort breaking into heavy stone sarcophagi.

Security precautions seem to have primarily consisted of policing burial grounds to deter robbers. This perhaps explains why an area such as the Valley of the Kings was considered an ideal royal cemetery: it was contained, and relatively easy to monitor.

The punishment for defiling the burial of a god-king was, unsurprisingly, severe: death by impalement on a wooden stake, the body subsequently burned to destroy any chance of an afterlife. Fear of not living on meant cremation was anathema to the ancient Egyptians.

TRUE: the plots of the most famous mummy movies date back to ancient times

Modern films about ancient mummies may seem to have been products of their times, betraying deep-seated colonial anxiety about the repercussions of disturbing ancient tombs and claiming the spoils in the name of science. Undoubtedly, the image of the animated mummy as a shuffling, unclean menace seems to date from the Victorian era – yet the inspiration for one of the major tropes in mummy fiction is much older.

The plot of the 1932 Universal Studios film The Mummy centres on the reanimation of an ancient Egyptian named Imhotep, played by Boris Karloff. The best known historical Imhotep was widely revered as a sage and healer and as the mastermind behind the first pyramid, built in the 26th century BC.

In the Karloff movie, Imhotep is brought back to life by an archaeologist – hungry for knowledge and ignorant of the potential consequences – who reads from an ancient scroll. This crucial plot point does in fact derive from an ancient source. A folk tale written down around two millennia ago, known today as the Tale of Setne Khaemwaset, was inspired by a real ancient person, Prince Khaemwaset, the fourth son of Ramesses II (the Great, reigned 1279–1213 BC).

• Read more | 5 of the most powerful pharaohs to rule ancient Egypt

The historical prince is known to have been something of an archaeologist himself, touring ancient monuments – including the pyramids – and adding identifying inscriptions. In the folk tale, his thirst for knowledge leads him in search of the Book of Thoth, which he finds buried in the tomb of an ancient prince. Possessing the book gets Khaemwaset into trouble, bringing the owner of the tomb (and the scroll) back to life.

More recent retellings – including the later 1959 Hammer film and the 1999 blockbuster, both also called The Mummy – hinge on the same plot point: reading forbidden knowledge from the Book of the Dead. Few viewers realise that the story is some 2,000 years old.

Campbell Price is curator of Egypt and Sudan at Manchester Museum, University of Manchester. His books include Totally Chaotic History: Ancient Egypt Gets Unruly! (Walker, April 2024), and Brief Histories: Ancient Egypt (Seven Dials, October 2024)

This article was first published in the November 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine

“Presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues and gold – everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment – an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by – I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, ‘Can you see anything?’ it was all I could do to get out the words ‘Yes, wonderful things’.”

The next day the doorway was unblocked and an electric light installed. Carter and Carnarvon found themselves standing in the antechamber, an untidy room packed with everything that an Egyptian king could possibly need for an enjoyable afterlife. But Carter’s attention was fixed on the northern wall. Here, blocked, plastered, sealed and guarded by two large statues of Tutankhamun, was the doorway to the burial chamber. Once again, the sealed doorway had been breached by a robber’s hole.

Carter and Carnarvon knew that the anteroom must be emptied before the wall could be dismantled, but that would take many weeks of hard work. Desperate to know if the tomb was intact they returned that night and crawled through the robber’s hole. To their delight they found that the burial chamber was almost completely filled by a golden shrine, its seals still intact. Swearing each other to secrecy they crawled back and sealed the hole.

The burial chamber would be officially opened on 17 February 1923 in the presence of an invited audience of Egyptologists and government officials.

The public was fascinated by the activities in the Valley of the Kings. Those who could travel to Egypt did, though there was little for them to see. Those who could not visit in person relied upon the newspapers that carried almost daily reports from the Valley. Soon the small, sleepy town of Luxor was swamped with visitors and the expedition found itself living in near siege conditions. As a means of recovering some of the money that he had spent looking for Tutankhamun, Carnarvon decided to sign an exclusive deal with The Times. This incensed the reporters from the other newspapers, and did nothing to stop their demands for information. Denied official access to the tomb, they now printed sensational gossip in place of facts.

In late February 1923 the excavation was closed to allow the exhausted excavators a brief holiday. While Carter stayed in Luxor, Carnarvon and his daughter, Lady Evelyn Herbert, sailed south to spend a few days at Aswan. During this trip Carnarvon was bitten on the cheek by a mosquito. Then, soon after his return to Luxor, he accidentally sliced the scab off the bite while shaving. He soon started to feel unwell. With his condition worsening he travelled to Cairo for expert medical attention. But it was too late. Blood poisoning set in and pneumonia followed. A younger, fitter man may have been able to throw off the infection, but the 57-year-old Carnarvon was still suffering the effects of a severe motor accident in 1901 that had left him weak and vulnerable to chest infections. He died on 5 April 1923.

Here was a dramatic Tutankhamun story that everyone could report. News of the death travelled fast, stimulating intense debate. For the first time the general public, made sensitive to the plight of the defenceless dead by the First World War and the major flu epidemic that followed it, started to question the archaeologists’ easy assumption that the dead were a legitimate target. Would Carter be happy if someone attempted to dig up the recently deceased Queen Victoria, asked one indignant Times correspondent?

For some observers this was far more than a question of ethics. They believed that the excavation had put the lives of the archaeologists at risk. Anyone with a taste for popular fiction understood just how dangerous the ancient Egyptians could be. Victorian literature was filled with accounts of vengeful mummies who strangled, poisoned and possessed their victims, with one of the most sensational works, Lost in a Pyramid, or, The Mummy’s Curse, being penned by Louisa May Alcott, more famous today as the author of Little Women. Already, before Carnarvon’s death, novelist Marie Corelli had warned against tampering with the unknown: “I cannot but think that some risks are run by breaking into the last rest of a king of Egypt whose tomb is specifically and solemnly guarded, and robbing him of his possessions”.

Britain, in 1923, was a land looking for comfort. The old religious certainties, already weakened by the scientific advances of the Victorian age, had been further eroded by the horrors of the First World War. Now the country was experiencing a wave of interest in all aspects of the occult as seances and ouija boards offered a glimmer of hope that the bereaved could contact those who had “passed over”. Theosophy, an occult attempt to reach spiritual enlightenment partially inspired by the spiritual forces or “elementals” of the ancient Egyptians, was all the rage

False reports started to emerge from the tomb. Many people believed that an engraved plaque – “Death comes on swift wings to he who disturbs the tomb of the pharaoh” – had been discovered and suppressed by Carter. It hadn’t; the plaque quite simply did not exist. Carter himself had little patience with the curse theorists. He made his feelings plain in an interview with the New York Times: “It is rather too much to ask me to believe that some spook is keeping watch and ward over the dead Pharaoh, ready to wreak vengeance on anyone who goes too near”. Inevitably, his vehement denial sparked rumours that Carter was collaborating with “the authorities” to hide the evidence of a dangerous curse.

Testing the curse theory

How could the long-dead Tutankhamun have killed anyone? The idea that his burial might have been booby trapped with poison was a popular one. It is theoretically possible that the sealed chamber could have housed a cocktail of microscopic spores and, indeed, a black fungus was found growing inside the tomb. However the Egyptian scientists simply did not have the knowledge necessary to set such a sophisticated trap. Could Carnarvon have been killed accidentally? Maybe he had been infected by poisonous bat-droppings? Or had been poisoned by a mosquito which had drunk embalming fluids?

It was left to the more practically minded to point out that the sealed tomb could not have housed a bat colony, while the lack of water in the Valley of the Kings meant that there were no mosquitoes. This injection of common sense did little to halt speculation. Many “experts”, most notably Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of two popular tales of ancient Egypt, preferred the idea of an intangible curse implemented by “elementals”.

In 1934 Egyptologist Herbert Winlock attempted to disprove the curse theory by studying the statistics. He found that only six of the 26 people present at the opening of the tomb had died within a decade. Time was to prove that, of those who had first visited the burial chamber, only Carnarvon had died suddenly at the relatively young age of 57. Howard Carter died aged 64, some 16 years after Carnarvon, while Lady Evelyn, who had been present on the first, clandestine, visit to the burial chamber, did not die until 1980.

Professor Douglas Derry who, it might be argued, committed the gravest desecration by autopsying and dismembering the king’s body, reached the grand age of 87. In 2002 Mark Nelson of Monash University, Melbourne, confirmed Winlock’s results, finding that the 25 people most likely to have been exposed to the curse died at an average age of 70. To set these figures into context, life expectancy at birth for men born in 1900 was 47 years, while those who lived to the age of 65 might be expected to reach the age of 76.

Writer and broadcaster Dr Joyce Tyldesley is honorary research fellow at the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at Liverpool University, and teaches Egyptology at Manchester University

This article was first published in the November 2005 issue of BBC History Magazine

We don’t have any record of Tutankhamun’s birth, and we don’t even know who his parents were (a subject that is hotly disputed by Egyptologists). This is therefore an opportunity for some archaeological detective work. His mummy shows us that Tutankhamun died when he was about 18 years old. Wine-jars stored in his tomb are labelled with the years of his reign. As the oldest of these jars is dated to “year 10”, we can deduce that Tutankhamun inherited his throne as an eight-year-old boy in c1336 BC. He was almost certainly born at Amarna, the new royal city built by his predecessor and probable father, the “Heretic Pharaoh” Akhenaten.

Akhenaten had been a highly unusual king. He had turned his back on the traditional gods and goddesses, choosing instead to worship just one god: a sun-disk known as “the Aten”. Following Akhenaten’s death, Tutankhamun (and his advisors) reversed the religious experiment, restored the traditional pantheon, and repaired the state temples which had been allowed to fall into disrepair. Tutankhamun seemed set for a glorious reign: but then he suddenly died.

How did Tutankhamun die?

It is not known exactly how Tutankhamun died. His body suffered damage at various stages – immediately before or immediately after death; during the curiously hasty mummification process; within the tomb (where a chemical reaction caused it to ignite in its coffin); and while being extracted from the coffin.

Obvious damage to Tutankhamun’s chest and legs suggests an accident – perhaps a chariot or hunting accident, or death on the battlefield. Others have suggested that Tutankhamun may have been murdered

• Read more | How did Tutankhamun die?

Tutankhamun: life, death and legacy

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Do we know what Tutankhamun looked like?

We have many images of Tutankhamun, ranging from colossal stone statues to small golden figures. These show him as a fit, handsome and vigorous young man confidently driving a chariot or hunting in the desert. However, these are not portraits: they are royal propaganda which presents all of Egypt’s kings in the same idealised way. We cannot assume that Tutankhamun actually looked like his official images.

Tutankhamun’s mummy shows that he had a damaged foot. Some experts believe that this is proof the living Tutankhamun had mobility problems: others believe that the damage to his foot was caused by the application of tight bandages during his mummification. Because of this difference of opinion, modern reconstructions of Tutankhamun vary. Some show him leaning on a walking stick, others as an athletic young man.

Why is King Tut so famous?

Tutankhamun’s is the only near-intact royal tomb to be discovered in the Valley of the Kings. The mummified king was found lying in a nest of golden coffins, surrounded by more than 5,000 precious grave goods. Nothing like this had ever been seen before. Instantly, Tutankhamun became an ancient world celebrity.

Where is Tutankhamun now?

Tutankhamun’s mummy still lies in his original tomb in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt.

Read on for eight fascinating facts about the young pharaoh…

His original name was not Tutankhamun

Tutankhamun was originally named Tutankhaten. This name, which literally means “living image of the Aten”, reflected the fact that Tutankhaten’s parents worshipped a sun god known as “the Aten”. After a few years on the throne the young king changed his religion, abandoned the Aten, and started to worship the god Amun [who was revered as king of the gods]. This caused him to change his name to Tutankhamun, or “living image of Amun”.

• In pictures | The glittering treasures of Tutankhamun

Tutankhamun was not, however, the name by which his people knew him. Like all of Egypt’s kings, Tutankhamun actually had five royal names. These took the form of short sentences that outlined the focus of his reign. Officially, he was:

(1) Horus Name: Image of births
(2) Two Ladies Name: Beautiful of laws who quells the Two Lands/who makes content all the gods
(3) Golden Horus Name: Elevated of appearances for the god/his father Re
(4) Prenomen: Nebkheperure
(5) Nomen: Tutankhamun

His last two names, known today as the prenomen and the nomen, are the names that we see written in cartouches (oval loops) on his monuments. We know him by his nomen, Tutankhamun. His people, however, knew him by his prenomen, Nebkheperure, which literally translates as “[the sun god] Re is the lord of manifestations”.

Tutankhamun has the smallest royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings

The first pharaohs built highly conspicuous pyramids in Egypt’s northern deserts. However, by the time of the New Kingdom (1550–1069 BC), this fashion had ended. Most kings were now buried in relative secrecy in rock-cut tombs tunnelled into the Valley of the Kings on the west bank of the Nile at the southern city of Thebes (modern-day Luxor). These tombs had inconspicuous doors, but were both spacious and well decorated inside.

Cemeteries carried their own potent magic, and dead kings were thought to have powerful spirits that might benefit others. Burial amongst his ancestors would have helped Tutankhamun to achieve his own afterlife. It therefore seems likely that Tutankhamun would have wished to be buried in a splendid tomb in either the main valley or in an offshoot, the Western Valley, where his grandfather, Amenhotep III, was buried. But, whatever he may have intended, we know that Tutankhamun was actually buried in a cramped tomb cut into the floor of the main valley.

It may be that Tutankhamun simply died too young to complete his ambitious plans. His own tomb was unfinished, and so he had to be buried in a substitute, non-royal tomb. However, this seems unlikely, as other kings managed to build suitable tombs in just two or three years. It seems far more likely that Tutankhamun’s successor, Ay, a king who inherited the throne as an elderly man, made a strategic swap. Just four years after Tutankhamun’s death, Ay himself was buried in a splendid tomb in the Western Valley, close by the tomb of Amenhotep III.

The unexpectedly small size of Tutankhamun’s tomb has led to recent suggestions that there may be parts as yet undiscovered. Currently Egyptologists are investigating the possibility that there may be secret chambers hidden behind the plastered wall of his burial chamber.

He was buried in a second-hand coffin

Tutankhamun’s mummy lay within a nest of three golden coffins, which fitted snugly one inside another like a set of Russian dolls. During the funeral ritual the combined coffins were placed in a rectangular stone sarcophagus. Unfortunately, the outer coffin proved to be slightly too big, and its toes peeked over the edge of the sarcophagus, preventing the lid from closing. Carpenters were quickly summoned and the coffin’s toes were cut away. More than 3,000 years later Howard Carter would find the fragments lying in the base of the sarcophagus.

All three of Tutankhamun’s coffins were similar in style: they were “anthropoid”, or human-form coffins, shaped to look like the god of the dead, Osiris, lying on his back and holding the crook and flail in his crossed arms. But the middle coffin had a slightly different style and its face did not look like the faces on other two coffins. Nor did it look like the face on Tutankhamun’s death mask.  Many Egyptologists now believe that this middle coffin – along with some of Tutankhamun’s other grave goods – was originally made for the mysterious “Neferneferuaten” – an enigmatic individual whose name is recorded in inscriptions and who may have been Tutankhamun’s immediate predecessor. We do not know what happened to Neferneferuaten, nor how Tutankhamun came to be buried in his or her coffin.

Tutankhamun loved to hunt ostriches

Tutankhamun’s ostrich-feather fan was discovered lying in his burial chamber, close by the king’s body. Originally the fan consisted of a long golden handle topped by a semi-circular ‘palm’ that supported 42 alternating brown and white feathers. These feathers crumbled away long ago, but their story is preserved in writing on the fan handle. This tells us that that the feathers were taken from ostriches captured by the king himself while hunting in the desert to the east of Heliopolis (near modern-day Cairo). The embossed scene on the palm shows, on one face, Tutankhamun setting off in his chariot to hunt ostrich, and on the reverse, the king returning in triumph with his prey.

Ostriches were important birds in ancient Egypt, and their feathers and eggs were prized as luxury items. Hunting ostriches was a royal sport that allowed the king to demonstrate his control over nature. It was a substitute for battle and, as such, was a dangerous occupation. We can see that Tutankhamun’s body was badly damaged before he was mummified. Is the placement of his ostrich fan so close to his body significant? Is this, perhaps, someone’s way of telling us that the young king died following a fatal accident on an ostrich hunt?

Tutankhamun's heart is missing

The ancient Egyptians believed that it was possible to live again after death, but thought that this could only be achieved if the body was preserved in a lifelike condition. This led them to develop the science of artificial mummification.

Essentially, mummification involved desiccating the body in natron salt, then wrapping it in many layers of bandages to preserve a lifelike shape. The body’s internal organs were removed at the start of the mummification process and preserved separately. The brain, its function then unknown, was simply thrown away – the heart, rather than the brain, was regarded as the organ of reasoning. As such, the heart would be required in the afterlife. It was therefore left in place and, if accidentally removed, immediately sewn back; though not always in its original location.

Tutankhamun, however, has no heart. Instead he was provided with an amuletic scarab inscribed with a funerary spell. This may have happened simply because the undertakers were careless, but it could also be a sign that Tutankhamun died far from home. By the time his body arrived at the undertakers’ workshop, his heart may have been too decayed to be preserved.

One of Tutankhamun’s favourite possessions was an iron dagger

Howard Carter discovered two daggers carefully wrapped inside Tutankhamun’s mummy bandages. One dagger had a gold blade, while the other had a blade made of iron. Each dagger had a gold sheath. Of the two, the iron dagger was by far the more valuable because, during Tutankhamun’s lifetime (he reigned from c1336–27 BC), iron, or “iron from the sky” as it was known, was a rare and precious metal. As its name suggests, Egypt’s “iron from the sky” was almost entirely obtained from meteorites.

Several other iron objects were found in Tutankhamun’s tomb: 16 miniature blades, a tiny headrest and an amulet. The fact that these pieces are not particularly well made, combined with their small size, suggest that they were made by local craftsmen who struggled to work the rare meteorite iron.

The dagger blade, however, is very different. Beautifully crafted, it is likely to have been imported to Egypt from a region accustomed to working iron. The royal diplomatic archives tell us that, several years before Tutankhamun’s birth, king Tushratta of Mitanni sent a metal dagger to Egypt as a gift to his new son-in-law, Amenhotep III. Given the rarity of good quality iron artefacts at this time, it is possible that Amenhotep’s dagger was inherited by his grandson, Tutankhamun, and eventually buried with him. Given its prominent location within the mummy bandages, it may even be that Tushratta’s dagger was used in Tutankhamun’s mummification ritual.

• On the podcast |  Tarek El Awady discusses the remarkable artefacts buried with Egypt’s iconic boy king

His trumpets have entertained an audience of more than 150 million

Tutankhamun’s grave goods included a small collection of musical instruments: one pair of ivory clappers, two sistra (rattles) and two trumpets, one made from silver with a gold mouthpiece and the other made of bronze partially overlaid by gold. This would not have made a very satisfactory orchestra, and it seems that music was not high on Tutankhamun’s list of priorities for his afterlife. In fact, his trumpets should more properly be classified as military equipment, while his clappers and sistra are likely to have had a ritual purpose.

On 16 April 1939, the two trumpets were played in a BBC live radio broadcast from Cairo Museum, which reached an estimated 150 million listeners. Bandsman James Tappern used a modern mouthpiece, which caused damage to the silver trumpet. In 1941 the bronze trumpet was played again, this time without a modern mouthpiece.

Some, influenced by the myth of “Tutankhamun’s curse”, have claimed that the trumpets have the power to summon war. They have suggested that it was the 1939 broadcast which caused Britain to enter the Second World War.

Tutankhamun was buried in the world’s most expensive coffin

Two of Tutankhamun’s three coffins were made of wood, covered with gold sheet. But, to Howard Carter’s great surprise, the innermost coffin was made from thick sheets of beaten gold. This coffin measures 1.88m in length, and weighs 110.4kg. If it were to be scrapped today it would be worth well over £1m. But as Tutankhamun’s final resting place it is, of course, priceless.

Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley teaches a suite of online courses in Egyptology at the University of Manchester. She is the author of Tutankhamun: Pharaoh, Icon, Enigma (Headline, 2022)

This article was first published by HistoryExtra in 2016 and reviewed and updated by the author in 2022

In the final episode of our series on the boy king, Ellie Cawthorne speaks to Professor Elizabeth Frood and Dr Heba Abd el Gawad to uncover how the way we think about Tutankhamun today exposes thorny issues about the treatment of Egyptian heritage, and whether it can even distort our view of Egyptian history.

In episode 6 of our series on Tutankhamun, Ellie Cawthorne and Dr Chris Naunton explore what the ancient Egyptians believed happened after death, delve into ancient mummification processes and follow Tutankhamun’s mummy on his somewhat unexpected adventures in the afterlife.