EGYPTOMANIA!

November marks the 100-year anniversary of the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. Luke Honey looks at the enduring allure of ancient Egypt...

- Luke Honey

On the afternoon of the 26th November 1922, in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, four excited Egyptologists stood before a dusty, ancient doorway blocked with stone and marked with mysterious hieroglyphs: the seals of the boy Pharaoh, Tutankhamun, and Anubis, the jackal god of the dead. At the head of the party was the British archaeologist Howard Carter, accompanied by Lord Carnarvon (his sponsor and the owner of Highclere Castle), Carnarvon's daughter, Lady Evelyn Herbert, and Carter's assistant, Mr Arthur Callender. Taking a chisel, Howard Carter carefully prised out a hole at the top of the entrance, lit a candle and peered into the chamber. Carter described the discovery in his book The Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamen (1924): ...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... 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".

So the legend of Tutankhamun was born. Over the next 10 years, Carter's team removed 5,000 precious artefacts from the four chambers of the Pharaoh's tomb. "Tutmania' became a craze almost instantaneously, with Egyptian motifs appearing on everything from architecture, furniture and porcelain tea sets to women's fashion, jewellery, scent bottles and powder compacts. From Louise Brooks' sleek dark bob to Huntley & Palmers' Tutankhamun biscuit tin, from the King Tut Fox Trot to Palmolive Cleopatra soap: you name it, it all went Tut. If the 1920s was a decade of crazes (ping-pong, mahjong, crosswords, pogo sticks, miniature golf and yo-yos), then the Tutankhamun craze was the craze to outlast them all.