On November 4, 1922, the British archaeologist and Egyptologist Howard Carter finally found the tomb of Tutankhamun, after years of fruitless excavations. A century later, comics Tutankhamun, the quest of Howard Cartervery documented, reconstructs the epic of this incredible discovery.
At that time, finding another tomb in the Valley of the Kings seemed unlikely. Last residence of the pharaohs, this region of Egypt, excavated from top to bottom in the 19th and early 20th centuries, had already revealed many treasures. In 1907, Lord Carnarvon, a wealthy aristocrat keen on archaeology, hires Howard Carter to help him dig in the Valley of the Kings: the aristocrat is convinced that the place has not revealed all its secrets..
From 1917, Carter concentrated his research on the tomb of Tutankhamun. It will take him five years to achieve his goals. Years of effort recreated in the docu-comic Tutankhamun, the quest of Howard Carter. “The bias of this comic is not to tell the treasure, which everyone knows, like the funerary mask. On the other hand, what was interesting, it was to relate how Howard Carter, the Egyptologist, and Lord Carnarvon, his patron, discovered after years of excavations the tomb of Tutankhamun”. explains the Tarnais Pierre-Roland Saint-Dizier, scriptwriter of the book.
The book, published by Editions Petit à Petit, is aimed at both the youngest (from 10 years old) and adults. He alternates comics and documentary texts. “We worked with a Toulouse Egyptologist, Amandine Marshall, who knows the subject very well. ‘Howard Carter’, noted Pierre-Roland Saint-Dizier.
Tutankhamun’s tomb is one of the most visited sites in the Valley of the Kings. And yet, he was not a great pharaoh. Died before his 20th birthday, his reign lasted only ten years. Finally, he will become famous 3,200 years after his death, thanks to the discovery of his tomb and its treasures.
Tutankhamun, the quest of Howard Carter of Pierre-Roland Saint-Dizier (screenplay), Amandine Marshall (documentation) and Solène Rousseau (drawings), 80 pages, €17.90, Petit à Petit editions.