Photo by Bjørn Christian Tørrissen
Tutankhamun was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who was the last of his royal family to rule during the end of the 18th dynasty. He ruled from about 1334 to 1325 BC in the conventional chronology during the New Kingdom of Egyptian history. His father was the heretical king Akhenaten and his mother was his father’s sister, identified through DNA testing. The 1922 discovery by Howard Carter of Tutankhamun’s nearly intact tomb, funded by Lord Carnarvon, received worldwide press coverage. With more than 5,000 artefacts, it sparked a renewed public interest in ancient Egypt, for which Tutankhamun’s mask, now in the Egyptian Museum, remains a popular symbol.
Speaker Clive Barham Carter studied Egyptology at Cambridge (as the only undergraduate). He was awarded a scholarship with the Egypt Exploration Society to dig at Saqqara under Prof Walter Emery. Later, he joined the staff at Charterhouse as a history teacher, a position he accepted with some trepidation, having been a pupil there. He managed to maintain his interest in Ancient Egypt by lecturing at the City Literary Institute and by sneaking Egypt into his General Studies classes. In retirement, he has returned to his enthusiasm for Ancient Egypt and now lectures at the Guildford Institute and for u3as, local groups and museums. He is an accredited lecturer with the Arts Society.
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