Discovered on November 4, 1922, Tutankhamun’s tomb contained many fantastic artifacts. However, despite laws stating that the artifacts in the tomb were Egyptian, some of the pharaoh’s jewels disappeared shortly after they were discovered. Some of these decorations may have been removed by Howard Carter himself, who oversaw the excavation.

What disappeared from Tutankhamun’s tomb

In a study presented at a conference in Luxor the other day, Marc Gabold, a professor of Egyptology at the Université Paul-Valery Montpellier in France, identified some of these lost jewels and where they might be. He studied photographs of finds taken from Tutankhamun’s tomb by photographer Harry Burton in the 1920s and compared them with objects found in museums and auctions.

• Habold’s research allowed him to truly rebuild it. A wide collar found on Tutankhamun’s chest. Now it consists of several parts and some parts are missing. According to Gabold, they were acquired by Carter and are now at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, and some of the necklace beads seem to be reordered into the necklace, now owned by an anonymous person. He tried to sell it at Christie’s auction in 2015 but was unsuccessful.
• Another example of lost jewelry Carter found from Tutankhamun’s tomb consists of: beads from a hood. Gabold, these beads are now St. He discovered that it was also hung on a necklace in the St. Louis Art Museum.
• Third is this necklace now in the British Museum in London.
• Another piece of jewelery allegedly stolen from Carter’s grave was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, but was returned to Egypt in 2011. IT pottery wide collar.

Items removed from Tutankhamun’s collar are now at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri / Photo Nelson-Atkins Museum

Why might Carter have taken the jewels?

Such accusations against Carter are not the first. In 1934, British Egyptologist Sir Alan Gardiner criticized the archaeologist for stealing from Tutankhamun’s tomb. He apparently gave Gardiner an amulet with an inscription on it, claiming it was not from the tomb. However, he did his own research and found that the artifact matched other amulets from Tut’s tomb and was made from the same mold. Gardiner invited Rex Engelbach, an Egyptologist and engineer, to make the description. He showed: amulet “undoubtedly stolen from Tutankhamun’s tomb”. Alan Gardiner did not tell anyone where he got the valuables, so no charges were brought against Carter.

It is unknown why Carter stole the works. Documents at the Nelson-Atkins Museum show that the archaeologist gave the collar pieces now in the museum to a surgeon named Berkeley Moynihan. Aidan Dodson, Professor of Egyptology at the University of Bristol suspects financial gain is his motivation. It is possible that Carter found some pieces unimportant and wanted to give them to his friends. In some cases, Carter was able to take them to England for repair or analysis, but died before he could complete the job.

He had a “fairly free and easygoing” demeanor befitting a man who started his career in the 1890s, when the ethos of archaeologists was quite different.
Dodson told Live Science in an email.

Now it is unclear what will happen to all these artifacts and whether they will return to Egypt.