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Howard Carter

Howard Carter was born in 1874 in Norfolk, England. Through his father, Samuel Carter, he was introduced to the world of art. His father was a painter himself and expected his son to follow his footsteps and become a painter. Howard Cater had the artistic skill but was not interested in making art his career. He had other interests, and one of them was archaeology.

In 1891, at the age of 17, Howard Carter went to Alexandria, Egypt to work for the Egyptian Exploration Fund as a tracer. Carter was a hard worker full of energy and skill. Carter became an archaeologist at a later job while working with Flinders Petrie, an excellent archaeologist at the time. Carter was appointed Principle Artist to the Egyptian Exploration Fund for the excavations of Deir el Babri, the burial place of Queen Hatshepsut. Through this job Carter improved his drawing skills and techniques of excavating and exploration.
Carter was offered the job of inspector general of Monuments for Upper Egypt at the age of 25 in 1899. In 1905 Carter resigned from the Antiquity Service because he was assigned to work in Delta town of Tanta, a place where there was very little historical findings.
In 1908 Carter returned to archaeology when he was partner with the Fifth Lord Carnarvon by Gaston Maspero. Together they made a great team and were successful. Although Carter's partnership with Maspero seemed to be going well, Carter was determined to find the tomb of King Tutankhamen.

In search of King Tutankhamen Howard Carter found less artifacts, Maspero saw this and gave Carter a deadline in 1922. After the deadline he did not want to invest into the search of King Tut's tomb.

Under this pressure Carter did not give up and continued to search with more enthusiasm. This was when Carter discovered the staircase on November 1, 1922. By November 26 the staircase was unearthed, and the entrance was open, the discovery of King Tutankhamen was now official.
Howard Carter couldn't keep the artifacts himself, instead he had to turn them to the Egyptian museum in Cairo when King Tut's corpse was studied. After the discovery of King Tut, Carter retired from archaeology. Instead he became a collector of Egyptian antiques. In 1939 Howard Carter returned to England and died of natural causes at the age of 65.

http://www.tqnyc.org/NYC00112/carter.htm

I was watching a TV quiz last night and one of the questions was; Who was the 'painter' who discovered the tomb of King Tut?