Sunday 22 January 2012

Today's Featured Blue Plaque Howard Carter, Tutankhamun  


CARTER, Howard (1874-1939 
 Egyptologist and discoverer of the tomb of Tutankhamun lived here19 Collingham Gardens, South Kensington, SW5 0HL Take a walk down a London Street and see where he lived.




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Wikipedia

Howard Carter was born in London, England, the son of Samuel Carter, an artist, and Martha Joyce (Sands) Carter.
In 1891, at the age of 17, a talented young artist, he was sent out to Egypt by the Egypt Exploration Fund to assist Percy Newberry in the excavation and recording of Middle Kingdom tombs at Beni Hasan. Even at that young age he was innovative in improving the methods of copying tomb decoration. In 1892 he worked under the tutelage of Flinders Petrie for one season at Amarna, the capital founded by the pharaoh Akhenaten. From 1894 to 1899 he then worked with Edouard Naville at Deir el Bahri, where he recorded the wall reliefs in the temple of Hatshepsut.
In 1899, Carter was appointed the first chief inspector of the Egyptian Antiquities Service (EAS). He supervised a number of excavations at Thebes (now known as Luxor) before he was transferred in 1904 to the Inspectorate of Lower Egypt. Carter resigned from the Antiquities Service in 1904 as a result of an affray between Egyptian site guards and a group of French tourists, in which he sided with the Egyptian personnel.