Tutankhamun (Archive Episode)

Summary

In Our Time – "Tutankhamun" (Archive Episode Summary)

Broadcast Date: September 18, 2025
Host: Melvyn Bragg
Guests:

• Christina Riggs, Professor of the History of Visual Culture, Durham University, Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford
• John Taylor, Curator, Department of Egypt and Sudan, British Museum
• Elizabeth Froude, Associate Professor of Egyptology, Director of the Griffith Institute, Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford

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Overview

This episode explores the story and legacy of Tutankhamun, focusing on the discovery of his tomb in 1922, its cultural and archaeological significance, the historical context of his reign, and the subsequent global fascination and myths associated with the "boy king." Melvyn Bragg and his guests unravel both the remarkable richness of the tomb's contents and the shifting narratives around Tutankhamun and Egyptology itself.

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The Valley of the Kings: Setting and Significance

Description and Selection (02:56 – 04:18)

• Location: Valley of the Kings, West Bank of Nile, near Luxor (ancient Thebes)
• Landscape: A “ravine cut out over millennia by seasonal rains” honeycombed with tombs, ranging from high, hidden early graves to later, more accessible ones.
  • Elizabeth Froude: "Any number of deep tombs...highly decorated...many meters into the limestone." (03:46)
• Purpose: Chosen in the New Kingdom (ca. 1540–1075 BCE) for its concealment—an attempt to protect burials from tomb robbers by separating burial places from mortuary temples.
• Not just kings: Also elite officials and royal family members were buried there.

History of Plunder and Excavation (05:04–07:15)

• Plunder began early; systematic excavation started in the 19th century.
• By early 20th century, most tombs were at least partly plundered; exploration became more archaeological, less treasure-hunting.
• Theodore Davis, an American philanthropist, intensively excavated (1902–1914): “He gets the concession...and he boasts of finding a tomb a year. Of course, most...already plundered.” (06:30–06:53)
• By WWI, conventional wisdom was that the valley was exhausted—paving the way for Carter’s more meticulous work.

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The Discovery of Tutankhamun’s Tomb

Howard Carter and His Team (07:15 – 11:26)

• Carter worked on behalf of Lord Carnarvon, employing many Egyptian archaeologists and workers—whose contributions have often been marginalized.
  • Christina Riggs: "All sorts of knowledge production in the Middle East, including archaeology, relied very much on local knowledge." (09:53)
  • On Egyptian foreman Ahmed Girdegar: “These men are never referred to as archaeologists...a term reserved for the white kind of European and American people who do the work.” (09:53)
• Extensive field experience but little formal training was the norm for both British and Egyptian archaeologists at this time.

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Discovery Process and Significance (11:42 – 19:59)

The Find (11:42 – 13:55)

• Previous tomb discoveries had been plundered; Carter wanted a complete, untouched royal burial.
• The first glimpse (November 1922): Through a small hole, by candlelight, Carter and team saw beds, chairs, and burial paraphernalia stacked “in a jumble,” many covered in gold.
  • John Taylor: “He puts his arm through...gradually the objects begin to emerge...” (12:46)
• Unprecedented completeness and richness—“the gold mask...solid gold inlaid with lapis lazuli and glass.” (15:23)

Artistic and Scholarly Revelation (15:09 – 19:59)

• The tomb's contents represented two main groups:
  • Funerary/magical objects enabling the king’s journey to the afterlife
  • Everyday and luxury items: furniture, food, clothes, jewelry
• The craftsmanship: “Extraordinarily advanced...the sophistication in the making and in the placing of these things is one of the reasons why it’s such a compelling collection.” (17:26)
• Over 5,000 objects; only about 30% have been fully studied—overwhelming in both scale and complexity. There's continued scholarly reticence, sometimes embarrassment, linked to the popular "glitzy" image of Egyptomania.
  • Elizabeth Froude: “A bit of embarrassment...the material is so complex.” (18:29)

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The Birth of Global Egyptomania

Media Frenzy and Egyptian Response (22:00 – 26:54)

• News was carefully managed, with The Times securing exclusive rights.
• First photographs by Harry Burton released in January 1923; these images became iconic worldwide.
  • Christina Riggs: “Photography was absolutely crucial to the work of archaeology. Without the camera, archaeology wouldn't have developed as it did.” (24:10)
• Tension arose since British outlets monopolized the story during a period of Egypt’s nationalist awakening after partial independence from Britain.
  • “It’s humiliating for Egyptian press...to be told that they’ve got to wait for the British newspaper to give them a story that’s taking place in their own backyard.” (26:01)

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Tutankhamun Himself: Life, Dynasty, and Mysteries

Lineage and Dynasty (26:58 – 34:53)

• Last of Egypt’s powerful 18th Dynasty, which at its peak extended from the Euphrates to Nubia.
  • His wealth partly stemmed from Nubian gold resources.
• Likely son of Akhenaten (the religious reformer/“heretic pharaoh”), precise parentage unresolved.
• Little is definitively known about his mother or wife, although Ankhesenamun (possibly his half-sister) features in both his life and tomb art.

The “Boy King” and Myths of Frailty (29:27 – 30:58)

• Notion of "frailty" (club foot, bone infection) may be overplayed:
  • Elizabeth Froude: “As a disabled woman with bone infection, I dare anyone to call me weak and feeble. So already there’s an ableist narrative...” (29:54)
• While he ascended the throne as a child, by mid-teens would be regarded as a mature adult in his own culture.
  • "By the age of 15 or 16...we should ascribe some potential agency to that." (30:59)

Name and Religious Restoration (31:46 – 34:53)

• Born Tutankhaten, reflecting the Aten cult led by Akhenaten.
• Changed to Tutankhamun as the court and society pivoted back to the worship of Amun, restoring traditional religious practices and temples.
  • “A very active policy of restoration and renewal." (34:08)
• Some evidence, including art, suggests he may have led military campaigns or symbolic hunts (the ostrich hunt fan).

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Cultural Legacy in Egypt and the World

Immediate and Long-term Symbolism (37:46 – 43:56)

• Tutankhamun: “the best known but least important” Egyptian king—his tomb’s fame far outweighs his brief reign or political impact.
• Nonetheless, he became a nationalist symbol almost immediately after discovery, reflecting Egypt's struggle for independence and pride in its ancient past.
  • John Taylor: “The Egyptian nationalist movement...saw Tutankhamun as a political figurehead.” (39:06)
  • Christina Riggs: "Different people want a bit of him, including Howard Carter...and the Egyptian nationalists...as an anti-imperial movement." (39:51)
• Tutankhamun was deployed as artistic, revolutionary and diplomatic icon in Egypt, reappearing in street art after the 2011 revolution and used in global exhibitions.
  • Elizabeth Froude: “There are lots of images relating to his possible mother Nefertiti as well...these are still really important icons of revolution.” (43:56)

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Continuing Mysteries and Scholarship

Why Was the Tomb Intact? (45:48 – 48:05)

• Unlike most other tombs, Tutankhamun’s likely survived undisturbed because successive construction buried it under debris, possibly also due to his association with religious "heresy."
  • John Taylor: “I wonder if it’s to do with how he’s regarded by posterity...as tainted by the heresy.” (47:36)

Ongoing Research and Challenges (44:27 – 54:39)

• Many objects await detailed study.
• The removal of excavation records (archives, negatives, diaries) to the West has shaped who studies and interprets the tomb.
  • Christina Riggs: “Excavation archives like the Tutankhamun archive left Egypt...research...mainly by Westerners.” (54:05)
• Recent relocation of the collection to the Grand Egyptian Museum offers new opportunities for conservation and scholarship.

The Impact of the Tomb’s Photography (55:05 – 55:52)

• Harry Burton’s images remain central to public perception, often casting sacred ritual objects as “art” in the Western sense, which shifts their context and meaning.
  • “A photograph is not a fact...depends on how it’s used and how it’s taken.” (55:52)

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Notable Quotes & Insights

• On the tomb’s wonder:

  “He puts his arm through...gradually the objects beyond begin to emerge...first of all, three large beds...covered with gold and inlaid with precious materials.” — John Taylor (12:46)

• On Egyptology’s oversight:

  “The Egyptian contribution is overlooked, not just for the tomb of Tutankhamun, but in all archaeology in Egypt.” — Christina Riggs (11:26)

• On scholarly attitudes:

  “A bit of embarrassment...the material is so complex.” — Elizabeth Froude (18:29)

• On Egyptian reaction:

  “It’s humiliating for Egyptian press, the Egyptian, you know, middle classes...to be told they’ve got to wait for the British newspaper...” — Christina Riggs (26:01)

• On Tutankhamun’s legend:

  "There’s a certain kind of...you can project different things onto Tutankhamun quite easily." — Christina Riggs (39:51)

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Key Timestamps

• Valley of the Kings described: 02:56–04:18
• Plunder and early excavation history: 05:04–07:15
• Howard Carter’s background and team: 07:15–11:26
• Discovery of the tomb: 11:42–13:55
• The treasures and significance: 14:09–19:59
• Media and global reaction: 22:00–26:54
• Discussion of Tutankhamun's dynasty: 26:58–34:53
• Cultural symbolism and legacy: 37:46–43:56
• Why the tomb survived: 45:48–48:05
• Archives and continuing research: 54:05–54:39
• Impact of photography: 55:05–55:52

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Final Thoughts

This episode immerses listeners in both the complexities and wonders of Tutankhamun’s discovery and afterlife in world culture. It highlights ongoing debates over scholarly approaches, the role of Egyptian expertise, repatriation of cultural heritage, and the enduring power of Egypt’s ancient past to resonate with living political and cultural movements. The discussion also underscores the need for continued study—both of what lay in the tomb and of how the world continues to visualize, mythologize, and sometimes misappropriate the “boy king.”

Transcript

[Melvin Bragg]

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[Simon Tillotson]

Hello, I'm Simon, producer of In Our Time. Following Melvin's announcement that he stepped down from In Our time after almost 27 years, we're taking the time to celebrate his outstanding, outstanding work with some favourite episodes from our archive, and thanks to everyone who's been in touch. In due course, we'll return with new programs and a new presenter, but till then, here's Melvin.

[Christina Riggs]

Hello.

[Melvin Bragg]

In 1922, archaeologists found Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, unopened for more than 3,000 years. As their leader Howard Carter reported, it contained wonderful things and is still seen as one of the, if not the most spectacular archaeological discovery of all time. It sparked a craze for the newly named King Tut with countless myths, and it inspired people around the world to learn about ancient Egypt, drawn by the golden death mask of the young king. With me to discuss Tutankhamun, Christina Riggs, professor of the History of Visual Culture at Durham University and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford John Taylor, Curator at the Department of Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum and Elizabeth Froude, Associate professor of Egyptology Director of the Griffith Institute and and fellow of Saint Cross at the University of Oxford. Liz Froude, where's the Valley of the Kings and what does it look like?

[Elizabeth Froude]

Well, we're in the south of Egypt, so the modern city of Luxor, the ancient city of Thebes, and on the west bank of the Nile, just across from the ancient city with its temples high in the cliffs, sort of nestled in the cliffs is a ravine cut out over millennia by seasonal rains. And we have this deep valley and two branches that is the valley of the K. And it is the burial place of New Kingdom kings, the kings that ruled Egypt from about 1540 BCE to 1075. Most of the kings of this period are buried in this necropolis. But not just kings. Also members of the royal family and very high ranking officials can also be buried in these limestone escarpments.

[Melvin Bragg]

What does it look like now?

[Elizabeth Froude]

We have honeycombed into the limestone, so sort of tunneled into the limestone, any number of deep tombs that lead that highly decorated. Some of them go many meters into the limestone from the sort of the entrance area of the valley. There's sort of the later tombs. And the earlier tombs are quite high, quite high up in the escarpment, very, very hidden, very well concealed. But the later tombs start to come down the valley a bit more.

[Melvin Bragg]

Aside from the fact that it was near Thebes, just across the river from Thebes, why did they choose this particular place? What were its advantages?

[Elizabeth Froude]

That's a very good question, and I'm not sure we have all the answers to that question, but it's quite a radical change at the beginning of the New Kingdom. The burial places of the kings are separated from the places of cult practice, of where the memorials of the kings were maintained. Those are done in temples down on the cultivation, and then the tombs are hidden away. And there might be something to be said for the fear of tomb robbery. So trying to keep the tombs, their burial chambers separate and secret and safe to some extent, to try to protect them a little bit more. But that may only be a partial answer to the question, when did the.

[Melvin Bragg]

Plunder on quite a big scale start for these tombs? Because there is a history of plunder. When did it start? How intense was it?

[Elizabeth Froude]

Very intense. From probably the late 19th century up until the discovery of the tomb of Tirun Khamun. But there are records of excavations happening there in the late 1700s. So already it's known as a place of burial, of burial of kings. And then over time, especially in the, in the mid, the mid 19th century onwards, you have this increased intensification of excavation and treasure hunting as well.

[Melvin Bragg]

Is it possible to distinguish between excavation and plunder?

[Christina Riggs]

The.

[Melvin Bragg]

Because what I was interested in is what sort of state was it in in terms of what tombs were intact, what was left and what had been destroyed and so on. By the time we get to the period we're going to talk about.

[Elizabeth Froude]

Well, I think sort of from the mid 19th century onwards, you have something more like an archaeological excavation process. So the concession is held. Howard Carter himself is involved in the conservation of some of the tombs. So there is an archaeolog academic practice. The great adventurer and explorer Giovanni Balzoni was probably one of the first to map topographically and geologically the Valley of the Kings in the 19th century. So there is this academic recording and interest. By this point, a lot of the tombs have been discovered. Some of them were open to tourists. And then the really intense excavation work begins under Theodore Montgomery Davis. He gets the concession to the Valley of the Kings in 1902. He's an American, American philanthropist. 1902, he gets the concession and he holds a concession till 1914. And he. I think he boasts of finding a tomb a year. Of course, most of these tombs are. Are already plundered, but he is. By 1914, he thinks the. The Valley has been exhausted. He thinks there's nothing left to find. And so he hands. Hands a concession on.

[Melvin Bragg]

Thank you, Christina Riggs. What was Howard Carter doing in the Valley of the Kings in 1922?

[Christina Riggs]

In 1922, Howard Carter had been working for several years as the archaeologist attached to Lord Carnarvon's efforts in the valley. So the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, George Molyneux, had been. Had become like many wealthy people like Theodore Davis before him, had gone to Egypt for tourism, for his health, had become interested in collecting Egyptian antiquities, which he did quite a lot of, formed a very fine collection with Howard Carter's help and also in excavating. So when it became possible in 1914 to get the permission, the Egyptian antiquities authorities gave him the permission to work in the Valley of the Kings. And so he shifts his focus there with Howard Carter leading the excavation work, which of course is being carried out by experienced Egyptian archaeologists who are part of this effort, and by a great number of local people. Children, for instance, employed as basket boys, so called, although there were girls as well. By 1922, they've had several fairly short and not very productive periods of working in the Valley of the Kings. Carter is kind of going back over ground to dig, dig down further, dig closer to the bedrock, as it were. And it's a bit of frustration because it's not yielding very much of interest, but they keep trying. And there are various stories about whether this was going to be the last go this. This effort in the. In the autumn of 1922, Carter had only just arrived from in Egypt. He'd spent some time. In October 1922, he'd spent some time in Cairo, been to see his dentist, done some banking, and done his usual rounds of the antiquities dealers, because Carter made a nice living for himself on the side, and also money for Carnarvon to help fund the digging by buying and selling antiquities. And so he'd only really got back to Luxo, I think, on November 1, just before November 1, to reopen the.

[Melvin Bragg]

Let me get this right. He'd been there for a few years before then, in the Valley of the Kings?

[Christina Riggs]

Yes. Well, he'd been living at luxor for about 20 years by that point.

[Melvin Bragg]

Yes.

[Christina Riggs]

Yeah.

[Melvin Bragg]

You mentioned the. And you want to point out very clearly that Egyptian archaeologists took a strong part in this. And you think that they've been underappreciated so far and that the Western, as it were, if I can call them Western archaeologists, thought that they weren't quite up to the job and didn't quite understand it. Could you develop that?

[Christina Riggs]

I would say that all sorts of knowledge production in the Middle east, including archaeology, relied very much on local knowledge. Carter himself acknowledges in the books that he publishes about the tomb of Tirankhamun, he acknowledges in a somewhat patronizing tone the Egyptian foreman, or ruaza, who helped, who were led by Ahmed Girdegar. Girdegar was a very experienced foreman, that is archaeologist by that point. But these men are never referred to as archaeologists. Archaeologists is a term that's reserved always for the white kind of European and American people who do the work.

[Melvin Bragg]

Were they, in effect, were they archaeologists?

[Christina Riggs]

They're doing the work of archaeology, yes. And they're kind of.

[Melvin Bragg]

Sorry, I'm just trying to get this down. Pinpoint this. Would Carter think that the chap that you've mentioned had been trained as an archaeologist? He himself. Carter would say, I. Carter, I'm trained as an archaeologist, but this chap isn't. Where are we?

[Christina Riggs]

Well, what's your training at this point? Carter has no formal education. He's trained in the field as Ahmed Garriga. The chief foreman under Carter was also trained in the field. And it would have been the Egyptian foreman who then is responsible for supervising the other people. Working under him because you needed other people doing the physical labor, but also it took an experienced eye. And there were three other Egyptian men who are named by Howard Carter as part of the work who would have been working alongside him throughout the clearance of the tomb.

[Melvin Bragg]

But on the whole, this is a gap in the history of the discovery of the discoverers.

[Christina Riggs]

Absolutely. The Egyptian contribution is overlooked, not just for the tomb of Tutankhamun, but in all archaeology in Egypt.

[Melvin Bragg]

Well, I hope we can come back to that, because it's fascinating. John Taylor, how would this excavation compare with others before?

[John Taylor]

Well, there had been a lot of excavations in the Valley of the Kings for many years previously. Howard Carter himself had been involved with quite a few of those. But what had happened on previous excavations is that when the tomb of a king was discovered, it had always been robbed in ancient times or cleared of any remaining objects that had been left behind by robbers. So although small fragments of the burial equipment of kings had been found, no one had ever seen the complete assemblage, totally untouched. And this was the. The goal that Carter was aiming for. And of course, when he saw the objects in the first chamber for the first time, he, as he says, he couldn't believe what he was seeing. And he struggled to. To recognize the. These strange objects that he was seeing in the candlelight that he put through the open doorway.

[Melvin Bragg]

What were those objects through the candlelight, through the hole in the wall? The first chamber. First of four chambers, wasn't it?

[John Taylor]

The first of four chambers. And Carter and his team are standing in the entrance passageway, which is quite a small space, about 6 foot wide by 10 foot high. And of course, it's very dark. They're underground. They're looking through a hole that Carter has made through the blocking at the end of this passageway. This is a rubble blocking. And he makes a hole and he puts, first of all, he tests the air inside the tomb to see if there's any poisonous gases in there. Having decided that it's okay from that point of view, he then puts his arm through the hole holding a candle. And then gradually the objects beyond begin to emerge. And what they see are, first of all, against the far wall of the chamber, three large beds or couches in the form of animals. These are covered with gold and inlaid with precious materials. And on top and underneath these objects, there are piled up chairs and stools and boxes of food and a whole paraphernalia of objects put there for the king's afterlife.

[Melvin Bragg]

The overall, this is intact. And one of the things that Distinguishes is that you have an intact tomb. Can you give us an impression of the range of artistic and funerary stuff there was in there?

[John Taylor]

The objects in the tomb fall into two main groups. First of all, there are the items which are there too magically transfer the king from the earthly life to the afterlife. So this applies to the coffins in which his mummy is placed, various shrines placed around the coffins, magical statuettes of gods and goddesses. And also we have objects which belong to the king in his daily life. So we've got chairs, beds, stools, boxes full of clothing, we've got food offerings, we've got jars of wine, a lot of jewelry as well. Some of the jewelry is actually on the king's body, others is stored in boxes inside the tomb. And we have things like shabti figures. These are magical statuettes representing the king which act as substitutes for him in the next world so that he doesn't have to carry out any onerous labor when he's in the realm of the gods.

[Melvin Bragg]

What about the great artistic and priceless treasures that are there? I think we're talking about the golden mask, we're talking about golden coffin, and on and on it goes.

[John Taylor]

Yes, that was one of the great revelations of the tomb that we have for the first time these wonderful artistic masterpieces which have been robbed in all the other tombs in the valley. We have the, the gold mask over the head of the mummy, which is itself solid gold inlaid with lapis lazuli and glass. We have the inner coffin which again is made entirely out of gold. And the level of craftsmanship of these objects is of the highest. Extremely fine workmanship. Other objects, including the famous throne which has, it's covered in gold inlaid. Scene on the back rest showing the king and queen.

[Melvin Bragg]

Thank you very much. Liz. How did these objects and others, if you want to continue with the listing, how did they fit in with the current idea of the splendor of the Egyptian dynasty?

[Elizabeth Froude]

I think they fulfilled an expectation of what the new kingdom kings would have had as part of their panoply. I think it all seem to fit in with our ideas of a cosmopolitan, outward looking imperial dynasty that we are seeing the tail end of with Tutankhamun. So some of the objects have designs on them. There's a dagger that has motifs that look very similar to the sorts of things that you get in the ancient Mediterranean kind of context. So there's an international style to some of this material and the objects fulfill the expectations around that. So this imperialist dynasty with this access to phenomenal wealth. Glass, which is a new material of the 18th Dynasty, a new import that the Egyptians start to make during the 18th Dynasty. So there's these new materials, new refined treatments for the body, such as oils and things as well. So it all fits in with this idea of the luxurious elite life.

[Melvin Bragg]

But as importantly, or perhaps more importantly, it shows an extraordinary, from what I've read and from what you said, an extraordinary level of advanced craftsmanship and ingenuity and intelligence in the way things are put together in the tomb. The sophistication in the making and in the placing of these things is one of the reasons, I suppose, why it's such a compelling collection.

[Elizabeth Froude]

Absolutely. And I think we as Egyptologists haven't done justice to. To that material yet. I think something like just over 30% of the objects in the tomb have been fully studied and analysed.

[Melvin Bragg]

Why is it taking so long?

[Elizabeth Froude]

There's a lot. So we're talking something like well over 5,000 individual objects, and I think it's overwhelmed the subject a bit. But I also think that amongst Egyptologists, certainly in the 1940s and 50s, until work was reinspired by Alan Gardner, there was a bit of a distaste for the material. A bit of a.

[Melvin Bragg]

In what way?

[Elizabeth Froude]

Well, it was almost a bit too sumptuous, too over the top, a bit too glitzy. It becomes associated with Egyptomania, with the curse stories, that kind of the mythologies that surround it. And I think, and I certainly think it's still true of Egyptologists. I don't know whether my colleagues here would agree with me that there's a certain embarrassment or a bit of a. Not distaste might be too strong, but a bit of embarrassment and a bit of just sort of leering away from it a little bit. I think now it's partly because the material is so complex. So if you're going to study this material from a material science perspective, you need to have collaborations with experts in different types of materials analysis and conservation. So it's a big task to work on this material properly, but we also haven't taken up the challenge of that.

[Melvin Bragg]

Would you go along with that, Christina?

[Christina Riggs]

I would, and for all the reasons that Liz has said. Also, it's material that's unparalleled and was at the time, and not maybe entirely unparalleled, but in being a complete assemblage, more or less, and the sorts of things that are represented there, it's very unusual. It doesn't give you any easy answers.

[Elizabeth Froude]

It doesn't quite fit any. We have no parallels for it. So there's points of comparanda are really difficult to find. It's really difficult to know how to manage certain object classes in the group because there's nothing like it.

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[Melvin Bragg]

Christina Riggs how did the discovery news reach outside Egypt to the rest of the world, and what sort of what was the initial reaction?

[Christina Riggs]

So the first thing Cairo needed to do was inform Lord Carnarvon, who was back in each in England. And he also then needed to inform the responsible inspector, as they were called, the inspector of antiquities for the region, who was another Englishman named Rex Engelbach. And so they wait. They kind of close things off and wait a couple of weeks until Carnarvon can get out from Egypt to be present at the opening of the first Chamber. And when they realize what they've got and what a find it is, then the plans for press coverage are the next thing in mind. The London Times has a correspondent on the spot who is given from the start, who is given privileged access.

[Melvin Bragg]

Is he given privileged access or exclusive access?

[Christina Riggs]

He's given exclusive access in the end, so he happens to be on the spot, so he gets first dibs. But then the Times, once Carnarvon arrives, well, actually, while Carnarvon is on the boat back from Egypt, on the way to England, the Illustrated London News, which was the most popular weekly illustrated paper of the time, sends a reporter, sends its illustrator, its long serving illustrator, to Marseille to meet Carnarvon's bird at Marseille and get the kind of first interview, what was it like? And do an artist's impression of what the first chamber and the moment of discovery, of entering the first chamber looked like. And then once Carnarvon's back in England, sort of over Christmas, he's approached by the Times, the London Times offering him an exclusive contract, which in exchange, I think he gets £5,000 and then 75% of the profits from selling on the stories and the photographs, which is important. And Carnarvon signs up to that, and that gives the Times exclusive access. And they also, Carter and Carnarvon have a close relationship with the illustrators London News to publish as well.

[Melvin Bragg]

Let's just touch on the photographs, which are very important and they became extraordinarily important. Can you just briefly tell us about those photographs?

[Christina Riggs]

Photography was absolutely crucial to the work of archaeology. Without the camera, archaeology wouldn't have developed as it did. And an archaeologist like Howard Carter was a very adept photographer. But he says in his notes, during those first kind of couple of weeks, when he's trying to get his head around what he's found, he tries to take photographs of the sealed doorway, the first sealed doorway, and they're rubbish, basically, they're no good. And so when he's in Cairo waiting for Carnarvon to arrive and ordering supplies for the work to come, he sees a photographer whom he knew, an Englishman named Harry Burton, who worked nearby. He worked for the Metropolitan Museum of Art excavations nearby in Luxor, on the west bank of Luxor. And here he asked Burton, well, would you take the photographs? And Burton says, sure, I'll have a go. Burton's got a very good reputation as a photographer. And they get then the agreement of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who are hoping that they'll get. They're going to get a share of the finds from the tomb out of this. And so it's Harry Burton who arrives finally in December of 1922 to take the first photographs. By that time, importantly, the tomb has been rigged for electricity, so he's got electric light to work by. And those photographs then are. Are contracted to the Time, so he has to make the prints in Egypt and send them by post, which. So there's always a couple of weeks delay. But the Times are trailing this already to their readers that they're going to have the first photographs. Those photographs are published on 30 January 1923. Four photographs, incredibly influential and picked up around the world.

[Melvin Bragg]

And so this was the start of what Carter and Carnarvon expected. They would. They would be plunderers. They could take the stuff back. And they had begun to take this up. The photography was there. The Egyptian archaeologists were learning about what was happening in that country from the London Times. Is that more or less right?

[Christina Riggs]

Something like that. The Egyptian public as well as rival newspapers are very upset that the Times has this exclusive contract and that the find has been monetized because they, of course, want a piece of the action as well, without having to pay the Times to get the stories and to get the photographs for the Egyptian press at a time when Egypt has just earned partial independence from Britain. Because Egypt up until that time had been a protectorate of Britain. It's part of the British Empire. And so we're seeing a sort of slow and painful unraveling of empire taking place in Egypt. And so it's humiliating for Egyptian press, the Egyptian, you know, middle classes who are following this closely, Egyptian politicians, to. To be told that they've got to wait for the British newspaper to give them a story that's taking place in their own backyard. It's deeply problematic.

[Melvin Bragg]

John Taylor, who then was he? Tutankhamun.

[John Taylor]

Tutankhamun was the last member of one of the most powerful ruling families of ancient Egypt, the 18th Dynasty. And this was a line of kings who had been in control of Egypt for about 200 years by the time Tutankhamun was born. It was the line which brought Egypt to the peak of her prosperity. Some of these kings built up a foreign empire. They set up very, very flourishing trading links and diplomatic contacts with other countries.

[Melvin Bragg]

How far did the empire reach?

[John Taylor]

In the north, it stretched as far as the Euphrates, and in the south down to about the fourth cataract of the Nile in Nubia. So modern Sudan and the Sudanese possessions were very important for Egypt because gold mines were situated there. And this gave Egypt a monopoly on gold. And this was their main bargain encounter with many of the other rulers in the Near East. So Egypt was very rich in Tutankhamun's time, and it was cosmopolitan as well, because there was a lot of interaction, cultural interaction now, with these other peoples. So this was the, the inheritance of Tutankhamun. Who he was in the sense of who his parents were is still a debated issue. Most Egyptologists would say that his father was Akhenaten. And Akhenaten was one of the most controversial rulers ever to occupy the Egyptian throne. Because under his rule, a major revolution took place, a revolution in the sense of a religious alteration. Akhenaten tried to promulgate the worship of one single deity, the Aten, the solar disk, which in fact was very unpopular with the rest of the people.

[Melvin Bragg]

So he tried to radically, radically change the whole thing in 20 years. And it turned out to be not enough because they went back to the other thing. But his mother, they don't know much about his mother. There are whispers about Nefertiti, but again, around the table, there doesn't seem to be any way of anywhere even. So we have this boy king who's a boy king. We know he's a king. We know he inherited when he was six, we know he died when he was 19. There's much has been made of his frailty. Where does that come from? What's the evidence for that?

[Elizabeth Froude]

There's not much evidence for that. But this image of Tutankhamun as a frail, disabled boy king. Club foot. Club foot. That came out of one of the more recent paleopathological kind of examinations of his body. So his body has been subject to autopsy after autopsy since its discovery. And every time there's a new autopsy or a new examination of those autopsy results, different ideas about his body emerge. You know, there was an idea because of damage to the back of the skull, that he had been murdered. That was then. The damage to the back of the skull was then discovered to be probably just the result of the mummification process. So there's been all sorts of reworkings of his body and reimaginings of his body. And one of these imaginings is that that he had a club foot and bone infection and was therefore disabled. And I have read many times of this weak and feeble child king hobbling across the sand. And as a disabled woman with bone infection, I dare anyone to call me Weak and feeble. So already there's an ableist narrative that Egyptologists buy into and perpetuate in the literature.

[Melvin Bragg]

So you don't know much about it.

[Elizabeth Froude]

The fact of the matter is we know that he came to the throne as a child. We know he died when he was about between 18, 17 to 19 years old. We can be sure about his age. Everything else we don't know. But the age thing is interesting.

[Melvin Bragg]

Why?

[Elizabeth Froude]

Because there is this. There is another myth in the literature that he was this boy king. And of course, yes, he was a child when he came to the throne, but by the time he's 15 or 16, he's a mature adult. And I think we tend to lose sight of that because we have this idea of what childhood should be, when maturity should be in our own culture and our own ideas around this. And I think we lose sight of the fact that probably by the age of 15 or 16, so halfway through his time on the throne, he is a mature adult, and we should ascribe some potential agency to that.

[Melvin Bragg]

Christina. Christina Riggs, what can we make out of the name? He wasn't Tutankhamun at first, was it? He linked in with who might have been his father. So what's going on there?

[Christina Riggs]

That's right. He's born as Tutankhaten. So as John was explaining, the previous king, possibly his father, Akhenaten, had changed the religion. And the change in name reflects that, because the idea is that they're worshipping the disk, the round kind of disk of the sun known as the Aten Tut Akh Aten means something like the living image of the Aten after he becomes king, not before, but and not at the moment he becomes king, but after he becomes king, he changes his name to Tutank Amun. And those last two syllables are important because Amun is the traditional God who was the focus of worship of this dynasty of kings and whose cult was based at Thebes. So he becomes the living image of Amun, this kind of creator God, supreme.

[Melvin Bragg]

God of Thebes, who was one before the radical.

[Christina Riggs]

Exactly. He returns to a traditional religion, mostly.

[Melvin Bragg]

Sorry, Buddhist advisors, or how did he get to go backwards?

[Elizabeth Froude]

It started probably before Tutankhamun. So between the death of Akhenaten and and the accession of Tutankhamun, you have one, possibly two rulers. It's all a bit shadowy and very controversial, but one of those rulers, or both of them, had already started their return to traditional religion. So that that was well underway by the time Tutankhamun comes to the throne. There's good evidence of that. And then Tutankhamun and his advisors, the people around him pick that up and take it further.

[Melvin Bragg]

Do we know what he did, any things that he did in these years of his reign, these 12 years of his reign? Krisena, again, there are books of something approaching despair.

[Christina Riggs]

No, there's evidence. There's the restoration stele. So this is an inscription that had been discovered I think in 1905, a big stone stele where the king. It's a typical kind of royal type of monument. So there's something formulaic about it. But, but referring to deeds that Tutankhamun says he's done to restore and repair the temples of the kings. I'm looking at Liz because she knows much more about this than I do. But that gives us some evidence of. And also scenes that survive in temples of Tutankhamen, sort of in the temple of Amun.

[Elizabeth Froude]

There's a lot of restoration work at Karnak, so. Or that that sort of heart of the, of the traditional religion, which is the temple of Amun at Karnak. Tutankhamun or the group around him are commissioning extensive restorations, especially in the so called public areas, the display areas of the temple. And the stele that Christina mentioned is set up, I think three different versions of that or three versions of that stele are set up in the temple that talk about the restoration process. And you know, right from the fourth cataract where there are temples, between the third and fourth cataract, there's restoration work happening there. The statues of Amun are being restored. So there's a very active policy of restoration and renewal.

[Christina Riggs]

And then the change of his name and of his queen's name must go along with one of those programs. And some of the objects that are found in the tomb actually have both names. So things that had already been made and created for him in his birth name as Tutankhaten, like the so called throne, the gold kind of ceremonial chair or also then are repaired with bits of the gold work kind of replaced to show the new name as well.

[John Taylor]

It's also still debated, but there is a possibility that he may have led military campaigns as well. On an object from his tomb, a painted box he's shown in his chariot charging into masses of defeated enemies. This is very much a kind of example of visual rhetoric in Egyptian art. The king is the great superhero. But there have also been found carvings from temple walls showing Tutankhamun again in battle. These carvings are a little bit more Interesting because they contain very idiosyncratic details which might suggest that they record historical events. So it could be that he did actually lead armies on the battlefield.

[Melvin Bragg]

And killed an ostrich.

[John Taylor]

And killed an ostrich at least once. We know this because one of the objects from the tomb is a chariot. Well, there's a fan, and on the handle of the fan is an inscription saying that the feathers which originally were put into the fan came from an ostrich, which the king himself hunted in the desert near the city of Heliopolis. So that's actually probably the only thing that we know for certain that Tutankhamun did in person, as opposed to acting the formal role of the pharaoh.

[Melvin Bragg]

I'm interested in the switch to this monotheism, really, which lasted about 15 years of his reign. Didn't kick in till 5 years and then the next 50. Do we know why that stopped? Did Tutankhamun have anything to do with that being reversed and going back to the old religions, the animal heads and so on and so forth?

[Elizabeth Froude]

I think he's. I think they, they realize they, the elites, the court, the, the whole system, they. There's a general realization that what Akhenaten had tried to instigate can't hold. It's not popular. It's not being, it's not being promulgated in the, in the, the city that, that Akhenaten himself created. You know, that we don't. We. We still see the traditional gods being worshipped by the people of the city. So, so it didn't take hold. And I think the moment Akhenaten dies, there is all the people who take the throne and the group around that individual decide that the best thing for stability and for prosperity is to return to the traditional gods.

[Melvin Bragg]

Christina Riggs, it's sometimes said that Tutankhamun is the best known, but the least important of Egyptian kings. What do you make of that?

[Christina Riggs]

Well, I suppose you can guess in a way or deduce from the sort of things we've been saying. He doesn't reign for very long. He's part of larger movements that are taking place. So in that sense, maybe historically he didn't have that much individual influence and he wasn't very well known before the discovery of his tomb. His name was known, but not much else about him was, other than that Steler that we were, we were mentioning. And so in a way, yes. And yet he had a huge impact on Egyptology's perception of itself as a field and on public perception of Egyptology and has continued throughout the 20th century in different waves of interest that have happened to foster an interest in ancient Egypt for better or worse.

[Melvin Bragg]

When the discovery coincided, as you said earlier, with Egypt breaking away from the British Empire and he became an emblematic figure, didn't he was very important and remains. So they keep, Egyptians keep coming back to him as this man who was there at a time when they were a great, great dynasty, independent, rich beyond measure, powerful. Did that obtain right away?

[John Taylor]

It did obtain very soon after the discovery of the tomb because the Egyptian nationalist movement at that time and they saw Tutankhamun as a kind of almost political figurehead, I suppose you could say, to refer to the, the great past and the great traditions of Egypt. And so yes, almost as soon as he became known to the public, he was associated with these kind of political undercurrents.

[Melvin Bragg]

And he's been used right, left and center. Do you think he's been abused right, left and center as well, Christina?

[Christina Riggs]

By whom?

[Melvin Bragg]

Well, people commenting on him, people using him for their different causes. Well, by the way that exhibitions are put together, for instance, that sort of thing.

[Christina Riggs]

Of course, I think in a way because there's so little known about him and there's a certain, I mean there's a certain kind of. You can project different things on to Tutankhamun quite easily. That's the, that's the case from the start. And, and different, different people want to want a bit of him, including Howard Carter who makes a career off the back of Tutankhamun and off a particular story that he tells, a particular Tutankhamen that he creates for himself. And then as John was mentioning, there's already the Egyptian nationalists in the nationalist movement, which is an anti imperial movement. Let's be very clear about this. This is a movement against the British Empire and its long standing military and political interference Egypt. And they have long already had an idea of looking to ancient Egypt as an independent Egypt before Ottoman rule, before British rule. And so Tutankhamun becomes a symbol then in the 1920s. And this is a story that the Egyptian middle classes are following very closely as well as the middle classes of Britain and France and America.

[Melvin Bragg]

He must have had a mother and he might have had a wife. Do we know much about them?

[Elizabeth Froude]

We don't. And that's quite interesting because the royal women of this dynasty are very, very visible and royal mothers are very visible. Kings mothers are very visible. So for his mother not to be would point to her probably dying before he takes the throne. But there are other powerful Women around. So there's his wife, Ankasenamun, who is one of Akhenaten's daughters, probably marries him to secure her own position, if nothing else. And there's also a witness. And this is a great story. So in the 1990s, a French team were excavating in Saqqara, a high escarpment in Saqqara, and they came across this very large tomb. And it's larger than any other, any of the tombs in the immediate vicinity, which are broadly contemporaneous. And it's a woman's tomb. So for a woman to have her own tomb is unusual. And in the first chamber of the tomb there is a relief carving of her seated with Tutankhamun on her lap and sort of a gesture of affection between them, a stylized gesture of affection between them. And he is named there as Tutankhamun. So he has already taken that new name and the tomb is finished some point after he dies. So she's around for the whole time. We don't know much else about her. But to have such a big tomb, she must have been a powerful individual, if not influential. So there are these, there is an entourage around him which seems to include, I'd like to think, quite powerful women.

[Melvin Bragg]

To return to Egypt. As we're coming towards the end of the program, Christina Riggs, one of the consequences been for that discovery been for people in Egypt.

[Christina Riggs]

Well, we've talked about its popularity at the time and it inspired playwrights, novelists, fit into kind of artistic movements within Egypt later on in the 20th century. I think other kings like Ramses the Great become more and more important sort of as symbols, connections of the ancient past. But Tutankhamun has been on postage style stamps, for instance. And the objects from the tomb of Tutankhamun started to be loaned to other countries beginning in 1961 as part of a program of sort of sharing. Egypt being in a position during the Nasser era. So when it is finally post Suez, firmly independent, it becomes an opportunity for Egypt to share as a sort of cultural diplomacy, to share its ancient culture with the world and to invite Western culture as well into Egypt. And we see that going on today still with the tours continuing. So of course it's not had one meaning, but different meanings for the west and in Egypt over time.

[Elizabeth Froude]

I always think about the post Revolution, post 2011 Revolution street art in Tahrir Square and in the immediate surroundings in Cairo. And there is a Tutankhamun. There's a transformation of the Tutankhamun mask which is part of this post revolution graffiti. And there are lots of images relating to his possible mother Nefertiti as well. Nefertiti with a gas mask. So these are still really important icons of revolution, although they take on different meanings.

[Melvin Bragg]

It's almost a century. John Taylor, is there a great deal more new to be learned from the tomb, do you think, or from the object in the tomb?

[John Taylor]

Obviously I think there is more to be learned, yes, certainly, as Liz was saying, many of the objects have not yet been subjected to a full academic study and publication. So there is plenty of scope there to analyze the materials that they're made of, to compare them with other items from other sources. I think also there is a strong possibility of learning more about Tutankhamun from other sites in Egypt. So Liz mentioned the, the tomb of the, the nurse, that part of Egypt, the Saqqara necropolis, still contains many tombs remaining to be discovered. And it's quite possible there could be other tombs there which relate to Tutankhamun's reign, which will throw light on the personalities that were behind the throne.

[Melvin Bragg]

Well, thank you very much indeed. Thank you, John. John Taylor, Christina Riggs and Liz Froude. We take a break next week and return on the 9th of January with Catullus, the Roman poet of love and hate, the epic and the insulting, claimed as the finest lyric poet of his time. Thanks for listening.

[Elizabeth Froude]

And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few.

[Christina Riggs]

Minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests.

[John Taylor]

I think one thing we haven't looked at is why did the tomb survive intact? Because it's the. Well, actually it's not the only tomb in the valley that was found undisturbed, but the, the only other ones are two tombs that are closely related to Tutankhamun. One is Tomb 55, in which someone from Tutankhamun's immediate family or several people were buried.

[Elizabeth Froude]

Maybe Akhenaten.

[John Taylor]

Maybe Akhenaten. And then only a few years ago, I think about 10 years ago, another tomb was discovered in the same part of the valley which contains some of the leftover materials from embalming, which quite possibly from Tutankhamun's burial. And the standard explanation for why the tomb was left undisturbed is that a later tomb was built nearby.

[Melvin Bragg]

And we're talking about Tutankhamun's tomb now.

[John Taylor]

Tutankhamun's tomb, yeah. So a later tomb was constructed, a much bigger one nearby Ramses VI Ramesses village. And all the rubble from the excavation of that covered the floor of that part of the valley and Tutankhamun was sealed underneath. But what is interesting is that at the very end of the New kingdom period, around 1100 BC, the Valley of the Kings was decommissioned officially. There was a kind of official emptying out of the contents of the tombs. So the bodies of the kings are taken out and secreted in a few small caches, and any remaining valuables that the robbers have left behind are then put back into the state coffers. Some of them reappear in the burials of later kings. They're recycled. So we know that they were doing this. There are written records to say that they were entering the tombs for this purpose.

[Elizabeth Froude]

And there's graffiti marking the tombs, graffiti.

[John Taylor]

On the walls saying that, you know, an official has been in to take everything out. So why does Tutankhamun and perhaps Akhenaten buried nearby? Why do they escape this process? I'm not sure. It's just chance, because later debris covers the tomb. I wonder if it's to do with how he's regarded by posterity that he and Akhenaten are regarded as tainted by the heresy of this religious revolution.

[Melvin Bragg]

We won't. We'll never know.

[John Taylor]

But I think it's an intriguing possibility. Possibility.

[Melvin Bragg]

What do you think?

[Christina Riggs]

Interesting. No, that's interesting. There's another cache as well, of embalming materials from Tutankhamun's burial, which was discovered already in 1907 by Theodore Davis. And that's one of the first clues, really, although, you know, hindsight is always. Is always perfect, and that there might be a tomb in that area, a burial for Tutankhamun.

[Elizabeth Froude]

He thought he'd found Tutankhamun. Chick.

[Christina Riggs]

Yeah. He published it as the Tomb of Tutankhamun in 1907. When it. When it wasn't. It's a. It's a cache of these. Because the mummification is a sacred process, and so everything that is part of that process that comes into contact with the body needs to be treated as sacred material and deposited near the burial or with the burial. So there's an interesting practice there of these little deposits in that area that weren't really appreciated until after the discovery of the tomb itself. I think it's also maybe worth the remembering. That discovery isn't one moment. The excavation and clearance of that tomb takes 10 years of Carter's life. And just to get it, you know, preserved, get it to the museum in Cairo, do the recording of it, and things like the mummy mask and the gold coffin aren't actually known to the public. They're not found until those. The coffins are opened and the mummies unwrapped in November of 1925. And then the public gets to know them through the media, through photography, in the Press in 1926. Because in the meantime, there's a year's break when Carter has a falling out with the antiquities authorities and can't work at the tomb anymore. And it's not until sort of Britain forces a change of the Egyptian government that it's negotiated, everybody calms down and Carter comes back to work and to get on with the first.

[Melvin Bragg]

Is this falling out.

[Christina Riggs]

Yeah. Of mini autopsies of the mummy.

[Melvin Bragg]

Is this falling out connected with the fact that he and Carnarvon couldn't take the stuff away as they'd imagined that they could, or hoped that they could?

[Christina Riggs]

That's the undercurrent. There are lots of tensions. Yeah, there are lots of tensions about more immediate problems like access to the tomb, presenting it to the press, who can come and visit on off days. You know, Carter loves to have kind of minor European aristocrats come and visit, but he gets very annoyed when the Egyptian government sends Egyptian ministers to come and visit in the background. Yes. This becomes a test case appointed just around. Just around the time of the First World War, there was a new French director of the Antiquities Service in Egypt, Pierre Lacolle, who intended to enforce more strictly Egypt's right to keep prize finds in its own museums and for itself. And was this a big test case? This was a test case and he.

[Melvin Bragg]

Won in the end.

[Christina Riggs]

It took many years. It took many years of negotiating. Carter and Carnarvon took some small objects without permission. So it's known that there are small things in private collections and certain museum collections around the world, but the main bulk of the finds stayed in Egypt. But throughout that 10 year period, or most of that 10 year period, they're in this kind of uncertain state about where they're going to wind up.

[Elizabeth Froude]

You can understand why in 1939. You know, Guacata dies in 1939, but between sort of that 10 year period up to his death, he doesn't, you know, once he's finished publishing in 1933, he's kind of done with it. And you can kind of understand because he's been battling these political intrigues and fighting his corner to some extent for so long.

[John Taylor]

I think Carter is rather a tragic figure in a way, because you can see how the discovery overwhelms him and exhausts him. And by the end, he's very lonely man. You know, he keeps going to Egypt, but people say they see him sitting in a hotel foyer all on his own.

[Melvin Bragg]

Why that?

[John Taylor]

It's partly because I think his. His battles with the authorities that we've been hearing about have left him very embittered.

[Melvin Bragg]

And he's embittered about. Did he expect to take the lot and just. He got a lot out of it. He got the archive. Well, that went to New York, didn't it?

[Elizabeth Froude]

Well, it went to. It went to Oxford, actually. So we have his archive, but that it didn't arrive to Oxford until after.

[Melvin Bragg]

And something quite a bit in New York. Is that right?

[Elizabeth Froude]

Photographs are in New York and in Oxford. Yeah, yeah.

[Melvin Bragg]

Sorry, I interrupted.

[John Taylor]

Well, I think also, you know, Carter, although he was a very able man, he had a talent for falling out with people and he's alienated a lot of his former colleagues and friends. By the mid-1930s, we know that members of his team, a lot of them, could only just manage to. To bear working with him because he infuriated them so much. They record all this in their diaries and letters. Well, he was a very stubborn character. He had fixed ideas about how things ought to be done and it was very, very difficult to change his mind. This is partly why there was such a lot of problem with the authorities, because whereas Carnarvon was much more of a diplomat, he was able to smooth over minor problems, whereas Carter always took a very, very rigid stance and this led to confrontation. So he, in a way, he was kind of the author of his own unhappiness. In the last years, did the Egyptian.

[Melvin Bragg]

Archaeologists take on the task when Carter, as it were, left and moved away?

[Christina Riggs]

No, the work was done by then. And then it's the material.

[Melvin Bragg]

You've all told me that there's only 30% of it done. There's much more to do.

[Elizabeth Froude]

The curators and the. The went to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and the curators there have done amazing work and probably know that material better than anyone else. And now that it's being transferred to the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo, there's a whole renewed conservation effort, which I think will spur new work on and.

[Christina Riggs]

New research being done. But the key point is that in all that debate over where the artifacts should stay. The archive. Yeah, the notes, the records, the drawings, the photographs, the. Are never in question because there's still this assumption that those belong to the archaeologists. And that means that excavation archives like the Tutankhamun archive left Egypt, and that means that they were still in Western Centers like Oxford and New York for research to be done mainly by Westerners.

[Melvin Bragg]

I said that earlier and you said, no, they weren't in New York. I thought some were in New York.

[Elizabeth Froude]

Well, the photographs, Harry Burton's photographs and negatives are in New York. The Oxford collection includes photographs and negatives as well, but it also includes Howard Carter's diary, his journals, his notes, all the record cards, the meticulously drawn record cards for each object. They're all now in Oxford and they're all available online as well.

[Melvin Bragg]

Can you give us some idea of the impact of the photographs?

[Christina Riggs]

Huge. That's how people imagined Tirankoman. And the objects that were photographed and published in the press are sort of, you know, still in a way accessible in our minds as the most famous photographs. So it, it absolutely shaped the idea of what these objects were and, and ways in which they were photographed, like sculpture, like works of art, sort of certain, more emphasis was given to certain objects that could be photographed in that way. And then that gets us thinking about them as works of art, which isn't what they were in ancient Egypt. A lot of these things are ritual objects, they're sacred objects. So there's a different way of thinking about the objects that is shaped through Harry Burton's astonishing photography. But a photograph is not a fact. A photograph depends on how it's used and how it's taken and then how it's used.

[Melvin Bragg]

I'd like to go on to that, but there wasn't time about how a lot of art is a consequence of religion and it doesn't set out to be art, it sets out to be something else.

[Christina Riggs]

It has its own aesthetic values which are important, but it's also meant to be. To be used.

[Melvin Bragg]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, as the producers come in with this usual announcement, we better wind this up, close it down, whatever it is. Simon, coffee?

[Simon Tillotson]

Melvin? Tea?

[Melvin Bragg]

Coffee?

[Elizabeth Froude]

I'd love a cup of coffee.

[John Taylor]

Coffee would be nice, yeah. Coffees. Coffee.

[Melvin Bragg]

I have a tea, please.

[Elizabeth Froude]

How did you feel?

[John Taylor]

That was In Our Time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson and it's a BBC Studios audio production.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

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[Christina Riggs]

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This is the story of the One As a custodial supervisor at a high school, he knows that during cold and flu season, germs spread fast. It's why he partners with Grainger to stay fully stocked on the products and supplies he needs, from tissues to disinfectants to floor scrubbers, all so that he can help students, staff and teachers stay healthy and focused. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.