Our fascination with things from ancient Egypt seems as if it will never go away. If you don't know any other names from the age, you know the name of King Tutankhamun, the discovery of whose tomb in 1922 created a sensation in Egyptology that caught popular, scientific, and historical attention which has never waned. We only know of Tutankhamun because of the good fortune, and the hard work in conquering bad fortune, of Howard Carter, who by force of will turned himself into a skilled excavator, without getting a formal education. His story is at the center of _In the Valley of the Kings: Howard Carter and the Mystery of King Tutankhamun's Tomb_ (Ballantine Books) by historian Daniel Myerson, who presents Carter as a fine example of a flawed personality who succeeded through tenacity and sheer eagerness to work. There is also a good summary of the history of Tutankhamun and his immediate ancestors, as well as reflections on the rules of the archeological game of the time.

Carter was low-born, with roots going back to the rural British lower class. He happened to have some skill at painting and sketching, and was doing so at the country estate of a family that was wild about Egyptian art. This led to his dream of going to Egypt, in 1892 at age seventeen. He went as a mere copyist, but became intoxicated with archeology. He lucked into an assignment with legendary William Matthew Flinders Petrie, and was quickly assigned his own excavation of Akhenaten's great temple. He became a chief inspector of archeological sites, but in a ruckus in which Egyptian guards struck belligerent Frenchmen who were trying to enter a prohibited area, Carter backed the guards, refused to apologize and was forced to resign. He was then "cold-shouldered by the elite and blacklisted as an excavator." For three years he made his living not with the excavating that he loved, but doing paintings which were sellable, and being a guide-for-hire. He then was joined to the Earl of Carnarvon who was doing some amateur excavating (and doing some of it badly). From 1907 to the start of the First World War, they made important discoveries within the hills of Thebes, with Carter as the brains and Carnarvon as the financial muscle. Carter believed that King Tutankhamen's tomb was within the Valley of the Kings, although everyone warned that no further royal tombs were to be found there. Eventually, in 1922 Carter convinced Carnarvon (very much against Carnarvon's initial wishes) to allow just one more season of digging, and returned to the area himself. A boy stumbled into the top step of a descending staircase, and twelve steps later, Carter found a sealed door with treasure behind it. He wired Carnarvon to come at once from London. There had been dozens of royal tombs discovered already, but none had been intact. The sensational find caused a circus, with cinematographers, reporters, curiosity-seekers, and diplomats showing up, all wanting in. At the same time, Egyptian nationalists were insisting that the spoils were their nation's. Carter was not the man for public relations; he was taciturn and often bad-tempered, and the stubbornness that drove him to success also made it almost impossible to work with him. He was actually evicted from the tomb, only allowed to come back and do his decade of work on cataloguing and preservation after he apologized for his previous attempts at restricting access.

Meyerson writes, "The real curse of Tut's tomb was that Carter did not die at the moment of discovery." Carter was to live a full lifespan, although Carnarvon did die of "the curse" shortly after the tomb was open. Meyerson points out that there was no such curse, and anyway, Tut would have been happy to have his name and fame broadcast five millennia later, as that was an ideal of Egyptian eternal life. Those who disdained Carter's lack of formal education, breeding, manners, or tact ensured that Great Britain gave him no honors and that he would not be allowed to receive any from other lands. There was also no mention of his name in the halls of the Egyptian museum which held the hoard he had discovered. Meyerson's is a portrait of one particular archeologist at work, one whose stubbornness and intensity led him to his greatest find and also kept him from the full appreciation he deserved in his lifetime.