When Carnarvon, unable to bear the suspense any longer, asked: ‘Can you see anything?’ Carter’s now-famous reply came back: ‘Yes, yes, wonderful things.’ Peering into the darkness with a lighted candle, Carter could not believe his eyes. Eventually, just after 4 o’clock in the afternoon of 26 November, the archaeologist and the aristocrat gained access to the royal tomb itself. Congratulations.’ When Carnarvon arrived in Luxor 17 days later, he and Carter proceeded to clear the blocking wall and the corridor beyond. Carter immediately sent a telegram to Carnarvon, who was some 2,500 miles away at his stately home in southern England: ‘At last have made wonderful discovery in Valley.

This was the moment for which the British archaeologist Howard Carter, director of the expedition, and his patron Lord Carnarvon – or, more accurately, their hundreds of Egyptian workers – had been toiling for 15 long years in the heat and dust of Egypt. Two days later, clearance revealed a descending staircase, terminating at a rubble wall that blocked further access.

Early in the morning of 4 November 1922, in the Valley of the Kings, Egyptian workers uncovered a step cut into the valley floor.