“Your Eyes Beholding Happiness”

When I was 12 or so, my parents gave me TUTANKHAMEN by Desroches-Noblecourt, the iconic text about the pharaoh and his tomb and its discoverer Howard Carter. I resolved to become an archeologist, and this resolution lasted at least, ohh, a year. We were surprised to learn once we arrived in Egypt that we would be visiting not just Tut’s tomb, but Carter’s house! All the awe and mystery that I felt as a pre-teen came flooding back. Twenty years before he became the most celebrated archeologist in history, Carter was unemployed and barely making ends meet by selling water colors. His gravestone has an epithet found on a cup in the tomb: “May your spirit live, may you spend millions of years, you who live in Thebes, sitting with your face to the north wind, your eyes beholding happiness.”Læs mere