King Tut and the Making of a Modern Obsession

How did a relatively unknown pharaoh become one of the most recognizable figures in the world—and help change what modernity looked like?

When Howard Carter’s team discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, the West was already fascinated by ancient Egypt. But the tomb gave that fascination a new protagonist, a stream of astonishing photographs and the suspense of a story unfolding one sealed door at a time. Soon, “King Tut” was appearing everywhere from Cartier jewelry and Art Deco movie palaces to perfume bottles, novelty songs and crates of California lemons.

In this episode, we follow Tutankhamun through two very different lives: his brief reign in ancient Egypt and the strange modern afterlife created for him by archaeologists, photographers, newspapers, designers, advertisers, Egyptian nationalists and museums. Along the way, we look at how the discovery transformed an existing Egyptomania into a global craze—and what disappeared when one young king became the face of an entire civilization.

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Further reading:

• Christina Riggs, Treasured: How Tutankhamun Shaped a Century (PublicAffairs, 2022).
• Jean-Marcel Humbert, Michael Pantazzi and Christiane Ziegler, eds., Egyptomania: Egypt in Western Art, 1730–1930 (National Gallery of Canada, 1994).