Tutankhamun was buried in a tomb that
was small relative to his status. His death may have occurred unexpectedly,
before the completion of a grander royal tomb, so that his mummy was buried in
a tomb intended for someone else. This would preserve the observance of the
customary seventy days between death and burial.[25]
King Tutankhamun's mummy still rests in
his tomb in the Valley of the Kings. On November 4, 2007, 85 years to the day
after Carter's discovery, the 19-year-old pharaoh went on display in his underground
tomb at Luxor, when the linen-wrapped mummy was removed from its golden
sarcophagus to a climate-controlled glass box. The case was designed to prevent
the heightened rate of decomposition caused by the humidity and warmth from
tourists visiting the tomb.[26]
Discovery of tomb,Tutankhamun seems to have faded from
public consciousness in Ancient Egypt within a short time after his death, and
remained virtually unknown until the 1920s. His tomb was robbed at least twice
in antiquity, but based on the items taken (including perishable oils and
perfumes) and the evidence of restoration of the tomb after the intrusions, it
seems clear that these robberies took place within several months at most of
the initial burial.
Eventually the location of the tomb was
lost because it had come to be buried by stone chips from subsequent tombs,
either dumped there or washed there by floods. In the years that followed, some
huts for workers were built over the tomb entrance, clearly not knowing what
lay beneath.
When at the end of the twentieth
dynasty the Valley of the Kings burials were systematically dismantled, the
burial of Tutankhamun was overlooked, presumably because knowledge of it had
been lost and his name may have been forgotten.