Tutankhamun's tomb, discovered a century ago on Nov. 4, 1922, contained many fantastic artifacts. But some of the pharaoh's jewelry has gone missing in the century since it was discovered, despite laws specifying that the artifacts in the tomb belong to Egypt.
Some of this jewelry may have been taken out of Egypt by Howard Carter, the British archaeologist who led the excavation that uncovered the tomb. In research that will be presented at a conference in Luxor between Nov. 4 and 6, Marc Gabolde(opens in new tab), an Egyptology professor at Paul-Valéry University of Montpellier in France, identified some of this lost jewelry and where it might be. He examined images that photographer Harry Burton snapped of finds from Tutankhamun's tomb in the 1920s and compared them to pieces found in museums and auction sites.
Gabolde's research allowed him to virtually reconstruct a broad collar that was on Tutankhamun's chest but is now in multiple pieces and locations, some of which are unknown. According to Gabolde, parts of the collar were taken by Carter and are in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, while some of the beads on the collar appear to have been restrung into a necklace that is now owned by anonymous owners who have tried, unsuccessfully, to sell them at auction — most recently, in 2015 at Christie's. Gabolde compared images of the collar taken by Burton to images from the museum and auction site and found that they appear to be the same. The Nelson-Atkins Museum agrees and has noted this on their website(opens in new tab).
