I thought I was visiting a tomb; instead, I walked into a three thousand year old argument about mortality and memory.
Since childhood, I’ve been enthralled by the legend of King Tutankhamun. And honestly, who isn’t. The boy king who accidentally achieved what every pharaoh desired: immortality. Not the carved in stone kind, but the strange, modern version – a name recognised across continents, a face (or at least his stellar burial mask) known by people who couldn’t place his intended last resting place on a map. The world’s first global phenomenon – three thousand years early.
And now, here I was, descending into his tomb – KV62 – hidden in the scorched folds of the Valley of the Kings, a short taxi ride from Luxor and the Nile’s eternal heartbeat. The moment I stepped inside, the air – I am convinced – thickened. My “wow” moment didn’t just arrive; it unfurled, ancient and deliberate. The chamber is modest compared to the grand mortuary palaces around it, yet it radiates a gravity that feels older than antiquity itself. The walls seem to hum with the residue of ritual.
Then I see him.
His remains lie in a Perspex case – a small, almost fragile figure beneath a white linen sheet. A king reduced to something that looks perilously close to a keepsake. Opposite him, the site of his sarcophagus. The closeness of the two – the vulnerable and the monumental – stops me cold. Something inside me recoils, though I can’t yet articulate why.
I ascend the narrow corridor – the same sloping artery that once carried a teenage pharaoh toward eternity and later bore witness to Howard Carter trespassing into the afterlife. A strange pressure settles on my shoulders. Not fear. Not awe. Something older. By the time I reach the steps at the top of the entrance, the world tilts. I sit down. Then comes the violent sickness. Not my finest hour.
The day unravels from there. By evening I am on a saline drip in my hotel room, dehydrated, feverish, and thoroughly defeated. Two days bedbound. Eventually I am well enough to fly home. But something travels with me – something I haven’t packed. Doubt.
Tutankhamun once ruled millions. Now his body lies on display, part of a perpetual procession of curious eyes and camera lenses. I can’t deny that his discovery – that archaeological atom bomb – reshapes our understanding of ancient Egypt and continues to mesmerise generation after generation. But is it right that his remains are still offered up for scrutiny, for snapshots, for the churn of tourism. My thoughts ricochet around my skull, refusing to settle into anything resembling certainty.
Do I believe in the curse. Of course not. But I carry a different kind of curse – one woven from confusion, reverence, and the uncomfortable knowledge that some questions aren’t meant to be resolved. And perhaps that becomes the true legacy of my Egyptian dream.
© Ian Kirke 2026 & all photographs
@ iankirke.bsky.social