This week in 1923 | From the Observer archive

[Who2]

Suspense has ended for the excavators in Egypt and the watchers in the two hemispheres.

Never before has the civilised world followed, or been able as now to follow, step by step, immediately upon the heels of discovery…
Now it is certain that in breaking through the sealed wall Lord Carnarvon and Mr Carter have broken the seal of a historical document quite unparalleled.
Hope is not satisfied, but exceeded.

It must be months before the whole meaning of the crowning discovery is deciphered and known.
It is certain to set inquiry coursing along new channels in every direction.
But the first glimpse has told us what we needed to know, that this is, indeed, the tomb of the King, and that it has escaped rifling at the hands of the tomb robbers.

The Royal mummy lies there, with the splendour and profusion of his funeral furnishings intact around him
– a sight to which the eyes and imagination of our drab age must take time to accustom themselves.

[Horus]

Some years ago I was doing some family history research and was going through reels and reels of microfiche copies of our local newspaper in the city library and right next to the article I was trying to find was the breaking report of Carters discovery in the V.O.K. It seemed so very strange sitting in a modern buildings with all the trappings of the 21st century around me and looking at a page giving the actual news that would have been breaking at the time and to think how the people reading those original newspaper reports would know nothing of all the things that transpired since, whilst I was a virtual traveller to the future when reading those same long forgotten pages.