The pyramids were tombs for Egypt's kings. In the Old Kingdom, about 2613 to 2181 BCE, Egypt's kings built pyramids; that age is known as the "Age of the Pyramids." There are over seventy pyramids in Egypt, stretching down the Nile River Valley. In the New Kingdom, pharaohs were buried instead in tombs cut into rock in the Valley of the Kings, on the Nile's west bank near Luxor; the entrances were well hidden, yet nearly all of the valley's known royal tombs were likely robbed. Some of the people employed to guard the tombs were corrupt, and confessions from convicted tomb robbers multiply toward the end of the New Kingdom.

What lay inside? The Egyptians believed the afterlife would be almost exactly like life on Earth, so tombs were filled with things a person would need there, such as food and games. A body was preserved for that journey. Embalmers dried it with natron, packed it with linen, herbs or sawdust, covered it with resin and wrapped it in linen bandages, often with amulets tucked in; the lungs, stomach, liver and intestines were embalmed separately and placed in canopic jars. In the best process, used for royals and top officials, the work lasted about 70 days. People who could not afford embalming were generally preserved by drying in the hot desert sand or by being covered with resin.

Mummification is the process of preserving a body, and the Egyptians practiced it for about 3,000 years. They mummified animals too. Almost every kind of animal that lived in ancient Egypt has been found as a mummy. Cat mummies were popular offerings in ancient Egypt. They were fairly common in Egypt from about 600 B.C. until A.D. 250, and many were left as offerings to the cat goddess Bastet. Egyptians likely got them at catteries, and some supposed cat mummies are nothing more than ancient sacks of stones; today scientists study mummies with CT scans, MRIs and x-rays, which can show a person's gender, age and health without unwrapping them.

Tutankhamun became king when he was a child, and he ruled for less than ten years. His father was Akhenaten, who moved the capital from Thebes to a new city, Akhetaten, now called Amarna. After Akhenaten, Tutankhamun's reforms returned Egypt to its traditional belief structure. Tutankhamun died at about age 18, before he turned twenty, and his general Horemheb later ruled and had his name erased from the record. Experts of Howard Carter's day said every tomb in the valley had been raided or found. Carter refused to give up and kept searching, although his funding from the Earl of Carnarvon was nearly gone.

Carter found Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings in November 1922. More than 5,000 treasures came from it. As of November 2026, it is described as the most intact pharaoh's tomb ever found; many had thought the 62 tombs found before 1922 were all the valley held, but in 2005 a team led by Otto Schaden found the valley's first unknown tomb since Tutankhamun's. A famous story says a curse protects Tutankhamun's tomb. The Curse of Tutankhamun has no basis in fact; the curse story spread after a death a few months after the tomb was opened.

Words to know

• embalmers: body preservers
• natron: drying salt
• resin: sticky tree sap
• amulets: lucky charms
• canopic: for organs