Strangely enough, the incident did not close without an event which seemed to cast a dark shadow across all the splendour of the discovery. Almost immediately after the triumph of the opening, and before the freshness of its interest had faded from men’s minds, Lord Carnarvon was stricken down with fever, and in the beginning of April he died in Cairo, leaving his great work still incomplete. There is no need to talk of the flood of superstitious drivel which was let loose over the world by what seemed so tragic an ending to so great a success. It is hard to say whether stupidity or cruelty were more conspicuous in it, and it remains self-condemned in the eyes of all reasonable people. There is, no doubt, an element of sadness in the thought that he without whom these treasures of the past might never have been disclosed did not live to see the completion of his work; but there is surely also an element of satisfaction in the thought that he knew that his long toil had not been in vain, and that he had accomplished something unique in the story of the exploration of that ancient world to which we owe so much. To leave the scene of triumph while the splendour of accomplishment is still undimmed has ever been esteemed the happiest of destinies. If it be so, then Lord Carnarvon was _felix opportunitate mortis_. Before we turn to the consideration of some of the chief treasures which have so far been gathered from the outer chambers of the tomb, let us devote a moment to the question of who the Pharaoh is whose splendours have thus dazzled the world, and what is known of his reign and his times. Not the least remarkable feature of the whole find is that the man around whom all this magnificence was gathered is just about one of the last of the Pharaohs whom one would have suspected of creating a sensation in the world of Egyptology. His reign is one of the shortest and least fully recorded in the roll of the XVIIIth Dynasty; indeed the only kings of the Dynasty who seem yet more insignificant than himself are his immediate predecessor Smenkhara, and his immediate successor Ay. The circumstances of his reign, so far as they are known, are briefly these. Tutankhamen began his career as one of the courtiers of Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten), and one of his supporters in the great revolution which he attempted to carry out on the religion of Egypt; though, from his apparent youth at the time of his death, he can scarcely have had any real share in the movement. Whether he was of the blood royal or not is uncertain. On the lion from Gebel Barkal, now in the British Museum, he calls Amenhotep III his father. If this means direct relationship, then he must have been the son of Amenhotep III by a secondary wife, and in that case he was a half-brother of Akhenaten, whose son-in-law he afterwards became. On the other hand, the title may be only one of respect applied to an indirect ancestor--really his grandfather-in-law.