Pierre Lacau the excavator all the rest. Lacau oversaw the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922 by the English archaeologists Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon in the Valley of the Kings. Relations with Carter were rarely cordial and were exacerbated by both the monopoly of publication rights which Lord Carnarvon sold to "The Times", and pressure from the Egyptian government who resented the lack of Egyptian involvement in the Tutankhamen excavation. In 1924 Lacau, acting under the orders of the new Minister of Public Works, forbade the wives of Howard Carter's team to enter the tomb. Carter closed the tomb
Tutankhamun chamber, which was purported to possibly contain a burial of Nefertiti. For many years, rumors of a "curse of the pharaohs" (probably fueled by newspapers seeking sales at the time of the discovery) persisted, emphasizing the early death of some of those who had entered the tomb. The most prominent was George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon who died on 5 April 1923, 5 months after the discovery of the first step leading down to the tomb on 4 November 1922. A study of documents and scholarly sources led "The Lancet" to conclude as unlikely that Carnarvon's death had anything