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 after the event. If Tutankhamun is the world's best known pharaoh, it is largely because his tomb is among the best preserved, and his image and associated artifacts the most exhibited. As Jon Manchip White writes, in his foreword to the 1977 edition of Carter's "The Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun", "The pharaoh who in life was one of the least esteemed of Egypt's Pharoahs has become in death the most renowned." The discoveries in the tomb were prominent news in the 1920s. Tutankhamen came to be called by a modern neologism, "King Tut". Ancient Egyptian references became common