Sofitel Winter Palace Hotel the hotel and speeches. The architect was Leon Stienon, the Italian construction company G.GAROZZO & Figli Costruzioni in Cemento Armato, Sistema SIACCI brevettato. During World War I the hotel was temporarily closed to paying guests and employed as a hospice for convalescing soldiers. A regular guest at the hotel from 1907 on was George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, better known simply as Lord Carnarvon. Carnarvon was the patron of Egyptologist Howard Carter, who in 1922 discovered the intact tomb of Tutankhamun. After the discovery was announced the Winter Palace played host to the international press corps and foreign visitors
Theodore M. Davis KV57 (tomb of Horemheb) and KV54 (Tutankhamun embalming cache). With Carter's discovery of KV62, Tutankhamun's tomb, in 1922 Davis's opinion that the "valley had been exhausted", was proved wrong. Burton later recalled that when Davis terminated his last excavation in the valley, out of fear of undercutting nearby tombs and pathways, he was only two metres away from discovering the entrance to KV62. Davis was portrayed by William Hope in the 2005 BBC docudrama "Egypt". Davis and the tomb of Queen Tiyi also feature prominently in "The Ape Who Guards the Balance" by Elizabeth Peters, where he is portrayed as