Howard Carter: the unsociable, sickly, homosexual and self-conscious Englishman who discovered Tutankhamun's tomb

This year marks the

, considered by many to be the most fabulous archaeological find of all time.

Its author was Howard Carter, an Englishman of humble origins, without academic studies, sickly and with corseted manners.

He never met a partner, although there is evidence that he was gay.

His complex personality, which led him to

and Egyptian authorities alike, has been explained from a possible autism spectrum disorder.

Who was this man, hero par excellence of Egyptology?

Howard Carter arrived in Egypt at the age of 17, haunted by his

The youngest of 11 children, he was born weak and sickly, so

His parents sent him to the country for long periods of time with his two unmarried aunts, away from society.

He was only nine years old when, in front of him, one of his brothers died after drinking a bottle of bleach.

: instead, his father taught him how to paint.

It was thanks to this ability to draw that he got a kind of scholarship to go to Egypt as a copyist of hieroglyphic inscriptions.

From the moment of his arrival in the country of the Nile, Carter worked hard to prove that he had the same or more qualities than his peers who had studied at Oxford or Cambridge.

And he did it.

: at the age of 25 he was already an

in Upper Egypt.

He had been in the post for six years when the Saqqara incident occurred, a turning point in Howard Carter's life that would mark him forever.

to sell watercolors

It happened near the Step Pyramid of Djoser.

A group of French tourists in an advanced degree of intoxication started a fight with the Egyptian guards of the site.

.

He came right away and drove the French out with bad boxes.

There might have been a punch.

The tourists protested to the authorities, the case escalated, and Carter was required to

Needless to say, he refused.

He resigned from his position and moved to Luxor, where he was forced to make a living

to the very tourists he hated so much.

Carter was convinced that there was still an intact tomb in the Valley of the Kings, belonging to an obscure and almost forgotten pharaoh, Tutankhamun.

.

It was Lord George Herbert, Earl of Carnavon, the owner of the real Downton Abbey castle, who saved him from infamy by hiring him to find

Love triangle

Much has been speculated about the relationship between the two men.

, Lord Carnarvon giving his friend fabulous gifts, and the two of them

It has also been said that the earl's daughter, Lady Evelyn, was in love with Carter, forming a complex and probably

In any case, they worked side by side for 15 years until, finally, they found the tomb, full of treasures, of Tutankhamun.

The focus of international public opinion fell on them immediately.

The press around the world echoed the

the Valley of the Kings was filled with foreign correspondents and Carter became a famous man, the paradigm of an adventurer, a successful man, a scholar.

: he avoided journalists, quarreled with them,

Four months after the discovery of the tomb,

.

Shortly before he died, he wrote a few lines to Carter that say a lot about their relationship: "My dear Carter, I was very unhappy today... I didn't know what to think or what to do, and when I saw Eve, she told me. I have no doubt that I have done a lot of stupid things and I am very sorry... but there is just one thing I want to tell you and that I hope you will always remember... whatever your feelings towards me, now or in the future, my feelings towards you will never change."

After the death of the count,

was unleashed .

Public opinion turned around: Carter and his patron went

blasphemers who dared to disturb the rest of a pharaoh who had been dead for thousands of years.

That was the beginning of the end for Carter.

Persecuted by the press, hated by tourists, criticized by everyone, he became

His bitter character led him to confront the Egyptian authorities again and again, who ended up expelling him from the country, separating him from his life's work.

the loneliness of his death

For the next several months, Carter devoted himself to lecturing.

He did not have the gift of words, so

and decided to imitate him in his public interventions.

He toured the United States where he was enormously successful, although he also managed to

those who had trusted him.

One of his few friends, Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart, XVII Duke of Alba, twice invited him to Madrid to give talks at the Residencia de Estudiantes and introduced him to the court of Alfonso XIII.

The exile lasted just under a year, because despite his difficult character, Carter

The Egyptian authorities were unable to find someone who could replace him and in the end they had to beg him to come back.

He did not finish classifying and preserving the tomb objects until 1932. Seven years later he died alone, in London.

.

Howard Carter was a controversial man.

about his lack of studies, he always sought the approval of others, especially his employer and friend, Lord Carnarvon.

His great archenemy, Arthur Weigall, called him "the most stubborn man she had ever met".

It was this stubbornness that led him to excavate 15 years in the Valley of the Kings without apparent result, when someone else, in his place, would have given up much earlier.

Archeology heroes don't just wear hats and whips and take on Nazis in lost temples.

Sometimes they are

But without them, the world would have missed out on some of its stellar moments.

Luis Melgar is a diplomat and writer.

His new novel,

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