Discovering Tutankhamun's Tomb

A long time ago, a boy named Tutankhamun became king of Egypt. He was only nine years old! He died when he was still young. People buried him in a hidden tomb. The tomb was full of golden treasures. For thousands of years, sand covered the door. Nobody knew where it was. Then, in 1922, a man named Howard Carter started to dig. He searched for the tomb for many years. One day, a worker found a step under the sand. The steps led down to a sealed door. Howard Carter made a small hole and peeked inside. He saw amazing things made of gold. Inside was the mummy of the young king. He wore a shiny gold mask. Today we can see these treasures in museums. They help us learn how people lived in ancient Egypt.

Long ago, people in Egypt lived near a big river called the Nile. The river gave them water to drink. It helped them grow food. They built tall pyramids and big temples. They wrote with little pictures called hieroglyphs. They believed in many gods. When a king died, they made the body into a mummy. The mummy was placed in a tomb with food and treasure. We know all of this because archaeologists found these old things in the ground. The dry sand kept them safe for thousands of years.

A very old stone tells us about Egypt's first king. His name was King Narmer. He lived more than 5,000 years ago. The stone has pictures carved into it. One side shows the king wearing a white crown. The other side shows him wearing a red crown. This tells us he joined two parts of Egypt into one country. The stone was found buried in the ground long ago. Now it rests in a museum in Egypt. It is so precious that it almost never travels. Other treasures, like the gold mask of Tutankhamun, have traveled to museums around the world. Old objects like these are like storybooks from long ago. They teach us how people lived and what they cared about.