The plan of Tutankhamun's tomb differs from that of royal tombs of the time, both in size and in layout. It did, however, contain all the necessary ritual spaces, but only the Burial Chamber was decorated. Drawing by Anandaroop Roy.

The Entrance Passage and Antechamber

The tomb is entered through a twenty-five-foot-long corridor that had been filled with rubble to deter robbers. At the end Carter found a small painted wood head of Tutankhamun as a child that symbolized the rebirth of the dead king. When he opened the blocked doorway, a fantastic scene confronted him: furniture, elaborately decorated chests, alabaster jars, and baskets piled all around massive gilt couches embellished with animal heads. Dismantled chariots filled one end of the room and two life-size guardian statues of the king stood at the other, flanking the sealed entrance to the Burial Chamber.

The Burial Chamber

The Burial Chamber was almost completely filled by four massive gilded wood shrines, one inside the other. The doors of the second and third shrines were secured by their original clay sealings, raising Carter's hope that Tutankhamun's mummy was undisturbed. The body, adorned with amuletic jewelry and a gold mask, had been placed inside three coffins, the innermost one made of solid gold. These coffins in turn rested in a massive red quartzite sarcophagus guarded by four winged goddesses and inscribed with invocations to the gods to protect the king in the afterlife. Ritual and magical objects had been carefully placed in the narrow space between the outermost shrine and the walls of the burial chamber.

The Treasury

The room Carter called the Treasury was connected to the Burial Chamber and guarded by a linen-robed statue of the jackal god Anubis on a portable shrine. There, he found Tutankhamun's alabaster canopic chest inside a gilded shrine flanked by statuettes of four winged goddesses. Each of its four inner compartments held an inlaid miniature gold coffin containing the king's mummified internal organs. Elsewhere in the room there were elaborately decorated chests filled with the king's personal possessions, model boats, and sealed wood shrines containing magical statuettes of the king and the gods.

The Annex

The Annex, the final chamber of the tomb, was entered through a small opening in the Antechamber under one of the animal-headed couches. Robbers had ransacked this room as well, and its contents—sometimes in piles several feet high—nearly covered the floor. The Annex was a storeroom for oils, unguents, food, wine, furniture, and other items that could not be accommodated in the Antechamber and Treasury. The final room that Carter cleared, in 1927, it contained more than 283 groups of objects.