I don’t know about your family, but in 1323 B.C. mine was scratching fleabites in hovels, mostly in Scandinavia, Britain and northwest coastal Europe.

They would have nodded in sympathetic recognition at philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ description of pre-government existence: “no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Meanwhile, only about 2,200 miles away, Egyptian society was already ancient and supremely sophisticated. By King Tutankhamun’s time, almost as many years had passed since the founding of first dynasty as have passed between our time and birth of Christ.

In an age when even bronze was still a novel new technological innovation to Nordic people, Egypt was producing products and artworks of astounding sophistication. All this is, of course, literally old news.

What is new is online publication by the Griffith Institute at Oxford University of English archaeologist Howard Carter’s records of the excavation of King Tut’s tomb. It’s impossible to read Carter’s contemporaneous first-hand notes from 1922 or look at the photos of the thousands of objects removed from the tomb and not be swept up in the joy of experiencing dynastic Egypt.

When Carter died in 1939 at age 64, it was chalked up to a curse on those who disturbed the tomb. But what these papers really make clear is that Carter might have worked himself into a somewhat early grave through sheer rapture and delight. Far from being a curse, the Tut materials are an ecstatic challenge to mediocrity and complacency. Carter must have burned himself up in his attempt to absorb and comprehend all he found. What a way to go.

The last pages of Carter’s’s record are being placed online now with instant access for everyone at (www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/4tut.html). Allow yourself plenty of time, and don’t stop with merely browsing through Harry Burton’s luminous photos of the interior and exterior of the tomb. Carter is not a poet by any means, but his written account of one of the great discoveries in all history is potent stuff.

A July 18 story in London’s Guardian newspaper describing the “Tutankhamun: Anatomy of an Excavation” project makes it clear that we are still a very long way from fully digesting all Carter gave us.

“The only intact pharaoh’s tomb ever discovered, it contained such an array of treasures that it took Carter 10 years to catalogue them all,” the Guardian reports. “Yet despite the immense significance of the discovery, the majority of Carter’s findings have never been published, and many questions surrounding the tomb remain unanswered.” Many of 5,398 objects found in the tomb are not well known, even to experts.

“I often say that the real curse of Tutankhamun is that Egyptologists have tended to shy away from working on the material,” expert Marianne Eaton-Krauss told the London newspaper. “These pieces are beautifully made. To study them takes a lot of work, and requires expertise not only on the symbolism, but also the technology.”

Everyone can be amazed at not only iconic objects like Tut’s burial mask, but many fragile items preserved in the near-perfect conditions of the tomb. To see things like a 3,250-year-old ostrich-feather fan is to be transported back in time. Ancient ceremonial shawls are still draped around the shoulders of the protective gods guarding the king.

Looking somewhat like the world’s ultimate abandoned self-storage unit, Burton’s photos capture what it was like to see this tomb in its first days of discovery: a revelation in every way.

-M.S.W.

Matt Winters is editor of the Chinook Observer