Pierre Lacau

Pierre Lacau (far left), watching Tutankhamun's mummy being unwrapped. Douglas Derry makes the first incision in the examination of observed by several others including Lacau, Carter (with magnifying glass) and Saleh Bey Hamdi (far right). Pierre Lacau (25 November 1873 – 26 March 1963) was a French Egyptologist and philologist. He served as Egypt's director of antiquities from 1914 until 1936, and oversaw the 1922 discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings by Howard Carter.

Early life Pierre Lacau was born in the French commune of Brie-Comte-Robert. He was raised and educated as a Jesuit.

Career Lacau's first appointment in Cairo was to the International Commission for drafting the general catalogue of the Museum of Cairo.

Lacau oversaw the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922 by the English archaeologists Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon in the Valley of the Kings. Relations with Carter were rarely cordial and were exacerbated by both the monopoly of publication rights which Lord Carnarvon sold to The Times, and pressure from the Egyptian government who resented the lack of Egyptian involvement in the Tutankhamen excavation.

In 1924 Lacau, acting under the orders of the new Minister of Public Works, forbade the wives of Howard Carter's team to enter the tomb. Carter closed the tomb in protest, locked it, refused to hand over the keys, and posted an explanatory notice in the Old Winter Palace Hotel, Luxor, thus breaking the terms of his license and relinquishing full control to Lacau.

In 1938 Lacau was appointed professor at the Collège de France in Paris, where he held the chair in Egyptology until 1947; he was elected to the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres in 1939. Pierre Lacau / Henri Chevrier 1956. Une Chapelle de Sésostris Ier à Karnak. I.Cairo.