“The Grand Egyptian Museum will finally honor my father and remind the world of his role in discovering Tutankhamun’s tomb,” said Nubi Hussein Abdel-Rasoul during a telephone interview on Egypt’s Extra News channel.
The 84-year-old Luxor native explained that his father, Hussein Abdel-Rasoul, was only 12 when he alerted British archaeologist Howard Carter to a tilted stone on the West Bank of Luxor in November 1922. “A water jug slipped, exposed an opening, and my father removed the stone, revealing the first steps of the staircase,” he recalled, according to Al-Masry Al-Youm.
“We are proud of what he contributed to Egypt and the world, and tourists still visit our house to photograph his old pictures and hear the story,” added Abdel-Rasoul. He noted that he meets weekly tour groups and appears on foreign television, including Japanese networks, to recount the event.
“This honor restores dignity to the Egyptian workers who helped make history; Egyptian discoveries should remain in Egyptian hands,” he said, as reported by Youm7. Abdel-Rasoul urged young Egyptians to join excavation projects, pointing out that local knowledge had shaped the original find.
The Abdel-Rasoul family has backed archaeological missions ever since 1922 and still preserves a rare photograph of the elder Hussein wearing a necklace from the tomb, Al-Masry Al-Youm wrote. Abdel-Rasoul expressed satisfaction that the museum in Cairo now includes a corner devoted to his father’s story.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi inaugurated the $1 billion Grand Egyptian Museum on November 1 in a ceremony attended by foreign monarchs and heads of state. Two days later, thousands of visitors entered the vast complex to view the fully reunited treasures of Tutankhamun—more than 5,000 objects, from golden chariots to the famous mask inlaid with lapis lazuli. At the heart of the exhibition stands a hall dedicated to the 1922 discovery, where the story of Hussein Abdel-Rasoul now appears alongside Howard Carter’s notes and early excavation photographs. Egyptian officials described the tribute as a symbolic restoration of credit to the local workers whose intuition and labor made the find possible.
Produced with the assistance of a news-analysis system.