It was the most famous archaeological find of all time, but still it holds secrets that have yet to be unravelled. Now Oxford scholars are preparing to post the notes, diaries, drawings and photographs from the 1922 excavation of the tomb of King Tutankhamun on the internet in an attempt to study it completely.

Howard Carter and his patron, Lord Carnarvon, first opened a mysterious doorway in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt 84 years ago and established an unknown boy king who died 3,500 years ago as one of the most famous faces in the world. Research at the tomb continued for eight years up to 1930. But most of the thousands of objects have never been properly studied, and most of the documentation has remained locked in archives in Oxford...

From then, research progress has been slow, Dr Jaromir Malek, of the Griffith Institute in Oxford, told a Bloomsbury Academy conference in London last Saturday. "We came to the conclusion that probably 20% of the material had been properly published, and if the current rate of progress was going to continue it would probably take another 200 years," he said...

Tutankhamun's mysteries to be put online, The Guardian, UK, May 15, 2006.