On February 16th 1923, in the searing heat of the Egyptian desert, archaeologist Howard Carter stood before a sealed doorway that hadn’t been touched in over 3,000 years. The entrance was bound with rope and sealed with ancient clay. Behind it lay the burial chamber of a boy-king whose name was about to electrify the world, Tutankhamun.

Carter had spent months cataloguing the outer rooms containing golden statues, alabaster vases and priceless relics completely untouched by time. But this is what he’d waited for all his life. Carter personally broke the seal, pushed open the doors and entered the burial chamber.

The sacred dust still contained the footprints of those who mourned the passing of the teenage pharaoh. 4m from the door lay the sarcophagus containing a solid gold coffin. Inside the coffin was the mummified remains of the 18-year-old ruler, wearing that now-iconic death mask, staring silently and mysteriously back through the mists of time.

65 ancient tombs had already been located in the infamous Valley of the Kings. Most had been stripped bare of their contents by looters long ago, but not this one. Tutankhamun’s tomb had remained hidden, its treasures untouched and its silence unbroken. It would take a decade to excavate it. Today, its contents would be worth billions.

A thousand years after the young Egyptian pharaoh was laid to rest in this ‘City of the Dead’ another king was buried 1,000 miles down the road in Jerusalem. A man who had been accused of blasphemy and then sentenced to death by the Roman governor as a political threat. His name was Jesus of Nazareth, they called him the King of the Jews.

Like Tutankhamun, his body was placed in a tomb, not surrounded by the gold and glory of ancient Egypt, but in a borrowed hole in the wall because he’d died penniless. This hero of the ordinary, this miracle working storyteller of the street who 2,000 years on, would be the cornerstone to civilisations and the foundation stone to billions of lives.

Like the ancient pharaoh, museums contain historical relics supposedly linked to the death of Jesus. Everything from the crown of thorns that was pushed into his skull as he died on the cross, to the nails that pinned him there and even wood from the cross itself.

But the most famous relic is the Turin Shroud that some say is the burial cloth bearing the imprint of the face of Christ. An ancient nod, perhaps, to the mask that bears the likeness of the face of Tutankhamen but made of humble linen not precious gold. 

Who knows what’s true and maybe who’s really bothered about a few Lara Croft or Indiana Jones style artefacts? So, what’s the connection between the burials of Tutankhamun and Jesus? Well not much if the truth is really known.

The real story is what happened next. Tutankhamun’s mummified body lay in his tomb for 3 millennia, but Jesus was only in his for 3 days. The crux of this story is not whether Jesus existed, that debate was settled a long time ago.  Neither is it about the carbon dating of a selection of ancient items of interest. 

The real questions are these. Did Jesus Christ rise from the dead, is he alive today and does he have any relevance to our lives? The answers to those questions change everything. Like I said, most of the tombs belonging to the pharaohs of Egypt were broken into and some of the bodies were even stolen.

Many believed that’s exactly what happened to Jesus until he appeared to his followers in bodily form, on one occasion to 500 at the same time. Most of them were still alive when the reports were written down and widely circulated and could verify the accounts as eye witnesses.

If it’s true, then Jesus Christ laid down his life for human wrongdoing and then broke the ancient seal. Death is no longer the end but the doorway. The Gospel is the ‘Access All Areas’ pass, not to a glass-fronted display of golden relics from the tomb of a forgotten king, but a ticket to ride the great adventure of life. 

An invitation from the Creator to be reborn into the eternal life Jesus spoke of. It will carry you through this life and on through the sealed doors of death to your final home in Heaven. The tomb of Tutankhamun was emptied by historians and archaeologists. The tomb of Jesus was emptied by resurrection.