I woke up in Luxor in my beautiful Airbnb, still riding the emotional wave of everything I had seen in the days leading up to this. A 5:00 Call To Prayer was some of the best morning meditation ever. Then at 6:00 a.m. sharp, my SUPERMAN driver, Nubi, picked me up and introduced me to my guide for the day, Hassan. I could tell immediately that I had lucked out. Hassan was warm, incredibly smart, and so knowledgeable that I wished he could’ve followed me right into every tomb. Good sign. But there’s a strange rule in the Valley of the Kings: guides are not allowed to go inside the tombs with tourists. Overcrowding, I suppose. So instead, they give you everything they can before you step inside — the history, the context, the warnings, the things to look for — and then they wait outside while you walk into the silence alone. I’m happy and proud to have studied this particular tomb at length so I am confident going in that I will at least know a bit of what I am witnessing. I passed on the early morning balloon ride over Luxor to be here before the crowds, I hope my plans are not in vain.

We are the first and only ones on the first tram up the hill. Good sign.

Towering over the Valley of the Kings is a mountain the Egyptians called El-Qurn, “The Horn,” a peak that rises so sharply and perfectly that it looks like a natural pyramid. Standing beneath it, you understand instantly why this place became the burial ground of pharaohs. It feels as if this mountain is watching over everything—ancient, silent, protective. When you look up at that peak from the valley floor, there’s a strange sensation that history is tilting toward you, as if the same force that shaped that mountain also shaped the place you’re standing in. It isn’t just a backdrop; it’s part of the story, a marker that the ancient Egyptians believed was sacred long before a single tomb was carved into the cliffs.

Of all the moments on this trip that stole my breath, nothing prepared me for what happened when I walked up to the sign that read, in MASH like stenciling:

“Tomb of Tut Ankh Amun #62”

Now THAT’S a good sign.

I gave a smiling man my ticket and walked down the stairs & turned a corner, and suddenly I was standing at the very place where history changed the world — not just Egyptology, not just archaeology, but the world. It was absolutely breathtaking. I felt something I’ve never felt anywhere else I’ve ever been.

My plan to arrive early *chefs kiss* and — miraculously — I was alone. Completely alone. I stepped down into King Tut’s tomb and spent twenty uninterrupted minutes inside by myself. It felt like a private audience, like the world had stepped aside and said, “Here, Rick. This is all yours.”

I cried.
I laughed.
I prayed. Strangely enough.
I laughed again.

It felt like a morning in a church, an intimate spiritual moment that I didn’t expect and still can’t fully explain. I saw the spots in the paint, (which they thought was mold from the breath of all the tourists but then it was proven that it was actual mold from the wet paint being applied over wet plaster which actually tells us that this was a rush job and not a normal tomb for a normal Pharaoh, because Ay wanted Tut’s REAL tomb for himself and shoved the boy king into this studio apartment of a tomb.) But I digress. I breathed in the air, knowing I was literally inside a story I had studied my whole life — and suddenly I wasn’t reading the history. I was inside it. I was Alice and this was the rabbit hole and I fell in face first.

What surprised me most was how deeply I was moved not just by the famous things — the paintings, the small size of the tomb, the presence of the actual mummy — but by the quiet details, the small things that most people would probably walk right past.

I loved being on that first step — the step Howard Carter stepped on. I actually paused there, squatted down, and thought, This is the exact spot where he said, “Wonderful things.” That alone was overwhelming.

And then I looked up.

There, in the ceiling, was the seam — the place where the false wall had been built, the one with the painted guards, the wall Carter broke through to find the sarcophagi. To me, seeing that seam was like finding an unmarked paragraph in a history book that suddenly lights up. I traced it with my eyes, imagining the sound of that moment in 1922, imagining the dust falling, imagining the first spark of light hitting treasures unseen for three thousand years. I was thrilled that they hadn’t sanded the seam away. It’s there if you look.

I don’t think many people notice that seam. But for me, it was as impactful as seeing his mummy, or the baboons, or Nut and Osiris welcoming him on the East wall…

Walking through that tomb didn’t feel real. It felt like being inside my own dream, like slipping through the pages of the books I’ve read since childhood and waking up inside them. I don’t know if I will ever feel that way again — that combination of awe, gratitude, and emotional clarity.

To say that those thirty minutes were among the greatest half hours of my life is an understatement.
They changed me.
And they deserve their own entry in this blog.

And I have to say one more thing: Thank you, Steve Martin. Thank you for letting me be reminded, as I ended my visit and walked up the stairs from which Howard Carter changed our World, I couldn’t help but stop to hear you singing in the back of my mind:

“He’s got a condo made of stone’a!”