LONDON.- Three watercolours of Egypt by Howard Carter, the English archaeologist who discovered the tomb of the Boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun in 1922, are to be sold at Bonhams Travel and Exploration Sale in London on 3 December. They have a combined upper estimate of £25,000.

Trained by his painter father, Howard Carter started life as an artist. He was only 17 when he first visited Egypt in 1891 to help record the excavation of Middle Temple tombs and quickly made a mark by improving the method of copying tomb decorations. From 1894-99 he worked at Thebes (Deir el-Bahari) recording the wall reliefs in the temple of Hatshepsut. One of the paintings in the sale - The Temple of Hatshepsut (£6,000-8,000) - dates from this period.

In 1899 Carter was appointed to the Egyptian Archaeological Service and was soon supervising excavations of his own. He was highly regarded for his methodical approach and the measures he introduced to safeguard ancient sites. In 1907 he was approached by the amateur Egyptologist the Earl of Carnarvon to oversee his Theban excavations. (Carnarvon’s family seat, Highclere Castle, is the setting for the ITV series Downton Abbey). Carter’s painting Under the Protection of the Gods depicting a tomb decoration is dated 1908 and estimated at £7,000-10,000.

In 1914, Carnarvon and Carter were given permission to dig in the Valley of the Kings – Carter’s watercolour of the same name (£5,000-7,000) was painted that year – though work was suspended during the First World War and did not begin in earnest until 1918.

Carnarvon’s ambition was to find the legendary tomb of Tutankhamun, a prize which had eluded earlier archaeologists searching in the area. By 1922, however, with no progress having been made, he was on the verge of giving up when Carter made his great discovery. It quickly became an international sensation, sparking a craze for all things Egyptian.

Carnarvon’s death from blood poisoning the following year started the story that Tutankhamun’s tomb was cursed. Over the succeeding years any misfortune, however minor, afflicting any figure, however remotely connected to the 1922 discovery, has been attributed to the curse of King Tut.

Howard Carter retired from archaeology soon after his discovery and became and agent for museums and private collectors, He died – of entirely natural causes – in 1937 aged 64.