Hopes Tutankhamun explorer case will be displayed

The suitcase belonging to Howard Carter and then John Healey had been kept under a bed in Bishop Auckland since the 1970s

The man who bought a suitcase believed to have been owned by the explorer who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun hopes it can be loaned out to museums.

Rupert Wace, an antiques collector, purchased the suitcase which originally belonged to Egyptologist Howard Carter before being gifted to his colleague John Healey.

When Mr Healey died in the early 1970s, the suitcase was kept under his son's bed in Bishop Auckland, County Durham.

Mr Wace paid £12,000 for the suitcase in February and said it was "a rather extraordinary price to pay" for a "battered up old suitcase".

Mr Wace said he has been "lucky enough over the years" to buy the original photographs of the excavation of Tutankhamun by a photographer called Harry Burton.

He said ancient Egypt had been his "passion and obsession" for decades.

Rupert Wace has built a significant Howard Carter collection over the years

Mr Wace, who has also accumulated 14 or 15 Carter watercolours, said: "When this suitcase came out from underneath someone's bed and turned up in auction, it caught my eye and I thought that in some strange way it fitted very well with the group of material I already had."

Carter and his team are credited with discovering the treasures of King Tut's tomb during a 1922 dig at the Valley of the Kings.

Antiques expert David Harper said Carter and Mr Healey worked together in Egypt in the 1930s.

Mr Wace also owns a collection of Carter watercolours

While Mr Wace has not yet received the suitcase, he hopes he can loan it out so it can go on public display.

"It was a rather extraordinary price to pay for what appeared to be, and what is on one level, a beaten up old suitcase," he said.

But he added it was impossible to value "because it's a one-off object".