Eileen Ogintz, Tribune Content Agency

Let’s hear it for ambitious kids!

A 12-year-old boy named Hussein was desperate to get a job on Englishman Howard Carter’s archaeological dig in Luxor, Egypt. It was 1922 and Carter was struggling. For years, he’d been searching unsuccessfully for the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, the “boy king,” who died as a teenager.

His patron, George Herbert, the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, and an avid collector of Egyptian antiquities, told Carter he was cutting off his funding after the season. (You may better recognize Lord Carnarvon because his family are the owners of Highclere Castle, the setting for "Downton Abbey".)

Carter kept brushing off young Hussein, said our Abercrombie & Kent guide, Essam Zeid, an expert Egyptologist. But the boy refused to give u

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