 Cigars of the Pharaoh ( French : Les Cigares du Pharaon ) is the fourth volume of The Adventures of Tintin , the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé . Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children 's supplement Le Petit Vingtième , it was serialised weekly from December 1932 to February 1934 before being published in a collected volume by Casterman in 1934 . The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy , who are travelling in Egypt when they discover a pharaoh 's tomb filled with dead Egyptologists and boxes of cigars . Pursuing the mystery of these cigars , they travel across Arabia and India , and reveal the secrets of an international drug smuggling enterprise . 
