Tutankhamun – A Traveling Fool

As I said in the post just before this one, this is the first time that the entire 5,398-piece complete collection from the tomb of King Tutankhamun has been displayed all in one place. I distinctly remember squeezing through a tight space between his canopic shrine and another displayed artifact (I think it was his throne) back in 2008. This was when everything was jammed into the Cairo Museum in Tahrir Square. It really reminded me of somebody’s attic. So much stuff in such a relatively small space.

Some of the items found in his tomb were used in royal ceremonies and religious rituals, while others were more personal, including his jewelry, clothing, furniture, food and drink, vehicles and weapons. All of the items are grouped as follows in the Tutankhamun Gallery of the GEM:

Discovery – the story of how Tut’s tomb was discovered.
Lifestyle – Tut’s personal possessions.
Rebirth – regarding the Egyptian concept of the afterlife.
Funeral – how his body was preserved, dressed, placed in the three coffins, the sarcophagus, and the multiple shrines, plus the funeral rituals.
Identity –Tut’s family tree.

Tutankhamun was born as Tutankhaten in roughly 1342 BC. His reign was roughly from 1332 to 1323 BC. He was about nine years old when he came to the throne and about eighteen or nineteen when he died. It is thought that he might have died from a combination of malaria and a severe leg fracture.

Since he was born during the reign of Akhenaten, he was named Tutankhaten, which meant “living image of Aten”, because of a major religious shift during Akhenaten’s reign. Instead of worshiping multiple gods, Akhenaten decided that only one god should be worshiped. That was Aten. The Aten was the disc of the sun and originally an aspect of Ra, the sun god in the traditional Egyptian religion. After Akhenaten’s death, Tutankhamun changed his name and returned to the ancient multi-deity religion.

Although he is thought to be the son of Akhenaten by most Egyptologists, there is a debate as to whether Akhenaten was actually his father or maybe it was Smenkhkare. Smenkhkare was a co-ruler of Akhenaten towards the end of Akhenaten’s reign. He also reigned for a short time after Akhenaten’s death before he too died and Tutankhamun took the throne. Tutankhamun was definitely a prince and referred to as the son of a king, but it wasn’t really clear as to which king. DNA testing has confirmed that his father is a particular mummy, but there is a dispute as to whether the mummy is Akhenaten or Smenkhkare.

His mother was definitely not Nefertiti, Akhenaten’s chief wife. DNA testing has identified a female mummy known as The Younger Lady as Tutankhamun’s mother. Both she and Akhenaten are believed to have been children of King Amenhotep III and his chief wife, Tiye. Nothing complicated there.

Tutankhamun’s wife, Ankhesenamun (originally Ankhesenpaaten) was definitely one of Akhenaten’s daughters with Nefertiti. They had two still-born daughters who were buried with Tutankhamun in his tomb. His death was the end of his bloodline. Information about Akhenaten and Tutankhamun is sketchy because their successors tried to erase them from history and so there isn’t as much information about them as with other pharaohs.

The majority of the photos that I took and am sharing here are from the areas of Lifestyle (photos 001 to 008) and Funeral (009 to 017, plus 020 to 027), although the throne was in the section referred to as Identity (018 & 019).

Photo 001 has Tutankhamun’s footwear, which was mostly sandals. 002 is of various chests and other furniture that contained his belongings. Next come some beds in 003. They look pretty uncomfortable to me, especially with those headrests. A few headrests can be seen in the photo to the right behind one of the beds.

Photo 004 shows clothing and some jewelry. Those linen triangles were loincloths.

Several alabaster urns and figures are in 005. Some chairs in 006. Chariots in 007. And a closeup of a chariot in 008.

Moving to the Funeral section of the collection, we have the outermost of the four shrines in photo 009. This were all of gilded wood. The second shrine in 010 had a gilded wood frame on top which held a linen cloth with gilt bronze and rose-shaped sequins. This was called a pall.

Photo 011 shows the 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th shrines in a line. The sarcophagus, the base of which was carved from a solid block of quartzite (the lid is of painted granite), is still in the tomb. I have some photos of that which I will share in a later post when we visit that tomb.

There were three nesting coffins. Photo 012 is of the outermost coffin, which was of embellished gilded wood. The second coffin (013) was also of embellished gilded wood. The third coffin (014), however, was of solid gold. Tutankhamun’s mummy was inside of that coffin, wrapped in funerary wrappings (015) and wearing the magnificent solid gold mask shown in photos 025 to 027.

Photo 016 shows the funerary beds that were found in the tomb and 017 shows an Anubis statue also found in the tomb. The throne, is shown in 018 & 019. It was of wood, overlaid with gold and silver.

Photo 020 shows the garment mannequin of the pharaoh. It is made of painted wood. The Canopic Shrine is in photo 021, with the Canopic Chest and Jars in photo 022. Each jar held a specific internal organ (liver, lungs, stomach, intestines) and normally featured a lid shaped after one of the Four Sons of Horus, who served as divine protectors. In this case, the lids all resembled Tut himself.

The guardian statues of King Tutankhamun (023 & 024) are a pair of life-sized wooden sentinel figures that stood facing each other on either side of the entrance to the pharaoh’s burial chamber. You may remember the photo of these in the tomb when it was discovered from the post about the Griffith Institute at Oxford University in England.

I took numerous photos of the mask from every angle. Here, I have included photos of the back of the mask (025), a side view (026) which shows a bit of the inside of the mask as well, and a full frontal view. Tutankhamun’s mummy remains in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings and will not be moved. We visited the tomb a bit later in this trip and I will be publishing a post of that visit, complete with photos.

Next – The Over Four Thousand Years Old King Khufu Solar Boats at the GEM

Do you want to know why King Tutankhamun’s tomb remained hidden from both tomb robbers and archaeologists for a few thousand years? Just read this post.

The Griffith Institute (established in 1939) is a part of the University of Oxford that concentrates on Egyptology. Its holdings include: manuscripts, excavation records, journals, inscriptions, drawings, watercolors, old negatives, photographs, squeezes, and rubbings. All from Archaeologists and Egyptologists who were instrumental in the archaeological discoveries and knowledge of Ancient Egypt. This collection includes the complete records of the ten-year excavation of Tutankhamun’s tomb which were deposited in the Griffith Institute by Howard Carter’s niece shortly after his death.

Our group met up with our Oxford Tour Director, Sally, at the planned time and place and walked across the street to the Ashmolean Museum. There we were split into two groups – one of twelve people, and the other of six. The group of twelve (which included me) was taken around the corner to the Griffith Institute (photo 001) where we were further split into two groups of six each. One group was taken in hand by one of the people who worked at the Institute, and the other group went elsewhere within the building with another guide.

My group was taken to a smallish room with a table that had six chairs for guests and one for our guide. She started with some documents from Sir W. M. Flinders Petrie. These were some photos with his hand-written labels (002 & 003) and some excavation records with his drawings (004). We were allowed to take photographs. Most of us did so.

Next we were shown Howard Carter’s journal. I took photos of several of the pages that were shown to us. One of the entries that actually moved me more than I had anticipated was the Saturday, November 4, 1922 entry that had one line written diagonally across the page. It said, “First steps of tomb found.” (005). There were audible gasps from pretty much our entire group. The following day, his entry declared, “Discovered tomb under tomb of Ramses VI. Investigated same & found seals intact.” (006)

Tutankhamun had reigned from roughly 1332 to 1323 BC during the Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt and died at the age of about 18 or 19. The cause of death has been debated. Although the tomb had a few items stolen shortly after the burial, it had managed to remain pretty much as it had been when Tutankhamun was buried in it.

In 1145 BC, Ramasses V (reign 1147–1143 BC) started a tomb above it, which was taken over and enlarged by his uncle, Ramasses VI (reign 1143–1136 BC). The rubble from this tomb fell down over the entrance to Tutankhamun’s tomb burying it. Workman’s huts were built over the buried entrance. The tomb was then completely hidden.

I have also included here some of the photographs taken by Harry Burton of Tutankhamun’s tomb and its contents as it was found. In the first one (007), the wall between the two sentinel statues was the plastered over entrance to the burial chamber.

The other two photos show some of the items stacked around in the outer room shown in 007. The oval boxes shown in the center of 008 and to the right in 009 contain food. This was to tide the Pharaoh over, in the afterlife, until his shabti (small figures of workers buried with the Pharaoh) could come magically to life and grow crops, bake bread etc.

Photo 010 is of Howard Carter with Lord Caernarfon at the entrance to the Burial Chamber shortly after they broke through. Tutankhamun’s mask is shown as it was found, still on Tutankhamun’s mummy, in photo 011. The last photo (012) of the tomb shows the entrance to the Treasury, just off of the Burial Chamber.

We then switched places with the other group and went to another room. There we were first shown the early attempts of an Archaeologist/Egyptologist to decipher hieroglyphics (photo 013), prior to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, and some of his other notes and illustrations (photos 014 & 015).

Several drawings and watercolor paintings created by various archaeologists were shared with us as well. Photo 016 shows a drawing of a cache of mummies with a rather grumpy-looking statue at the top, just to the right of the text. Photo 017 shows three watercolor panoramic views of Cairo. Photo 018 shows a watercolor painting of Abu Simbel in its original setting.

Photo 019 shows a watercolor of just the tops of the columns (which were mostly buried in the sand) in what appears to be Luxor Temple in the city that had once been called Thebes. There is also a diagram of the temple (which looks to me to be Luxor and not Karnak) and two smaller watercolor illustrations. I am using the illustration in the lower right, which is definitely of Luxor Temple, to identify the location.

They also shared what is called an archaeological squeeze (020). This is a 3D facsimile of an ancient inscription made by pressing moistened filter paper into the carved surfaces of stone or metal. When dry, the paper was peeled off, leaving a durable, lightweight negative impression that captured the original pretty accurately. This allowed for enhanced readability of the original as well as being able to have a portable version of it.

They thought they were also helping to preserve the artifacts and not causing any damage to them. Turns out that some of the artifacts were damaged as the technique originally involved using a mallet to help create the squeeze. Later the mallet was replaced with a special brush with stiff, closely packed bristles, usually made of horsehair.

They also showed us a photo of the actual item from which the squeeze had been created. It was a relief of Amenhotep III (021).

After this, all twelve of us switched places with the group of six who had gone to the Ashmolean first.

Next – More Egyptian treasures at the Ashmolean Museum