Discovering Tut :The Saga Continues

A. R. Williams

The Mummy of King Tut

As the mummy of King Tut was glided for performing a CT scan, angry winds stirred and dark clouds covered the stars. His scan was being done to unearth the mysteries that had surrounded his death.

Tourists had lined to pay their respects to the ‘mummy’ of the famous Egyptian king Tutankhamun and made speculations about his untimely death.

Tut’s Life• Reign : Given his age, the king

probably had very powerful advisers, presumably including General Horemheb and the Vizier A.Y.Horemheb records that the king appointed him "lord of the land" as hereditary prince to maintain law. Healso noted his ability to calm the young king when his temper flared.

• Domestic policy :In his third reignal year, Tutankhamun reversed several changes made during his father's reign. He ended the worship of the god Aten and restored the god Amun to supremacy. The ban on the cult of Amun was lifted and traditional privileges were restored to its priesthood. The capital was moved back to Thebes and the city of Akhetaten abandoned.

• This is when he changed his name to Tutankhamun, "Living image of Amun", reinforcing the restoration of Amun.

• As part of his restoration, the king initiated building projects, in particular at Thebes and Karnak where he dedicated a temple to Amun.

• Many monuments were erected, and an inscription on his tomb door declares the king had "spent his life in fashioning the images of the gods". The traditional festivals were now celebrated again, including those related tothe Apis Bull Horemakhet, and Opet .His restoration stela says:“The temples of the gods and goddesses ... were in ruins. Their shrines were deserted and overgrown. Their sanctuaries were as non-existent and theircourts were used as roads ... the gods turned their backs upon this land... If anyone made a prayer to a god for advice he would never respond.”

Burial treasures of Tut• The treasures of Tutankhamun have

been marveled at since their discovery by Howard Carter on November 4, 1922. It was the first, and to this day the only, royal tomb in the history of Egyptology to be found practically untouched, even though in ancient times it had been the object of no less than two attempts at robbery.   The emptying of Tutankhamun's tomb lasted several years and made possible the recovery of about 3500 articles, confirming the tomb as the most exceptional archeological discovery ever made in Egypt.

• Tutankhamun’s second innermost coffin, also referred to as the intermediate coffin is made of gilded, laminated wood with inlays of polychrome glass pastes.

• Tutankhamun's third coffin is made of solid, hammered gold and weighs about 450 pounds. The royal mummy of Tutankhamun was found inside this coffin

• Tutankhamun's famous gold funerary mask rested directly on the pharaoh's mummy inside the third coffin. The pharaoh wears the classic names headdress striped with transversal bands of glass paste imitating lapis lazuli and is adorned with a wide collar composed of streaks of semiprecious stones and colored glasses. The eyes are made of quartz and obsidian.   As on the coffins, the lapis-lazuli outline of the eyes reproduces the distinctive kohl eye make-up originally applied to protect against the sun's glare but increasingly employed for its beautifying effect.

• The foremost and furthermost gilded wood statuettes portray Tutankhamun hunting hippopotamus with a harpoon from a boat made of papyrus.

• One of the two calcite lamps found in Tutankhamun's burial chamber.  The cup takes the form of an open lotus flower and is flanked on both sides by rich, openwork decoration in which the god Heh is depicted kneeling on a number of papyrus plants with his arms raised.

• Three models of luxury ships (left) were found in Tutankhamun's tomb. The baldachins at the bow and stern are decorated with symbols of the sphinx and the bull. Thirty-two model boats were placed in the tomb for Tutankhamun's use in the afterworld

The Valley of Kings

The ancient cemetery of the great king Tutankhamun

The Curse• A cobra killed Howard Carter's pet canary after

the discovery of King Tut's tomb.• Lord Carnarvon, the person who funded the dig

of King Tut’s Tomb, died shortly after the discovery, due to a mosquito bite which turned into an infection. At that exact moment the lights in Cairo mysteriously went out.

• Lord Carnarvon's dog howled and dropped dead at two in the morning when Carnarvon died.

• What is interesting is that Howard Carter lived a decade after this major discovery.

• In 1923, another man involved in the opening of the tomb, George Jay Gould, died as a result of a fever followed by Carnarvon's half-brother Aubrey Herbert in 1923; Egyptologist H.E. Evelyn-White; radiologist Sir Archibad Douglas-Reid; Howard Carter's assistant Richard Bethel; his father Lord Westbury; Egyptologist A.C. Mace; Egyptologist James Breasted in 1935; and finally Howard Carter in March of 1939.

• Although some believe that the deaths may just be coincidental, many believe that the deaths were a result of the mummy's curse.

• It is believed several of the deaths could be linked to a released mold that had been trapped in the tomb and released.

• New findings are showing that bacteria on the wall of the tomb might have been the cause of the curse. The bacteria would release spores into the air allowing it to be breathed. This in turn caused people who came into contact with these spores to become ill.

Tut’s family history Amenhotep III (Tut’s father or grandfather) ruled for almost four decades during the 18th dynasty golden age. He was succeeded by his son Amenhotep IV who pioneered one of the odd periods in the history of ancient Egypt. He made some drastic and unpleasant changes. He promoted the worship of the Aten, the Sun disk, and changed his name to Akhenaten. He moved the religious capital to the new city of Akhetaten. He made some drastic unpleasant changes. He destroyed the images and temples of Amun, a major god. After his demise, a ruler named Smenkhkare reigned for a brief time. Finally, Tutankhaten(the name was later changed to Tutankhamun) took the throne and restored the old order destroyed by his predecessors. He reigned for about nine years.

The role of Science & Technology in the discovery of Tut

• Egypt’s famed King Tutankhamun suffered from a cleft palate and club foot, likely forcing him to walk with a cane, and died from complications from a broken leg exacerbated by malaria, according to the most extensive study ever of his mummy.

• The findings were from two years of DNA testing and CT scans on 16 mummies, including those of Tutankhamun and his family, the team that carried out the study said in an article to be published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

• It also established the clearest yet family tree for Tut. The study said his father was most likely Akhenaten, the pharaoh who tried to revolutionize ancient Egyptian religion to worship one god — while his mother was a still unidentified sister of Akhenaten.

• Tut, who became pharaoh at the age of 10 in 1333 B.C., ruled for just nine years at a pivotal time in Egypt’s history. While a comparatively minor king, the 1922 discovery of his tomb filled with stunning artifacts, including the famed golden funeral mask, made him known the world over.

• Speculation had long swirled over why the boy king died at such a young age. A hole in his skull long fueled speculation he was murdered, until an X-ray scan in 2005 ruled that out, finding that the hole was likely from the mummification process. The scan also uncovered the broken leg.

The CT scan In the year 2005, (more than 3,300 years after his death), King

Tut’s mummy became one of the first mummies to undergo a CT scan-“in death, as in life, moving regally ahead of his countrymen.” The CT scan was led by Zahi Hawass and done with a portable CT machine. The scan came up with new clues about his life and death. It provided precise data for an accurate forensic reconstruction of King Tut. Due to sand in the cooler fan of the CT machine, they had to use two plastic fans to complete the scanning process.

Tut’s body was examined over a computer screen with the help of the CT scan. It showed a grey head, neck vertebrae, a hand, several images of the rib cage and a transection of the skull. After collecting the data for scan, the Pharaoh is sent back to the place he belonged, i.e. his coffin. It was a relief for Zahi Hawass as “nothing had gone seriously wrong” with the mummy.

After their observations, when they left, the wind had stopped and the surrounding came to a deathly silence. In the sky, just above the entrance to Tut's tomb stood Orion, the constellation, also called by the Egyptians as the soul of Osiris, the God of afterlife, watching over the boy king.

THE MYSTERY STILL CONTINUES…

Made By:Shashwat Mishra 6069 XI-F