Tutankhamen became
pharaoh at 12, was married to his half-sister at 13, and was dead at 18. Known
to the modern world as King Tut, he was a minor figure in Egyptian history. However,
he has become one of the most famous names in ancient history, more famous than
all the great pharaohs of Egypt because of his burial place. How did this
happen?
Tut’s is the only
tomb of a pharaoh that has been discovered intact. The tombs of all the other
kings were broken into and robbed of their treasures almost before the dead
kings were buried. His relative unimportance as a pharaoh was the reason his
tomb remained undiscovered for 3,300 years. When the tombs of later, more
important pharaohs were excavated, the debris from the digs was piled high at
the entrance to Tut’s tomb. This debris kept Tut’s relatively modest tomb
hidden for centuries.
If it hadn’t been
for the persistence of Howard Carter, a British archaeologist, Tut’s tomb might
still be hidden. From information Carter discovered in Egyptian hieroglyphics,
he knew it had to be somewhere in a certain area of the Valley of the Kings. Where
exactly, he could only guess. For six years, Carter and his team searched and
dug and at times came within a few feet of the opening of Tut’s tomb.
Then one day in
1922, one of the team members poking around in the rubble gave an excited
shout. He had found steps cut into the rock. Carter and his team began to dig;
they uncovered thirteen steps which led to a passageway. At the end of the
passageway, Carter found a door with a seal bearing the name Tutankhamen. It
looked as if the seal had not been broken.
Carter was certain
that he had at last found the tomb of the boy king. He chiseled a hole in the doorway
and held up a lantern. He gasped. His team asked, “What do you see?” He
answered breathlessly, “Wonderful things. Gold!!!” What Carter didn’t realize
was that he was looking into an outside chamber, or annex. The “gold” that gleamed
in the light of his lantern was “golden,” but not gold. The objects were
painted with gold leaf. There were toys, chariots, furniture, animals, and
images of the boy king and his wife. It wasn’t until after months of careful
digging and cataloging that Carter and his team came upon the real treasure in
Tut’s tomb. When they finally entered Tut’s actual burial chamber, they found a
huge stone tomb. It was about eight feet high and it took weeks to remove the
massive lid.
Inside lay the real
treasure: three coffins, each fitting one inside the other. The two outside
coffins were made of wood, exquisitely carved to look like the boy king. Each
was painted with gold leaf, and inlaid with semiprecious stones. Upon opening
the second coffin, Carter gasped. The third coffin was not of gold leaf, but of
pure gold. It was gold of the finest quality, carved and polished into a
perfect likeness of the boy king. He was shown sleeping, his face peaceful and
beautiful.
But the
wonders did not end there. After cleaning and polishing the golden coffin,
Carter pried open the lid. He expected to find the mummy wrapped in drab linen
bandages. Instead, the head and chest of the mummy were covered with a
beautiful golden death-mask. It was a perfect copy of the face on the three
outer coffins.
Carter’s six year
search for the tomb of King Tut had ended. Little did Carter realize when he
began, what an enormous treasure he would find.
