The Autopsy Of The Tomb Of Tutankhamun (1922) - Alternative View

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The Autopsy Of The Tomb Of Tutankhamun (1922) - Alternative View
The Autopsy Of The Tomb Of Tutankhamun (1922) - Alternative View

Video: The Autopsy Of The Tomb Of Tutankhamun (1922) - Alternative View

Video: The Autopsy Of The Tomb Of Tutankhamun (1922) - Alternative View
Video: Soon After King Tut's Tomb Was Unsealed, a Weird Series of Phenomena Began to Occur 2024, March
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Tutankhamun (Tutankhaton) - Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt from the XVIII dynasty of the New Kingdom, reign, approximately 1332-1323. BC e.

According to the general custom in ancient times, the deceased was placed in the grave everything that was considered most valuable for him during his lifetime: to kings and nobles - signs of their dignity, to a warrior - his weapon, etc. But they all "took" with them almost everything collected for your life, gold and other objects that do not give in to decay. There were such kings and rulers who took the entire state treasury with them to their tombs, and the people, mourning the king, mourned the loss of all their wealth.

So the ancient tombs were treasures in which untold riches were hidden. To protect them from plundering, builders built entrances inaccessible to outsiders; arranged doors with secret locks, which were closed and opened with the help of a magical talisman.

What efforts the pharaohs did not make in order to protect their tombs from looting, no matter how sophisticated they tried to resist the all-destructive time, all their efforts were in vain. The genius of their architects was not able to defeat the evil will of man, his greed and indifference to ancient civilizations. The countless riches that were supplied to the afterlife for the departed rulers, their family members and important dignitaries, have long attracted greedy robbers. Neither terrible spells, nor careful guards, nor the clever tricks of architects (camouflaged traps, walled up chambers, false passages, secret stairs, etc.) helped against them.

Due to a happy coincidence, only the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun remained the only one that survived almost completely intact, although in ancient times it was plundered twice. The discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun is associated with the names of the English Lord Carnarvon and the archaeologist Howard Carter.

Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter

Lord Carnarvon, heir to a huge fortune, was also one of the first motorists. In one of the car accidents, he could barely survive, and after that he had to give up his dreams of sports. In order to strengthen his health, the bored lord visited Egypt and was interested in the great past of this country. For his own amusement, he decided to engage in excavations himself, but his independent attempts in this field were unsuccessful. Money alone was not enough for this, and Lord Carnarvon lacked knowledge and experience. And then he was advised to seek help from the archaeologist Howard Carter.

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1914 - Lord Carnarvon saw the name of Tutankhamun on one of the faience goblets discovered during excavations in the Valley of the Kings. He met the same name on a gold plate from a small cache. These findings prompted the Lord to procure permission from the Egyptian government to search for the tomb of Tutankhamun. The same material evidence supported G. Carter, when he was overcome by despondency from a long, but unsuccessful search.

Tutankhamun's tomb found

Archaeologists searched for the tomb of the pharaoh for 7 long years, but in the end they were lucky. Sensational news spread throughout the world in early 1923. In those days, crowds of reporters, photographers and radio commentators flocked to the small and usually quiet town of Luxor. From the Valley of the Kings, reports, messages, notes, essays, reports, reports, articles were rushed every hour by telephone and telegraph …

For more than 80 days, archaeologists traveled to the golden coffin of Tutankhamun - through four outer arks, a stone sarcophagus and three inner coffins, until in the end they saw someone who for a long time was only a ghostly name for historians. But at first, archaeologists and workers discovered steps that led into the depths of the cliff and ended at the walled entrance. When the entrance was freed, behind it there was a descending corridor covered with fragments of limestone, and at the end of the corridor there was another entrance, which was also walled up. This entrance led to the anterior chamber with a side storeroom, the burial chamber and the treasury.

Having made a hole in the masonry, G. Carter put his hand with a candle there and clung to the hole. “At first I saw nothing,” he later writes in his book. - Warm air rushed out of the chamber, and the candle flame began to flash. But gradually, when the eyes became accustomed to the twilight, the details of the room began to slowly emerge from the darkness. There were strange figures of animals, statues and gold - gold shimmered everywhere."

In the tomb

Tutankhamun's tomb was actually one of the richest. When Lord Carnarvon and G. Carter entered the first room, they were stunned by the number and variety of objects that filled it. There were chariots studded with gold, bows, quivers of arrows, and shooting gloves; beds, also upholstered in gold; armchairs covered with the smallest inserts of ivory, gold, silver and gems; magnificent stone vessels, richly decorated caskets with clothes and ornaments. There were also boxes of food and jars of long-dried wine. The first room was followed by others, and what was found in the tomb of Tutankhamun exceeded the wildest expectations of the expedition members.

Tutankhamun's golden sarcophagus weighing 110 kg
Tutankhamun's golden sarcophagus weighing 110 kg

Tutankhamun's golden sarcophagus weighing 110 kg

The fact that the tomb was found at all was in itself an incomparable success. But fate smiled at G. Carter once again, in those days he wrote: "We saw what no man of our time was awarded." From the front chamber of the tomb alone, the British expedition took out 34 containers full of priceless jewelry, gold, precious stones and magnificent works of ancient Egyptian art. And when the members of the expedition entered the burial chambers of the pharaoh, they found here a wooden gilded ark, in it another - an oak ark, in the second - a third gilded ark, and then a fourth. The latter contained a sarcophagus made of a single piece of the rarest crystalline quartzite, and in it two more sarcophagi.

The north wall of the sarcophagus hall in the tomb of Tutankhamun is painted with three scenes. On the right is the opening of the mouth of the pharaoh's mummy by his successor Ey. Until the moment the mouth was opened, the deceased pharaoh was depicted in the form of a mummy, and after this rite he already appeared in his usual earthly image. The central part of the painting is occupied by the scene of the meeting of the revived pharaoh with the goddess Nut: Tutankhamun is depicted in the robe and headdress of the earthly king, holding a mace and staff in his hands. In the last scene, the pharaoh is embraced by Osiris, behind Tutankhamun is his "ka".

The ancient Egyptians believed in the existence of several souls in man. Tutankhamun had two "ka" statues, which were carried in the honorary row during the funeral procession. In the pharaoh's burial chambers, these statues stood on the sides of a sealed door leading to a golden sarcophagus. The "ka" of Tutankhamun has a youthfully beautiful face with wide-set eyes, gazing with the impassive stillness of death.

Ancient sculptors and painters repeated it many times on chests, chests and arks. The dimensions of the statue of the spirit-twin helped scientists to establish the growth of the pharaoh himself, since according to the funeral traditions of the ancient Egyptians, these dimensions corresponded to the growth of the deceased.

Tutankhamun's "ba" guarded a wooden sculpture depicting the pharaoh on the burial bed, and on the other side a falcon overshadowed the sacred mummy with its wing. On the figurine of the pharaoh, archaeologists saw the carved words with which the pharaoh addressed the goddess of the sky: "Come down, mother Nut, bow down over me and turn me into one of the immortal stars that are all in you!" This sculpture was one of those sacrifices that the courtiers presented to the already deceased Pharaoh as a promise to serve him in the afterlife.

Pharaoh's mummy

In order to get to the sacred mummy of the pharaoh, archaeologists had a chance to open several sarcophagi. “The mummy lay in a coffin,” writes G. Carter, “to which it adhered tightly, since, having lowered it into the coffin, it was filled with aromatic oils. The head and shoulders, right up to the ribcage, were covered with a beautiful golden mask, reproducing the features of the king's face, with a headband and a necklace. It could not be removed, since it was also glued to the coffin with a layer of resin, which thickened into a rock solid, like a stone."

The coffin, which contained the mummy of Tutankhamun, depicted in the image of Osiris, was entirely made of massive gold sheet with a thickness of 2.5 to 3.5 millimeters. In its form, it repeated the previous two, but its decor was more complex. The pharaoh's body was protected with their wings by the goddesses Isis and Nephthys; chest and shoulders - kite and cobra (goddesses - patrons of the North and South). These figurines were superimposed on top of the coffin, with each feather of the kite filled with pieces of gems or colored glass.

The mummy lying in the coffin was wrapped in many swaddling clothes. On the upper one were sewn hands holding a whip and a rod; under them was also a golden image of "ba" in the form of a bird with a human head. At the places of the sling there were longitudinal and transverse stripes with texts of prayers. When G. Carter unrolled the mummy, he discovered many more jewels, the inventory of which is divided into 101 groups.

Treasures from the tomb

So, for example, archaeologists found two daggers on the body of the pharaoh - a bronze and a silver one. The handle of one of them is adorned with gold grain and framed with interwoven cloisonne enamel ribbons. At the bottom, the decorations end with a chain of curls of gold wire and rope ornament. The hardened gold blade has two longitudinal grooves in the middle, crowned with a palmetto, above which a geometric pattern is located with a narrow frieze.

Throne of Tutankhamun
Throne of Tutankhamun

Throne of Tutankhamun

The forged mask that covered the face of Tutankhamun was made of a thick sheet of gold and richly decorated: stripes of a scarf, eyebrows and eyelids were made of dark blue glass, a wide necklace shone with numerous inserts of gems. The Pharaoh's throne was made of wood trimmed with gold leaf and richly decorated with inlays of multi-colored faience, gems and glass. The legs of the throne in the shape of lion paws are crowned with lion heads of chased gold; the handles are winged serpents coiled into a ring, supporting the pharaoh's cartouches with their wings. Between the props behind the back of the throne are six Ureis in crowns and with solar disks. All of them are made of gilded wood and inlaid: the heads of the Ureis are made of purple faience, the crowns are made of gold and silver, and the sun discs are of gilded wood.

On the back of the throne there is a relief image of papyri and water birds, in front there is a one-of-a-kind inlaid image of the pharaoh and his wife. The lost gold ornaments that connected the seat with the lower frame were an ornament made of lotus and papyrus, united by the central image - the hieroglyph “sema”, symbolizing the unity of Upper and Lower Egypt.

In Ancient Egypt there was also a custom to decorate the bodies of the deceased with flower wreaths. The wreaths that were found in the tomb of Tutankhamun did not come down to us in very good condition, and two or three flowers, at the very first touch, generally crumbled into powder. The leaves were also very brittle, and the scientists kept them in lukewarm water for several hours before starting research.

The necklace found on the lid of the third coffin was made up of leaves, flowers, berries and fruits, various plants, mixed with blue glass beads. The plants were arranged in nine rows, tied to semicircular strips cut from the papyrus core. As a result of the analysis of flowers and fruits, scientists were able to establish the approximate time of burial of Pharaoh Tutankhamun - it happened between mid-March and the end of April. It was then that cornflowers bloomed in Egypt, the fruits of mandrake and nightshade, woven into a wreath, ripened.

In beautiful vessels made of stone, scientists also discovered fragrant ointments with which the pharaoh had to anoint himself in the afterlife, as he did in earthly life. These perfumes, and after 3000 years, emitted a strong aroma …

Now the treasures from the tomb of Tutankhamun are exhibited in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and occupy 10 rooms there, the area of which is equal to a football field. With the permission of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, research was carried out on the mummies of famous pharaohs. The most modern technology was used in the work, forensic doctors and even experts from Scotland Yard were involved in the case, who took X-rays of Tutankhamun's skull and found traces of a deep wound on the back of his head. And the English detectives came to the conclusion that this was a criminal case, and 3,000 years ago the 18-year-old ruler of Egypt fell victim to a palace coup and died instantly from a strong blow.

N. Ionina