On November 4, 1922, English archaeologist Howard Carter found the buried entrance to the tomb KV62 in the famous Valley of the Kings. When the entrance was cleared of sand, there was no limit to the amazement and joy of the scientist - the seals on the doors of the tomb were genuine and had not been opened. He immediately notified his partner, the patron of the arts, Lord Carnarvon about the find.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Carter - Carnarvon tandem had already made a number of discoveries. In particular, with their participation, the tomb of Amenhotep I and the burials of several queens of the XVIII dynasty were found. Due to the outbreak of the First World War, the British suspended work in Egypt. After its completion, excavations continued, but for a long time Carter was haunted by failures.
Archaeological sensation
The discovery of the pharaoh's grave, untouched by the robbers, promised a sensation in the scientific world. Even before its autopsy, Carter determined that it belongs to the little-known pharaoh of the late 18th dynasty - Tutankhamun.
On November 26, 1922, Carter and Carnarvon opened the seals and went downstairs, becoming the first people in the last 3 thousand years to appear in the tomb. When the light of the torches dispelled the darkness, the British could not believe their eyes. Hundreds, if not thousands, of items from the everyday life of the pharaoh lay under a layer of dust in an intact, pristine state. Approaching the sarcophagus, scientists saw that it was intact and was not robbed. It was a sensation!
Carter's archaeological discovery revived interest in Egyptology throughout the world. And the inhabitant of the tomb - young Tutankhamun - became one of the most famous pharaohs of Ancient Egypt. The work on the extraction and description of the objects found here dragged on for several years. And this is not surprising - after all, as it turned out, the tomb contained more than 3.5 thousand objects of art, made in the style of the Amarna period. All of them were transferred to the Cairo Museum.
The most famous of the found artifacts was Tutankhamun's death mask weighing 11.26 kilograms, created from pure gold and decorated with hundreds of precious stones. Also, among the items from the collection of Tutankhamun, scientists have identified a pendant with a winged scarab.
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Made in the technique of cloisonné enamel, the pendant was richly inlaid with semiprecious stones and colored glass. Its main element is the winged scarab beetle, which was a sacred creature in Ancient Egypt, and then a symbol of power.
The reasons why the scarab began to play such a role in the mythology of Egypt is understandable. The instinct of a scarab to roll a ball of dung, moving it in front of him, was associated by the Egyptians with the movement of the solar disk across the sky, which was pushed by the god Ra. Therefore, the scarab was doomed to worship. Beetle figurines made of stone or glazed clay served as seals, medals or talismans and symbolized immortality. Moreover, such amulets were worn not only by the living, but also by the dead.
When an Egyptian priest or official died, a stone scarab was placed in his sarcophagus, or even inside a mummy, in the place of the heart. On the back, smooth side of the pendant, the 30th chapter of the Book of the Dead was often written, beseeching the heart not to testify against the deceased at the trial of Osiris. They did the same with the deceased pharaohs, which is confirmed by a pendant with a winged scarab.
Libyan glass
Undoubtedly, the skill and grace with which the winged scarab pendant was made, classifies it as a masterpiece of jewelry art. The beetle, which is the central element of the product, holds a lotus flower in one hind paw, and an urey or cobra in the other. With his front paws, he supports the boat on which the Eye of Horus (Wadget) is located. Sacred snakes are located on both sides of it. In turn, above the Wadzhet symbol, there is a golden crescent with the image in silver of the main religious cults: Thoth, Ra-Khorakhti and the Pharaoh.
The attention of scientists was also attracted by the material from which the body of the beetle was made. It was tektite, or Libyan glass, a mineral well known since antiquity and used not only in jewelry. Libyan glass was used by armourers, making spearheads, blades and daggers from it for the nobility. The glassy rock is 98% quartz and has a pleasant yellow-green hue.
The largest deposit of this rock stretches for hundreds of square kilometers in the Libyan Desert, in the dunes of the Great Sandy Sea, near the Saad plateau. Individual pieces of Libyan glass weigh a quarter of a centner here. Although the bulk is much smaller and resembles bottle shards, scattered in countless numbers.
Scientists discovered this deposit only in 1816, but it gained worldwide fame in 1932. Then the employee of the "Egyptian Geological Gazette" Patrick Clayton saw these millions of fragments and wrote an article about them. At 200 kilometers from the Clayton deposit, he also found the remains of an ancient military factory that made spearheads, blades, daggers, etc. from the mineral. Some fragments of the "toy warriors" were 100 thousand years old, which indicated that the ancient Egyptians not only knew, but also actively used the deposit.
Comparing the samples of Libyan glass with the material of the body of the scarab on the pendant of Tutankhamun, scientists came to the conclusion that they are identical. At the same time, another question arose - where did the mountains of glass appear in the middle of the desert ?!
From the course of chemistry it is known that glass is obtained as a result of exposure to high temperature sand. Despite the fact that the sun beats down mercilessly in the desert, this is not the temperature to carry out such a process. For transformation, heating is required at least 1700 °. But what could melt tons of sand so much ?! At first, scientists assumed that it could be a super-powerful lightning strike. It has long been known that as a result of such an anomaly, fulgurites appear - sand stones that are sintered from temperature. But it was not clear how the desert could attract so many lightning to get so much glass.
Alien from space
In the 20th century, a version was put forward that the Libyan glass deposit could have resulted from a comet falling into the desert about 28 million years ago. But there was no scientific evidence for this.
In 1996, Egyptian geologist Ali Barakat found a black charred stone in the middle of the specified deposit. Suspecting that it was a type of black diamond called carbonado, Barakat sent it to his colleague Marco Andreoli at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. In turn, Andreoli recruited like-minded people - Professor Ian Kramers from the University of Johannesburg and Dr. Chris Harris from the University of Cape Town. Scientists named the stone "Hypatia" (in honor of the woman mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria). Their research dragged on for years, and only in 2011, the researchers were able to publish the results, which pulled on a mini-sensation.
First, it was found that the oxygen to carbon ratio in the stone was not similar to that on Earth. Secondly, the sample found inclusions of diamonds that could have formed from carbon as a result of the explosion. Third, analysis of the gas contained within the rock showed that the ratio of argon isotopes excluded the terrestrial origin of "Hypatia". And further research brought the understanding that the stone from the Libyan Desert is not a typical meteorite, but an alien from the asteroid belt of the solar system.
Thus, a stone like "Hypatia" is almost impossible to find on Earth. Its closest relatives are microscopic dust in the upper atmosphere and carbon-rich dust in the Antarctic ice. Describing the result obtained, Kramere did not hide his emotions: “This causes real euphoria! When you separate the wheat from the chaff and finally realize that you have reached the truth. " Scientists have confidently stated that "Hypatia" is part of the comet's coal core, which exploded over this area of the desert 28 million years ago.
After receiving such data, the puzzle with the pharaoh's pendant finally came together! Millions of shards of yellow-green glass in the desert are the result of sand melting under the influence of ultra-high temperatures. They were obtained as a result of the fall of a comet in this area. And one of the yellow-green shards found its use in a pendant that the sun-like pharaoh wore around his neck.
Alexey ANIKIN