But how did they get in there?įrom other clues, it became clear to Carter that King Tut’s tomb hadn’t remained completely untouched. When the archeologists untangled the scarf, they found several gold rings inside.
But alongside these priceless items was something conspicuously commonplace-a knotted up linen scarf. Inside a small wooden chest made from ebony and cedar, Carter and his team found a gold-plated leopard head, and a gorgeous pair of ceremonial objects known as the pharaoh’s crook and flail, always depicted as held across his chest. That really got my attention.”Ī solid-gold dagger with an ornately decorated sheath was also found in the folds of King Tut’s mummy placed ceremoniously on his right thigh.
“There were theories that the iron dagger was a gift from a foreign king who would have presented it as a ‘gift from the gods,’” says Mueller, “as an omen of something powerful. On the surface, this iron-bladed dagger doesn’t look like a spectacular find, but King Tut died several centuries before the start of the Iron Age, when advances in technology allowed for the forging of iron and steel from mineral deposits.ĭuring King Tut’s time, the few iron objects on record were made from metals that literally fell from the heavens in the form of meteorites. Here are nine fascinating artifacts recovered from King Tut’s tomb, from the biggest finds to some hidden treasures. “It’s no wonder that these treasures have branded themselves in the international consciousness since 1922.” Most people would recognize the iconic objects from the collection, like King Tut’s solid gold coffin and funerary mask, but even the smallest items-alabaster unguent bowls, King Tut’s walking stick or his sandals-are “works of supreme artistry,” says Mueller, who spent days with museum staff as they restored King Tut’s artifacts for display. “I don’t think there’s anything that can hold a candle to it in terms of outright richness, and in terms of the cultural and archeological information that it contains,” says Tom Mueller, a journalist who wrote a National Geographic article about Carter’s historic discovery and the opening of Cairo’s Grand Egyptian Museum, the new home for King Tut’s treasures. They were nearly intact.Ī century later, the discovery of King Tut’s tomb, which contained more than 5,000 priceless artifacts, remains the greatest archeological find of all time. King Tut may not have been a mighty ruler like Ramesses the Great, whose tomb complex covers more than 8,000 square feet of underground chambers, but unlike Ramesses and other pharaohs, King Tut’s treasures hadn’t been looted or damaged by floods.
“I was struck dumb with amazement.” When Carter’s patron, Lord Carnarvon, anxiously asked if Carter could see anything, the stunned archeologist replied, “Yes, wonderful things.”Ĭarter and the Egyptian team had found the lost tomb of Tutankhamun, the boy king of Egypt, who was buried in a small and overlooked tomb in 1323 B.C. “etails of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold, everywhere the glint of gold,” wrote Carter. Twenty-two days later, Carter descended those stairs, lit a candle, poked it through a hole in a blocked doorway and waited as his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light. It was one hundred years ago on November 4, 1922, that British archaeologist Howard Carter and an Egyptian team discovered an ancient stairway hidden for more than 3,000 years beneath the sands of Egypt’s Valley of the Kings.
0 kommentar(er)
