TREASURES FROM THE TOMB by TODD FARLEY
BRITISH archaeologist Howard Carter spent more than a decade in the early 1900s fruitlessly sifting through the sands of Egypt’s Valley of the Kings for his patron, Lord Carnarvon. But after 15 years of toil, Carter finally struck gold in 1922: He found steps going down into the desert floor that would reveal a buried tomb, its doors still sealed shut.
After its entrance was pried open, Carter held a candle into the darkness and gasped. When Lord Carnarvon asked if he could see anything, Carter famously replied “Yes, yes, wonderful things,” Toby Wilkinson writes in “Tutankhamun’s Trumpet: Ancient Egypt in 100 Objects From The Boy King’s Tomb” (Picador, May 2022).
Eventually found to house the mummified remains of an Egyptian pharaoh named Tutankhamun, the discovery would ultimately be hailed as the “greatest archaeological discovery of all time,” Wilkinson writes. Nearly 5,400 cultural, political, religious, and historical objects were found inside. Combined, they depicted what life was like in the Nile Valley during King Tut’s reign more than 3,000 years ago.
Here are 10 of the most interesting items they found:
The Coffin Texts: Included in Tut’s tomb was the Book of the Dead, including the “Negative Confession” from Chapter 125. Egyptians believed in order to gain entry into the afterlife, the deceased had to declare — twice! — before Osiris and a godly tribunal that he or she had not committed various sins, including “I have not killed,” “I have not impoverished my fellows,” “I have not taken milk from the mouths of children .... I have not committed buggery.”
The Little Golden Shrine:
A wooden shrine built atop a silver base, the piece is overlaid with gold foil and depicts 18 scenes of domestic bliss between King Tut and his young wife, Ankhesenamun. One of the most intimate shows Tut hunting while Ankhesenamun lounges on a river bank, with the queen handing the king an arrow. It shows the “black plain” of the Nile Valley rich with fish and wildlife, but the piece has a deeper meaning because “shoot” and “inseminate” are the same word in Egyptian and the arrow represents a phallus. The scene is thus a kind of ancient African porn, “a metaphor for sexual intercourse and procreation,” according to Wilkinson.
Daggers made of iron and gold: While most of the booty found in King Tut’s tomb were spread over 4 large rooms, some were so invaluable they were placed preciously near to the pharoah’s body. Those artifacts included two daggers placed on his person: A gold one was tucked inside the linen wrappings of the mummified Tut’s waist and signified the pharaoh’s great wealth; an iron one was hidden in the wrappings of Tut’s right thigh and represented his reach, as iron was a “great rarity” in Egypt and thus the “ultimate status symbol,” Wilkinson writes. Only the rich had gold in Egypt and the powerful iron, with the pharaoh Tut possessing both.
The Canopic Chest: Many of the items in Tut’s tomb imply a lovely Egyptian life of decorative clothes and jewelry, delicious food and drink, elaborate toys and games — but the Canopic Chest reminds that the tomb is a graveyard, too. The chest entails four miniature coffins of gold placed in a solid block of calcite, each containing a body part of the deceased pharaoh. In one was his liver, another his lungs; in the third was his stomach and the fourth his intestines, all embalmed to stave off “putrefaction” so Tut could continue to use the organs as needed in the afterlife.