Details about Tomb of Tutankhamun

Tomb of Tutankhamun

Pharaoh Tutankhamun also known as King Tut was the last Eighteenth Dynasty Pharaoh from 1334 to 1325 B.C. in the New Kingdom Period. Tutankhamun has made one of the famous pharaohs not for his achievements, including wars won, or politics, but for different, less historically important in relation reasons such as how his tomb and treasures were found intact and he was buried in an unmarked grave and also the way he died at an age deemed inappropriate for a man of his stature, as many believed in the olden days that a king could not die so young, especially with broken femur and skull bones, and his minister marrying his widow after his death and declaring himself a king.

All of these intriguing occurrences plus the fact that the curse of the pharaohs linked to the tomb of King Tut has been exaggerated in films and video games made King Tut the most well-known pharaoh for reasons that are certainly not of historical relevance or what he accomplished during his brief reign as ruler of Egypt, but rather due to the mysteries and enigmas surrounding some of which were thought to be the oldest species' murder ever documented.

The burial site of King Tutankhamun some say belonging to the Eighteenth Dynasty seems to be familiar, however, it is one of the most appreciated ones for the reason that it is the only burial site of a king in the Valley of Kings whose burial goods were found undisturbed. The tomb was found on the 16th of February 1923; he told that the English archaeologist Howard Carter was the first person in history to discover the heart of the tomb of King Tut and that no one set foot into the tomb for 3000 years prior to his arrival.

The so-called Valley of the Kings, located on the west bank of the Nile River near Thebes, and for 450 years during the New Kingdom of the Ancient Egyptians, which lasted from 1539 to 1075 BC, was a cemetery for the pharaohs of that period, where in this rocky valley, which has an area of about 20,000 square meters, there are 27 royal tombs belonging to three dynasties, the 18th, 19th and 20th Egyptian dynasties that have been discovered to this day.

It is estimated that there are at least 30 more tombs hidden within the basin. As for the tombs already found within the Valley of the Kings, which are listed below in the order of their disocvery, the tombs belong to Thutmose I, Amenhotep II, Tutankhamun and Horemheb of the 18th Dynasty, Ramses I, Seti I, Ramesses the Great, Amenemhet II, Seti II, Sabtah of the 19th Dynasty, Set Nakhty, Ramesses III, Ramesses IV, Ramesses V, Ramesses IX belonging to the 20th Dynasty. There are other tombs with unidentified kings, however, a knowledge about those rulers is still being sought.

The building of the pharaoh's tomb almost always began a few days after he had been declared the pharaoh of Egypt and the construction almost always lasted many years, and the laborers worked using primitive equipment like an axe to create long trenches and small chambers in the ground, and later on, there were tombs erected above other tombs, and the making of new tunnels and trenches many times caused the blocking of the entrances of the tomb of the older pharaoh and this chaos in the pyramid building process is what contributed to the preservation of these riches from stealing for the many years.

On November 4, 1922, when the British archaeologist and historian of ancient Egypt Howard Carter was excavating at the entrance to the tunnel leading to the tomb of Ramses IV in the Valley of the Kings, he noticed a large vault and continued careful excavation until he entered the room that houses the tomb of Tutankhamun On the walls of the room containing the tomb were wonderful drawings that told in the form of pictures the story of Tutankhamun's departure to the world of the dead, and the scene was very impressive to the scientist Howard Carter, He was holding a light and gazing through a hole into the chamber when his aide reportedly said, "Can you see anything?" “Yes, I see wonderful things,” Carter said.

In the room where Tutankhamun's coffin is located, Howard Carter, born in 1874 and died in 1939, became the first person after 3000 years on 16th February, 1923. As Carter surveyed the room, he spotted a central, inlaid gold carved, wooden box and upon lifting the box, he discovered that the box was hiding yet another box which was also elaborately decorated with gold inlay, and upon further lifting of the second box, he found that the second box was also hiding box number three which had the same gold embellishment and when he lifted the third box, Carter reached the room where the Sarcophagus was situated and this was housed in a rather massive carved stone which depicted the image of the young king Tutankhamun and lifting this stone cover revealed to Carter the lavishly designed golden sarcophagus of the same statue of King Tut and this golden coffin was also holding two golden coffins of the likenesses of the boy king.

Carter had to cut through three golden sarcophagi to get to Tutankhamun's mummy. Howard had difficulty lifting the third golden shroud that covered Tutankhamun's mummy from the mummy, so Carter thought that exposing the shroud to the heat of the hot Egyptian summer sun would be able to separate the golden shroud from the mummy, However, his efforts were unsuccessful, and in order to access the mummy, which was covered in layers of silk, he had to rip the golden shroud in half. 

After removing the shroud made of silk, he found Tutankhamun's mummy in full adornment of necklaces, rings, crown and staff, all of which were made of pure gold, to remove these artifacts, the excavation team had to separate the skull and the main bones from their joints, and after removing the jewelry, the team reinstalled the skeleton of the mummy and placed it in a wooden coffin.