King Tutankhamun

King Tutankhamun was a pharaoh of ancient Egypt at 9 years old. He was buried in the valley of kings, located in Thebes. Tutankhamun and his tomb were studied by various number of historians, such as Howard Carter. He wasn’t important when he was the ruler although thirty-two centuries after his death is when he became most famous. This was after Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamun in 1922. Due to his short reign and the change of religion his father had made, Tut spent much of his reign repairing the damage and restoring the old religion.

He was also trained by the memory of his father’s change. He was also thought to be either sick or he had died form an injury at the age of 19, further limiting his chances of having a long, important reign. However, the discovery of his tomb made him significant and important in the modern day. Most of the tombs of the pharaohs have been lost, so when King Tutankhamun’s tomb was intact when discovered, it was historically significant.

His tomb was small, likely due to an unexpected death, but filled with thousands of treasures. The tomb included his intact burial mask, coffins and sarcophagus. All his burial treasure was still intact, as well, which was unheard of or pharaoh tombs. His artefacts taught Egyptologists much about the tomb and burial traditions of the era, and his artefacts regularly appear in museums of the world. In recent years, the most delicate items have been kept within Egypt’s borders for safe-keeping.

The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb was important as it was the first royal Egyptian tomb that archaeologists discovered intact and in excellent condition, his tomb was discovered by a British archaeologist Howard Carter. The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb began when Carter convinced Carnarvon to obtain the concession of all the major finds in the Valley of kings. The outbreak of WW1 forced the two to postpone their work. Carter began his excavation November 10th 1925, he removed the lid off the third coffin, and found the second and first stuck together.

His first attempt of removing the coffin from the tomb and placed them outside where the sun might warm the unguents to soften them. This failed even though the temperature reached 65 degrees. Since this did not work Carter and his team used paraffin wax lamps to heat the contents to more than 500 degrees this allowed to separate slowly. Carter discovered Tutankhamun’s collection is the most complete royal treasure ever discovered, consisting of more than 3850 artefacts. For e. g. golden shrines, jewellery, and weapons.

Although Carter discovered Tut’s tomb, Yasmin from the Egyptian museum states that only now archaeologists have discovered that Tut’s head dress and face weren’t originally meant to be together because only women and children had their ears pierced, whereas Tut’s ears were pierced. His face mask also was originally for a woman causing them to make one to fit Tut’s face and screw the head dress together. The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb was important because his tomb was placed under ground with 4 other rooms.

As soon as you walk through the passage way the first room you see is the antechamber, this is where the larger objects were placed, for example, couches, chairs and 700+ more. To the right there was the burial chamber, which is where his tomb was placed, connected to the burial chamber was the treasury room, this is where all the important/ significant objects were, they believed all the artefacts placed in this room would go into the afterlife with him. The last room was the annex, in this room was smaller items, for example, food, pots, wines etc. Tutankhamun’s tomb was also very important because two robberies had occurred in the annex.