Tomb Of Tutankhamun Research Articles

An Unedited Hieratic Docket Regarding the Travel Expenses of Tutankhamun’s Funeral Procession (Carter 270b)

Summary Based on an unedited hieratic docket from the tomb of Tutankhamun, this article determines financial aspects of royal funeral processions in ancient Egypt. With reference to written sources from the Middle Kingdom, it is concluded that mechanics to safeguard the ritual’s safety included en route cash payments during the 18th Dynasty. As a result, this study advocates caution when it comes to the assessment of looting activities soon after Tutankhamun’s interment in KV 62.

The High Potential of Micro-Magnetic Resonance Imaging for the Identification of Archaeological Reeds: The Case Study of Tutankhamun

This study explores the potential of micro-magnetic resonance imaging (μ-MRI) for identifying archaeological reeds found in the tomb of Tutankhamun. Reed plants had various historical uses in the past, with ancient Egyptians extensively employing them for crafting a wide range of items. The distinct cross-sectional characteristics of Arundo donax (giant reed) and Phragmites australis (common reed) are observed and described via optical microscopy and μ-MRI in this study. While optical microscopy offers higher resolution, μ-MRI provides advantages for studying archaeobotanical specimens, as it eliminates the need for mechanical sectioning and potentially damaging fragile samples. The application of μ-MRI on a selected archaeological reed allowed us to identify it as Phragmites australis, showing that μ-MRI can yield clear images, maintaining the integrity of the sample. In contrast, diagnostic features appeared greatly deformed on the thin section observed via optical microscopy. Despite the limitations related to the sample size and the need for sample soaking, μ-MRI presents a valuable tool for analyzing archaeological remains in the field of cultural heritage, with the potential for broader applications. Overall, this study contributes to expanding the toolkit available to researchers studying plant remains, providing insights into reed identification and preservation in archaeological contexts.

Mummies, myths, and medicine in ancient Egypt

This year marks the centenary, and the bicentenary, of two crucial revelations about ancient Egypt. The tomb of Tutankhamun, who died aged only 19 years in circa 1323 BCE, with his gold-masked mummy, was discovered in 1922. The young pharaoh was then virtually unknown even to Egyptologists—unlike some other pharaohs such as Rameses the Great, known to the ancient Greeks as Ozymandias. Imagine for a moment that the huge crowds visiting the glittering Tutankhamun exhibitions during the 20th century had been told by Egyptologists: sorry, we do not know this pharaoh's name and have no idea what the hieroglyphic inscriptions on his tomb and its treasures mean.

Review of The Ornamental Calcite Vessels from the Tomb of Tutankhamun


 
 
 Lise Manniche, The Ornamental Calcite Vessels from the Tomb of Tutankhamun. Leuven: Peeters and Griffith Institute Publications, 2019. ISBN 978-90-429-3721-5 / eISBN 978-90-429-3722-2. Pp. Xvi + 46, 55 plates, 25 in color. 62 euros.
 
 

Book Review: The Ornamental Calcite Vessels from the Tomb of Tutankhamun

Book Review: The Ornamental Calcite Vessels from the Tomb of Tutankhamun

Who invented the glasses and when

Glasses, if to sort things out, are one of the most remarkable inventions of mankind, which has given millions of people the opportunity to perceive the world through vision. Prototype of the first glasses — they were the thinnest emerald plates enclosed in a bronze frame — was found in the tomb of Tutankhamun according to historical information. Ancient Greeks and Romans did not know the glasses unlike the ancient Egyptians and used pieces of rock crystal for reading, they preferred to use monocle prototypes, i.e., devices for one eye. Medieval monks also tried to use pieces of rock crystal or quartzite as lenses, which after some time they began to place in a frame. Arabs were the first to come up with a glass ball as an optical device. It is believed that glasses for the protection against the sun and sun glare were invented even earlier than glasses for vision correction. It is noteworthy that this invention belongs not to the southern, but to the northern peoples –inhabitants of Greenland were the first to come up with the use of bone plates with narrow slots that protected eyes from the snow shining in the bright sun.

Processing the Images Obtained by a Laser Scan of the Tomb of Tutankhamun

The possibility of secret chambers in the tomb of Tutankhamun, one of which could be the burial chamber of Nefertiti, was proposed in 2015 by Nicholas Reeves. He published a work in which he used images from high definition laser scans of the walls of the tomb, given by the site of Factum Arte. Reeves argued that in these images it is possible to see the “ghosts” of two hitherto unrecognized doorways. In fact, he is giving in his article - The Burial of Nefertiti? Amarna Royal Tombs Project Occasional Paper N1 - some processed images without discussing the method for processing them. Here, we use the images of the West- and North walls from Factum Arte and apply GIMP and ImageJ for processing them, to see if we obtain the same results given by Reeves.

Shouldering the past: Photography, archaeology, and collective effort at the tomb of Tutankhamun.

Photographing archaeological labor was routine on Egyptian and other Middle Eastern sites during the colonial period and interwar years. Yet why and how such photographs were taken is rarely discussed in literature concerned with the history of archaeology, which tends to take photography as given if it considers it at all. This paper uses photographs from the first two seasons of work at the tomb of Tutankhamun (1922-4) to show that photography contributed to discursive strategies that positioned archaeology as a scientific practice - both in the public presentation of well-known sites and in the self-presentation of archaeologists to themselves and each other. Since the subjects of such photographs are often indigenous laborers working together or with foreign excavators, I argue that the representation of fieldwork through photography allows us to theorize colonial archaeology as a collective activity, albeit one inherently based on asymmetrical power relationships. Through photographs, we can access the affective and embodied experiences that collective effort in a colonial context involved, bringing into question standard narratives of the history and epistemology of archaeology.

Blame the Mummy

Roger Luckhurst, The Mummy's Curse: The True History of a Dark Fantasy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012, 336pp; £18.99 hardbackIn The Mummy's Curse Roger Luckhurst explains why the funerary practices of a long-dead and geographically-distant civilisation came to exercise such a fascination in modern Britain. More precisely, he analyses the way in which Egyptian mummies almost always come trailing disaster in our popular culture. To do so he ranges broadly over a diverse array of cultural phenomena, from exhibitions to supernatural fiction to late-Victorian theosophy. He also pursues the most ephemeral of trails, tracking the circulation of rumours and club-room stories about the dire consequences that ensue for those who meddle with mummies. The most familiar of these curse narratives attached themselves to the Carter-Carnarvon excavation of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922-23, but as Luckhurst shows, such tales of mysterious illnesses and fatal accidents appear long before then.In the first section of this entertaining and thoughtful study Luckhurst outlines the stories that came to circulate around the tomb of Tutankhamun, and around some earlier mummies. The first of these is the 'unlucky mummy' in the British Museum, otherwise Acquisition 22542; this is actually a painted inner coffin lid from the mummy-case of a high-status individual, and was described by the Victorian Egyptologist Ernest Wallis Budge as that of the Priestess of Amen-Ra. Its magical powers first manifested themselves in 1868 at the expense of Thomas Douglas Murray, who was said to have lost an arm in a shooting accident in Egypt immediately after acquiring the unlucky artefact. (In fact he seems to have lost the arm the previous year; and he soldiered on until 1911, leading a relatively uneventful life, unless you count his role in introducing the Pekingese breed to England) In untangling the skein that leads from the actual life of Douglas Murray to the curse legend, Luckhurst introduces us to a complicated cast that includes the amateurs of the supernatural of the Ghost Club, H. Rider Haggard and his friend, the journalist Bertram Fletcher Robinson, and Wallis Budge himself. Luckhurst also trails the version of the mummy curse that came to follow Walter Herbert Ingram, whose 1885 Egyptian souvenir-buying (in this case the painted Coffin of Nesmin, now in the collection of the Rhode Island School of Design) resulted in his death at the hooves of an angry elephant. Again a gap exists between the verifiable facts and the far more lively curse tales that mutated over time to draw in, inter alia, a mummy's hand in the collection of the 'Ripley's Believe It Or Not' museum. While Luckhurst offers some provisional political readings of these curse stories at this juncture (e.g. in terms of their resonance with Britain's military presence in Egypt), he points out that the most interesting things about them is that they appear at all, that is to say that after a long period in which Egypt was more associated with the sublime or with popular antiquarianism, it came to be read in decidedly gothic terms; the stories are part of a more general 'curdling in the English cultural imagination about Egypt' (p83).In the succeeding chapters Luckhurst explores other aspects of the presence of ancient Egypt in modern Britain: commercial entertainments, official exhibitions, mummy fiction, and the late-Victorian revival of magic in the Order of the Golden Dawn and other mystical circles. The rich historical detail of these chapters is impressive, and Luckhurst moves smoothly from the Egyptian Avenue in Highgate Cemetery, to Cleopatra's Needle, to the forgotten novels of Andrew Haggard (brother of H. …

Controlled Damage: The Mechanics and Micro-History of the Damnatio Memoriae Carried Out in KV-23, the Tomb of Ay

AbstractPreliminary study of the damaged royal names and images in KV-23—the tomb of Tutankhamun’s successor Ay—conducted a number of years ago and more recent consideration of the data from that research have enabled an understanding of the mechanics of the damnatio leveled against the monument. This research has also enabled the formation of conclusions regarding some of the symbolic aspects of the destruction. Although the details of the recovered evidence are those of a singular event in a particular tomb, the principles of the mechanics and symbolism underlying the destruction have broader application to our understanding of the process of damnatio in ancient Egypt, though many unanswered questions remain.

In the tomb of Tutankhamun

The rooms devoted to the tomb of Tutankhamun inside the Egyptian Art Museum in Cairo are an exemplary laboratory in which to observe a wide range of relationships visitors have with artifacts: from the most expeditious visit to the most meticulous investigation. This article shows how the funerary furniture of the Pharaoh has been carefully cultivated as a mystery to be deciphered and how from its excavation by Howard Carter to its display inside the museum, the enigma of Tutankhamun has taken unexpected forms, giving us a remarkable opportunity to think about the anthropological implications of assisted curiosity.

The Four Ceremonial Shields From the Tomb of Tutankhamun

Of the total of eight shields from the tomb of Tutankhamun, four are figurative and designed for use as standards; they portray the pharaoh overcoming foreign enemies in various symbolic ways.

Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs

Asense of eager anticipation has descended over the line of people waiting at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in a decor of plywood pillars and flowing drapes. Heavy black curtains part and a group of approximately forty people is herded into a dark room, illuminated sparsely with scorpion shaped wall lights. A screen above our heads shows moving images of Egypt, the tomb of Tutankhamun and Zahi Hawass, Egypt's highest antiquities official, lovingly bending over the king's mummy as if to assure him that CT scanners don't hurt. The voice of Omar Sharif welcomes the visitor in a two-minute introduction. Then a second set of curtains opens and the visitor stands eye-to-eye with the very lifelike wooden torso from Tutankhamun's tomb, a curiously painted figure without arms or legs, perhaps once used as a dress model or a mannequin.

"The Sarcophagus in the Tomb of Tutankhamun": A Clarification

"The Sarcophagus in the Tomb of Tutankhamun": A Clarification

Egyptian Stone Vessels: Khian through Thutmosis IV. By Christine Lilyquist. The Sarcophagus in the Tomb of Tutankhamun. By M. Eaton-Krauss. Stone Vessels, Pottery and Sealings from the Tomb of Tutankhamun. By John Baines.

<i>Egyptian Stone Vessels: Khian through Thutmosis IV</i>. By Christine Lilyquist. <i>The Sarcophagus in the Tomb of Tutankhamun</i>. By M. Eaton-Krauss. <i>Stone Vessels, Pottery and Sealings from the Tomb of Tutankhamun</i>. By John Baines.

Model Boats from the Tomb of Tutankhamun

The 35 wooden model boats found in Tutankhamun's tomb are important in that they represent the last large group of model boats which has survived from Ancient Egypt and are the only complete group to have survived from the 18th Dynasty. They are, therefore, our main evidence 'in the round' for vessels of that period. They supplement the information provided by reliefs and paintings and supply important information on many aspects of Ancient Egyptian boat design and development of the period. This book brings together for the first time all the unpublished information contained in the index cards, notes and sketches of Carter, Mace and Lucas, and in Burton's photographs. The book also contains a study of eleven magical oars discovered in the burial chamber.

Contaminated plant-foods from the tomb of Tutankhamun: A new interpretive system

Abstract The unexpected presence of numerous and diverse vegetal contaminants in recently discovered samples of plant remains from the tomb of Tutankhamun (1325 BC), stimulated the development of a new analytical method for distinguishing the principal Egyptian stored plant-food species from ordinary weed-species even in cases where these species' contaminants were more abundant than those of the plant food species. Furthermore, additional analytical levels allow us to distinguish seeds and fruits which arrived in the samples through cross-storage or cross-processing contamination rather than from field contamination. Whereas Hillman's (1984a, Plants and Ancient Man. Studies in Paleoethno-botany, pp. 127–154, A. A. Bathema) A to D classifications were concerned primarily with identifying the classes of crop product represented by (or in) archaeological remains (and thence the agricultural activities which generated them), this new E to I system of analysis extends Hillman's system to include explicit identification of the source(s) of the various contaminants present within any one of these crop products. The system thus further refines the interpretation of sample composition in terms of past human activities in all cases where the crop product was recovered from a storage context.

Book Review: The Small Golden Shrine from the Tomb of Tutankhamun

Book Review: The Small Golden Shrine from the Tomb of Tutankhamun

The Small Golden Shrine from the Tomb of Tutankhamun

The Small Golden Shrine from the Tomb of Tutankhamun

Nicagoras of Athens and the Lateran Obelisk

One day in the year 326 of our era Nicagoras, torch-bearer of the Eleusinian mysteries, made his way unsuspectingly past the buried tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings near Thebes, and climbed towards the entrance of the tomb immediately above it. Though it had itself long since been robbed, the making of Ramses VI's sepulchre had at least produced a generous scree, to which Tutankhamun owed his current oblivion and future fame. Scrambling cautiously over this, and the accumulation of sand and stones in the tomb's entrance, Nicagoras followed his dragoman down a long corridor. We can tell from its thick encrustation of graffiti that this tomb was by far the most popular with visitors; and Nicagoras's practised guide knew exactly what appealed to the different sorts of people who made up his clientèle. Learning that the Athenian was a priest, and a cultured man with philosophical interests, he made a point of stopping in front of a scene which shows the soul standing before Osiris, the god of the dead, thanks to which this tomb is sometimes called the ‘Tomb of Metempsychosis’.