King Toet revives in Amsterdam

Last week the exhibition 'Tutankhamun, his grave and his treasures . was opened in Amsterdam ’ opened. The exhibition contains accurate replicas of all the artifacts that Egyptologist Howard Carter found in the virtually intact tomb of this pharaoh ninety years ago. The discovery of his tomb made Tutankhamun one of the most famous kings of ancient Egypt. And that while 'King Tut' was not a great ruler, and relatively little is known about his life.

“Can you see anything?” an uptight Earl George Herbert of Carnavon asked Egyptologist Howard Carter as he carefully inserted a candle through the small hole in the sealed wall of a newly discovered tomb in the Valley of the Kings. "Yes," Carter stammered as his eyes adjusted to the three-thousand-year-old darkness. “Beautiful things…”

On November 4, 1922, Carter and his team of Egyptian workers discovered steps leading to a stone door near Thebes (now Luxor). The seal on the door seemed intact. That indicated that the tomb had not been violated by grave robbers. Immediately Carter sent a telegram to Lord Carnavon, the funder of his research:"A remarkable discovery at last made in the Valley. Tomb with unbroken seals. Leave everything as it is and wait for your arrival. Congratulations.

In the presence of Lord Carnavon, Carter and his team cleared a thirty-foot-long corridor of debris and stones, only to arrive at a new sealed door at the end. When that door was opened, Carter saw clearly for the first time what he had already seen in the dim light of his candle.

Life-size statues and strange animal heads, golden beds, a beautifully decorated throne, a gravestone, gilded chariot parts. On the threshold lay a withered grave wreath. No one had been in here for over three thousand years.

Immeasurable gilded shrine

Carter and Carnavon were only standing in the antechamber of the tomb. Here were Pharaoh Tutankhamun's personal belongings, items used at his funeral, and supplies of food and drink left behind for his journey to the realm of the dead. When the archaeologists had numbered, photographed and carefully brought all the objects from the anteroom to the laboratory, a laborious task that took months, they turned to the mysterious north wall of the room.

Two wooden guard figures protected a plastered door there. Carter began to hack open the door slowly and carefully. After ten minutes, a hole was formed large enough for a torch to pass through. “The light was a marvelous sight,” Carter wrote in his report. "For there, about three feet from the door, stood what appeared to be a strong wall of gold, stretching as far as the eye could see."

As Carter and Carnavon chopped on, it became clear what the strange gold wall was:'We were at the entrance to the actual burial chamber, and what barred our way was the side wall of an immense gilded shrine, serving to cover the sarcophagus and to protect.'

There appeared to be only half a meter of space between the painted walls of the burial chamber and the golden shrine. Carter noted:"From the beginning to the end the shrine was covered with gold, and on the sides were panels, inlaid with beautiful blue china, on which were repeatedly represented magical symbols, intended to give strength and security. On the north side were the seven magical oars which the king would need to sail the waters of the underworld.”

Matryoshka dolls

The doors of the shrine were unsealed, and for a moment Carter and Carnavon feared that the shrine's contents might have been looted by grave robbers. “We eagerly pushed back the bolts and opened the doors. Inside was a second shrine with similar bolted doors, and on the bolts was a seal that was unblemished.”

Ultimately, the archaeologists would have to open four shrines, stacked together like matryoshka dolls. In the last shrine was a double sarcophagus containing the mummified body of the dead king, wearing a solid gold death mask, the finest ever found in an Egyptian tomb. A second door in the wall of the burial chamber led to the treasury.

Inside it turned out to be the most beautiful treasures. Beautiful statues of the king, some wrapped in colorful linen cloths. The showpiece was a gold case, guarded on four sides by statues of goddesses, who seemed to be looking anxiously over their shoulders.

In it were four canopies, vases in the shape of gods with the embalmed entrails of the king. All this beauty has hardly been tarnished by the ravages of time.

From Tutankhaton to Tutankhamun

For all the pomp and circumstance Carter found in Tutankhamun's underground tomb, his tomb was hastily and simply constructed. In fact, his tomb was somewhat shabby compared to other pharaohs of the mighty Eighteenth Dynasty. This is partly because Tutankhamun was a weak ruler during a troubled period in ancient Egypt.

His predecessor, Pharaoh Amenopsis IV, had radically broken with the religious tradition of ancient Egypt during his reign. Until then, Egyptian religious life consisted of the worship of an entire pantheon of gods, headed by the sun god Amun. Amenopsis introduced a form of monotheism. Henceforth only one god should be worshipped, Aton, the sun disk. Amenopsis changed his own name to Akhnaten.

Akhenaten had the ancient statues of Amun destroyed and built a new temple at Karnak, which he called "Aton Is Found." The new sun god could see everyone shining in the sky every day, so statues were no longer necessary. Because the sun god Aton created the world anew every morning at sunrise, there was no longer room for an afterlife and the god Osiris, the ruler of the realm of the dead. Akhnaten thereby abolished the beloved Egyptian death cult.

Akhnaten's reforms were understandably unpopular, but presumably could be pushed through because Akhnaten still had full control of the military. His heir apparent, originally called Tutankhaton, "the living image of Aton," inherited an empire full of disaffected citizens. When he became pharaoh at the age of eight, a high priest named Eje saw an opportunity to restore stability to the empire. He forced the boy to renounce the new faith, restore the old gods and change his own name to Tutankhamun.

Strawman

For the rest of his short life, Tutankhamun was basically a straw man for Ay and a certain Horemheb, the highest general of the army. They had seized power after Akhenaten's unpopular and failed reforms and decided together what happened. Although Tutankhamun is regularly depicted riding a chariot and victorious on the battlefield, few conquest campaigns were actually undertaken. Eje and Horemheb were mainly busy strengthening their own power base.

When Tutankhamun died at the age of eighteen, Ay led his funeral. Why Tutankhamun died so young has never been clarified. The high priest then became Pharaoh himself and ruled for a short time, after which he was expelled from the throne by Horemheb. It was all pharaoh power play full of conspiracies. Aje and Horemheb may have conspired to kill him. However, extensive examination of the king's body has revealed no signs of violence.

Archaeologist Carter aptly articulated Tutankhamun's weakness as a pharaoh when he said, "With our present state of knowledge, we can say with certainty that the only special feature of his life was that he died and was buried." That was ninety years ago, but in the meantime not much has been clarified about the life of 'King Toet'.

Necropolis Police

The special thing is that his grave was hidden well enough not to be discovered by looters. Valuable jewelery and pieces of gold furniture were usually left behind in the royal tombs. The perfume, textiles and good wines, which the king would certainly need in the afterlife, also attracted grave robbers. The special necropolis police, who had to guard the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, had their hands full.

“Nevertheless, Tutankhamun's tomb has never been completely unscathed, at least not the antechamber,” says Dr. Ingrid Blom-Böer, Egyptologist and associated with the Tutankhamun exhibition. “In the first years after the death of the pharaoh, something has indeed disappeared. Some chests were knocked over and the contents of many chests do not quite match what they say."

The fact that the robbers only stole small objects is thanks to the necropolis police, they may have been caught red-handed. The seal that Carter found on the door is therefore not the original, it was applied later by the necropolis police. The seal on the shrines was original.

The tomb of Tutankhamun found in 1922 has the code name DK-62 (DK stands for Valley of the Kings). Another grave was only discovered in 2005. Who DK-63 belongs to is still unknown. “The count is now official at DK-65, but only embalming materials were found in that tomb,” said Blom-Boër. “There is still a lot to discover under the Egyptian sand. Also in the cellars of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo are all kinds of objects that we want to investigate. But permits are rarely issued to start digging.”

Permits and research money are the recurring problems in Egyptology. “The extremely slow bureaucracy in Egypt does not make the work any easier,” says Blom-Böer. “Not to mention the troubled situation in the country. And we would like to explore so much more.”