c) Imagine you are Howard Carter. You were fortunate to find King Tut's tomb
intact. Describe what you saw in the burial chamber. Describe King Tut's coffins
and their contents.
Answers
Answer:
We look at Tut’s tomb and the gold treasures it contained with astonishment. But in Antiquity Egypt’s gold was already legendary. Few people ever got to see royal tomb’s contents with their own eyes, but looking at the size of the pyramids, one could only imagine fantastic riches. The wealth accumulated inside the temples was also out of sight but people got a glimpse when the gods’ statue was carried on a gilded ship during great festivals.
To express how disappointed he was at not having received the solid gold statues he expected, a foreign King reminded Pharaoh that in Egypt “gold is as plentiful as dirt”.
Untold Story: Tomb Looting in Ancient Egypt
Hole dug in Tutankhamun’s tomb by plunderers, as Tut's treasure was twice looted in Antiquity
One of the holes dug in Tutankhamun’s tomb by plunderers not long after the burial. Harry Burton © Copyright Griffith Institute, University of Oxford
But being buried with lavish treasures, hoping it would help provide eternal life, therefore, turned out to have the opposite effect. During three millennia, over 300 Kings ruled Egypt, but however tall their pyramid was or deeply carved their tomb was, the thieves always found a way to get in. What is often untold about ancient Egypt is that nearly all the many hundreds of tombs built for royals and nobles were looted in antiquity.
The prime role of the ‘house of eternity,’ the tomb, was to shelter the body of Pharaoh for his eternal life. Wrapped in fine linen, gold jewelry and amulets, the mummies were protected inside stone sarcophagi weighing dozens of tons. But thieves, only interested in treasure and quick fortune, at best shredded to pieces the mummy, at worst simply burnt it, for quicker access to its gold riches.
By the time of Cleopatra, the tourist visiting the Valley of the Kings could only report that “most of the tombs had been destroyed”.
Thieves First On The Scene: 19th Century