King Tut
Our good friends Hope and Dave, who live in South Carolina, joined us in Asheville for the weekend. We went to ancient Egypt! Well, it was really a special exhibit at the nearby Biltmore Estate called Tutankhamun: His Tomb and His Treasures.
Over one thousand expertly made replicas were presented in a way that enabled us to experience a bit of the thrill that Howard Carter and Lord Carnavorn must have felt when they entered the 3,300-year-old royal tomb for the very first time. (Replicas were used because the original artifacts can no longer leave Egypt.)
The first part of the exhibit provided historical context. In the early 1800s, the Rosetta Stone unlocked the key to decoding hieroglyphics, thanks to the Greek text inscribed below the Egyptian. In 1922, after fifteen years of fruitless excavations in the Valley of the Kings, Carnarvon was ready to end the project, and Carter convinced him to fund one last dig. We all know what happened next: they discovered the nearly intact tomb of young Tutankhamun.
After a short film, we saw the first room inside the tomb entrance, the Antechamber. In that dark room, we could see three golden animal beds, a golden throne, and a golden chariot that appeared to have been disassembled by tomb raiders.
In the next room, the burial chamber, were four golden shrines of carved, gilded wood, nested like matryoshkas (Russian dolls). These had to be painstakingly disassembled, one by one, in the cramped spaces of the small chamber. A set of smaller replicas was shown un-nested so that we could see the intricate artwork on the sides of each shrine.
Inside the smallest shrine was a stone sarcophagus containing three nested coffins. The outer and middle coffins were made of wood, gilded in gold and decorated with colored glass and gemstones. The innermost coffin was made of pure gold! Inside that golden coffin was Tutankhamun’s mummified body, adorned with gold straps and the famous burial mask.
That magnificent, iconic mask was 25 pounds of solid gold, decorated with inlaid glass and gemstones.
The next room, the Treasury, contained the canonic jars holding the king’s internal organs (removed from the body during embalming), gold collars and finger and toe covers that had adorned the mummified body, and (sadly) the small nested coffins for two stillborn babies who were buried with their father.
A fourth room, the Annex, was connected to the Antechamber. So many items were piled in this room that they covered the floor. The last part of the exhibit showcased hundreds of items from the tomb, ranging from inlaid furniture and senet game boards to statues of Egyptian gods to a golden chariot.
It was fun to see this with our friends and to marvel at the wondrous treasures buried with young Tutankhamun (he was just 18 years old when he died of malaria and an infection from a broken leg). The replicas were stunning, and I hope that one day we’ll be able to visit the new Grand Egyptian Museum and see the original artifacts.
Just for fun: Steve Martin sings King Tut on Saturday Night Live
