Episode 21 The Discovery of Tutankhamen’s Tomb
The History of Ancient Egypt
Professor Robert Brier
Film Review
Tutankhamen (aka King Tut) was the son of Ankenaten (see Egypt’s Ankenaten: The World’s First Monotheistic Ruler). Most of this lecture concerns the long search for his tomb in the Valley of the Kings. It was Howard Carter, a self-taught working class archeologist who searched for, and ultimately found, the lost tomb. Owing to the efforts of later pharaohs to obliterate any historical record of Ankenaten and his descendant, archeologist had no knowledge of his existence prior to Carter’s discovery of Tutakamen’s name in a cartouche* in the Valley of the Kings in the early 1900s.
After a five-year, Carter ultimately found Tutakamen’ tomb in 1922. Unlike most tomb in the Valley of the Kings, it was totally undisturbed and still contained Tutakamen’s mummy in the sarcophagus.
It took a full year to carefully clear all the beautiful golden furniture and utensils from the outer chamber.
Tutakamen’s mummy (the only intact mummy ever recovered from the Valley of the Kings) was found inside a 250 pound solid gold coffin inside a large stone sarcophagus, inside a wooden shrine in the burial chamber. The tomb contained no inscriptions or papyri describing who his parents were. The burial chamber also contained his throne and baby sandals.
*Inscribing their name inside a cartouche was the primary way Egyptians pharaohs designated their divinity.
Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.
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