From the time I was a child I was in love with the boy king Tutankhamen and I have spent years adoring his images. In the recent BBC series Immortal Egypt with Joann Fletcher I was truly startled to hear a new discovery regarding two of the treasures of Tutankhamen’s tomb. The episode I watched ,”Zenith”, was about the Amarna period covering the rule of Amenhotep III, Akhenaten his son and Tutankhamun his grandson.
For anyone who knows anything of Egyptian history it is understood that Tutankhamun was one of the less important pharaohs. He ruled for almost a decade and died young at the age of about nineteen. Although the treasures of his tomb are today considered amongs the greatest treasures of Ancient Egypt to be found it is acknowledged that his tomb was done in an obvious rush with far less attention paid to detail than in the tombs of other pharaoh’s.
Joann Fletcher, the narrator of this excellent series talked about how the priesthood in Ancient Egypt had been displaced by Akhenaten’s worship of the sun god Aten and how, when Tutankhamum died, they took the opportunity to banish the remains of the Amarna period once and for all. Showing pictures of what Carter found when first entering Tutankhamun’s tomb she explained that the preists literatlly dumped all the artifacts and treasures associated with the Amarna period in the tomb before sealing in up forever. Two of the most notable treasures of Tutankhamum’s tomb are is his royal throne and his spectacular golden death mask. It is about these two items that startling new information was revealed.
On the back of the seat of the famous golden throne is depicted two figures of a man and a woman. Since the throne was found in Tutankhamun’s tomb it was assumed that the two figures were that of Tutankhamun and his Ankhesenpaaten, Tutankhamun’s wife. However, on examination of the image it has been discovered that the crown of the male figure and the headdress of the female had been altered. The startling conclusion is that the throne, although from the Amarna period did not originally belong to Tutankhamen and that the two figures on the back are in fact none other than Akhenaten and Neferetiti.
The second starling revelation was that when the golden death mask was studied it was found there were two different types of gold on it. The gold making up the face and the gold making up the head dress were substantially different enough to conclude that the face of the death mask, that is the face of Tutankhamun, was in fact a later addition welded on top of the original face of the death mask. It was also brough into question as to why the ears of the death mask showed holes in the ears for earings. It was explained that Ancient Egyptian male children wore earings but adults did not. Women however of all ages wore earings and their death masks revealed that there ears were punctured for the insertion of earings. By the time Tutankamun died he was to old to have been wearing earings. It is now believed that the original owner and face on the death mask was that of Queen Neferetiti.
I am amazed at these discoveries. But one of the things that surprises me is that archeologists haven’t realised this before. The tomb was discovered in the early 20th century after all. Surely the holes in the ears, the different types of gold on the mask and the alterations to the relief on the throne would have been obvious. These relics have after all been closely studied for decades. I wonder what else hasn’t been noticed ? Could the stories of the origins of the sphinx and the great pyramid also be an oversight by the learned archeologists ?!
Ancient Egypt 