AKHENATEN/TUTANKHAMUN

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Egypt's antiquities chief Dr. Zahi Hawass speaks to the
media near the tomb of King Tut in the famed Valley of the
 Kings in Luxor, Egypt Sunday, Nov. 4, 2007. The mummy
of the 19-year-old pharaoh, whose life and death has
captivated people for nearly a century, was placed in a
climate-controlled glass box in the tomb, with only the face
 and feet showing under the linen covering.

(AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

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VIDEO





http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=4858191&ch=4226714&src=news

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                                      T H E   H A P P I E S T   P H A R A O H





by Jimmy Dunn

Today, I have a vision of a sort of Pharaoh reunion.

Everyone is hanging about, many of whom are very much alive, while others are somewhat weaker, struggling for breath at times. Indeed, not all of  them are here. Many from the intermediate periods
did not make it and, apparently, even a few from other more prominent times have left the world of
the living for good.

Some of them, while strong and healthy, are not altogether pleased about the presence of some of
their companions. Clearly, Tuthmosis III really did not expect to see Hatshepsut so strong and alive,
and no one particularly wanted or expected to see Akhenaten, as healthy as ever.

Among the strongest and most healthy we find Ramesses II (he worked very hard for this), Djoser and Khufu. Tuthmosis III, perhaps the greatest empire builder in Egyptian history is strong enough, and Cleopatra (VII), though most of her Alexandria is now gone, survives very well.

But among their midst is an irony.

He was a child king, hardly living into adulthood, with probably nothing to show for his own efforts. Even though his reign was pivotal in the 3,000 year reign of ancient Egyptian religion most, if not all, of this was not his doing. He had not the time to establish himself, and some of his successors even tried to eliminate any possibility of his eternal life.

Yet, here he is, his chest heaving with pure air, his heart beating with the steady confidence of a
top athlete, stronger and healthier than even the most elite among the Pharaohs, for his name
is on everyone's tongues, and this is what matters most to all of the Pharaohs. Tutankhamun.

To the ancient Egyptians, an individual consisted of a number of different parts, which is not altogether different than those of religion view individuals today.

Even now, we think of a person as having a body and a soul, or spirit. The ancient Egyptians thought the same thing, but added to this mix was a persons name, his shadow and other elements (though this is a slightly simplified explanation of the ancient Egyptian's idea of a soul). All of these elements were important, but perhaps most important of all, at least for eternal life, was the name. If one's name was not remembered, there was little hope for the soul to live on after the physical death of the body. As long as the pharaoh's name was remembered, the king would live on through eternity, and none of their names are remembered better than that of King Tut.

Of this group of great men, he must be the happiest of all, not to mention very fond of Howard Carter, even though he did rob his tomb one last time.

In ancient Egypt, kings played the Pharaoh's game, though we should probably not call it a game, because they were dead serious about the outcome. They imagined that they could control their own fate, and the fate of their predecessors by usurping their names on statues, or sometimes by completely obliterating a foe's name from the historic record.

Hatshepsut more or less, mostly more, usurped the throne from her stepson, Tuthmosis III. It may have been good for him, allowing him to mature and become the great commander that he was, but it didn't please him. After her death, he went about methodically removing her name, and so he thought her chances for eternal life as well, from the monuments that she built while king (in ancient Egypt, a king was a king, female or male). What he couldn't remove, he built walls around, such as her Obelisk at Karnak. However, that act only helped to preserve her monument, and her name lives on today and so, according to the ancient Egyptian religion, so does she.

Everyone tried to kill off Akhenaten's hopes for an eternal life. He was the heretic king who, while attempting to radically alter ancient Egyptian religion, abandoned the priests of Amun and the other age old deities of Egypt. His successors tried to remove his name from every source, including the lists of Kings that were kept in holy places. But the city he built at modern el-Amarna was left to the desert sands which, in many ways, protected it for prosperity, and his radical beliefs found for him not oblivion but posterity. He may live on, healthy and viral, but perhaps not a favorite of the gods.




And then...... there's King Tut.


After the death of his presumed father, Akhenaten, the old religion was restored, making his reign pivotal in Egyptian history, but this was almost certainly not his work.

Personally, he may not be able to claim a single building project of his own, and much of the wealth even in his tomb was not his, but gifts from others. It was surely Ay and Horemheb who held the reins of power during Tutankhamun's kingship, and after the young king's death, Horemheb took back much
of the work performed in the young king's name, by usurping inscriptions with his own name.

Like his father, Tut's name was also omitted from the various Kings' lists. In fact, were it not for Howard Carter, he might not have made the reunion of Pharaohs at all.

But fate plays strange tricks.

What little he had, compared to some of the greater kings of ancient Egypt, was discovered mostly intact in his tomb. Even the grave robbers played into this divine poker hand, not plundering his tomb completely, like so many others.

                             


Today marks the opening of the King Tut exhibit and not since Tutankhamun's tomb was discovered has

he been better known to the world. And since an attribute of ancient Egyptian religion was that,

indeed, fame lead to eternal life for the pharaoh, today King Tut must be one of the happiest pharaohs

who ever lived, and lived on.


http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/tut.htm

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An elaborately decorated miniature coffin, seen here on display at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia in January 2007, is among the treasures found in King Tutankhamun's tomb that are now on a popular world tour. The tiny sarcophagus once held the mummified remains of the boy king's liver.

The tour, called "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," recently left Philadelphia and will open again in London on November 15.

Today's move of Tut's mummy to a public display case is expected to sustain the young pharaoh's unrivaled popularity, said Egyptologist Kent Weeks.



"I don't know that Tutankhamun himself would have complained too much about being moved", Weeks said. "At

least we're all repeating his name."



http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/11/photogalleries/tut-display/photo6.html






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                                                Tut fever brings a golden glow to London





By Jeremy Lovell
Fri Nov 9, 11:41 AM ET
 
LONDON (Reuters) - Four London landmarks will be bathed in golden light every night next week to mark the return to the city for the first time in 35 years of the treasures of Tutankhamun, Egypt's boy king.

The Tower of London, the Wellington Arch, the London Eye and the O2 arena, which will house "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," will be lit up in gold to emulate the precious metal that the tomb's discoverer Howard Carter said he saw everywhere in 1922.

"The Tower of London is a well-known iconic building that is recognized worldwide," said Ann Wilson, head of sales at the Tower.

"So in addition to its own role as a leading tourist attraction and World Heritage Site, these types of lighting projects are an interesting and contemporary way of engaging with the cultural life of London," she added.

Organizers have already sold 325,000 advance tickets for the exhibition which opens on November 15 and runs through August 2008.

When the boy king's 3,500-year-old burial artifacts first came to London in 1972, queues stretched around the block at the British Museum, as Tut fever took the nation by storm.

By the time the exhibition ended after six months, more than 1.6 million people had handed over the 50-pence admission fee.

Many of the same artifacts are back, although not the death mask which is too fragile to travel from Egypt. However, the adult admission charge is now 15 pounds and the venue, in Greenwich, is far less accessible.

In all, 130 objects will be on display, including 50 from the tomb itself such as a coffin made of gold and precious stones, and the boy king's royal head dress.

The show, which tours the world raising money towards preserving Egyptian antiquities, attracted 4 million visitors during a two-year stay in the United States.

(Reporting by Jeremy Lovell; editing by Andrew Dobbie)

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                                  T H E   S E A R C H   F O R   T U T A N K H A M U N




Howard Carter's records of the five seasons of excavations,

financed by Lord Carnarvon,

in the Valley of the Kings 1915 - 1922






        © Griffith Institute

Griffith Institute, Oxford OX1 2LG




Concept and Direction: Jaromir Malek

Design: Gregor Neunert and Jonathan Moffett

Scanning: Gregor Neunert

Transcript: Lindsay Allen, Gregor Neunert and Jaromir Malek



This website was created with the financial support of

The Theban Foundation

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Introduction to 'The Search for Tutankhamun'





The website demonstrates that the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun by Howard Carter in November 1922 was not accidental but the result of a combination of a well-reasoned systematic search and exceptional archaeological intuition. It is remarkable that Carter's inclination was always to return to the area where the tomb was eventually discovered.



1. The transcript.

This is based on Carter's Notebook E. Its accuracy can be checked by clicking on the 'Journal of Excavations' in the right top-corner and comparing it with the scans of the original hand-written Notebooks.
The coments in italics have been added by us and are intended as a help for the users of the website.



2. The photographs.

The photographs which can be connected with a specific excavation season are listed, in a chronological order, under the heading of the appropriate season (and, in some cases, there are also links to these photographs in the transcipt). A list of the photographs which are not dated is given at the end of the listing of the seasons.
 
The whole photographic documentation can be easily surveyed in the Gallery of photographs in which all pictures are listed in the order of the Griffith Institute numbers. The Gallery also contains links to concordances of photographs based on Carter's numbering of these photographs, as well as links to panoramic views and views showing the progress of excavation.



3. The maps.

The Index of Maps lists all Carter's maps which were used in the compilation of this database. In most cases, Carter wrote a map reference next to the find number in his Notebook. In the transcript, this is linked to the appropriate square of Carter's map where the find is underlined in red.
Maps of the Valley of the Kings, based on B. Porter and R. L. B. Moss, Topographical Bibliography, which show the areas where Howard Carter worked during the 2nd to 5th seasons (and also the beginning of the 6th, the Tutankhamun season), have been added by us. The current area is indicated in red, while areas previously worked on are marked in green.


Gregor Neunert and Jaromir Malek

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Journal of Lord Carnarvon's Excavations
in the Valleys of the Tombs of the Kings.
Giving the order and position of objects found

by

Howard Carter

Griffith Institute, Oxford, Carter MSS. I.J.387 = Notebook E
(another copy, Carter MSS. I.J.386 = Notebook D)

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Gallery of photographs, Excavation Seasons 1915-22

(Carter MSS. I.J.319-385)
(as catalogued in the Griffith Institute)


http://griffith.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/




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AS MOST OF US HAVE, AT ONE TIME OR OTHER, READ THE ACCOUNT OF THE DISCOVERY OF

TUTANKHAMEN'S TOMB, FEW OF US HAVE SEEN PHOTOGRAPHS OF THIS NOTABLE EVENT.


SO, HAVING FOUND THE FULL ILLUSTRATED DOCUMENTARY, I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT APPRE-

CIATE SEEING IT THE WAY HOWARD CARTER SAW IT.


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(Carter MSS. I.J. 319) Postcard.
[View of tombs KV 9 Ramesses VI and KV 8 Merneptah.]

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