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Tag: Pectoral

Treasures of King Tut – Tutankhamun’s Jewellery and the Love of a Queen

The Golden Mask of King Tutankhamun is one of the highlights of the treasures of KV62. Click the image to skip to the video.When Howard Carter said he spied wondrous things upon cracking open the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922, he wasnt joking. KV62 was filled with probably the most fantastic collection of ancient treasures ever discovered in one place all from beautiful golden coffins, to giant statues, canopic shrines and a golden throne. Tuts own body was literally stuffed with precious jewellery.

In the third instalment of our four-part video series King Tut Revealed filmed by Nico Piazza, and featuring still photography by Sandro Vannini Dr Zahi Hawass, who you can watch in this video revealing the cause of Tuts death and sharing his thoughts on the curse of Tutankhamun(Watch this video by clicking here), tells us about his personal favourites among the many treasures of King Tuts tomb, a large number of which are currently on display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

The Golden Death Mask and the Coffins

I believe it is something that will never be repeated, says Hawass of his first selection, the golden death mask probably the most famous and iconic of all the artefacts found in Tutankhamuns tomb. No artist in the world will be ever be able to repeat it, he says, as were shown some of Sandro Vanninis wonderfully vivid shots of the radiant, enchanting 11kg likeness of the boy king, which was found laid over his face. It is a masterpiece of art, in my opinion, Hawass adds.

Tuts body was discovered lying inside a large nest of coffins. Seven coffins total were found in the tomb (all except one have been removed) its these that Hawass next selects among his favourite treasures. Each coffin can give you amazing and beautiful art, he says, before pointing out how the engravings upon them dont all necessarily portray Tutankhamun as he really looked some of them show Tut as he perhaps wished he looked (he wasn’t the prettiest of chaps, it must be said). Some of what you discover in the tomb is the idealistic life of what he wanted to be, Hawass explains, it is not really realistic art.

The Golden Throne

The most amazing thing they showed in that statue is the love between the king and the queen.

When Hawass himself visits the Cairo Museum, whats the first artefact he goes to look at? I go to the golden throne, he reveals, another masterpiece. Why? Because, beneath that gruff exterior, Dr Zahis a big old romantic at heart. The most amazing thing they showed in that statue, he explains, a small tear possibly forming in the corner of his eye, is the love between the king and the queen.

The eagle-eyed viewer will observe that, in the detailed raised image set on the back-panel of the golden throne, showing the boy king and his bride Queen Ankhesenamun relaxing in a garden pavilion, both figures are only wearing one sandal. So they both got dressed in a rush that morning, right? Wrong: Theyre wearing one sandal only to show that they are sharing everything, explains Hawass. The love was between them, and this is why when King Tut died, Queen Ankhesenamun was so upset. She put a flower it was discovered on his mummy. Sniff pass the Kleenex!

This winged scarab necklace is one of Dr Hawass' favourite King Tut artefacts. Image Copyright - Sandro Vannini.

The Jewellery

The jewellery is amazing, says Hawass, of his final selection among the treasure of King Tuts tomb. Over 104 individual pieces of jewellery including beads, bracelets, rings, amulets and necklaces were found crammed inside the mummy of Tut, as well as strewn around his treasury. They were made from combinations of the most valuable materials the kingdom of Egypt had to offer. The opulence of this pharaohs burial is not to be underestimated.

Hawasss favourite piece is a necklace with a winged scarab (some parts of which, it’s been speculated, come from glass created by a meteor), made from gold, silver, glass and semi-precious stones. Holding the Horus eye and this is a symbol of Osiris are the two cobras, he describes, protecting the king in between. And down, look at the lotus flower. This is in my opinion, a masterpiece. Such tiny, meticulous details in a jewellery item reveal a much larger picture about what inspired artists in ancient Egypt. Art in ancient Egypt was for the sake of religion, according to Dr Hawass.

Coming soon: the final instalment of King Tut Revealed, in which Hawass talks about why King Tuts tomb avoided robbery as others were plundered.

HD Video: King Tut Revealed (Part 3/4) The Treasure

(Click here for the transcript of this video)

Be it insights into the search for the tomb of Cleopatra, sneak peeks at the treasures of King Tuts tomb or new revelations on the riddle of KV63, were videos crazy here at Heritage Key. Sign-up to our RSS feed and get new clips delivered straight to your inbox as soon as they go online. Alternatively, keep an eye on our videos page, where you can take a look at all of our videos to date.

Is King Tut’s Necklace from Outer Space?

An alien necklace in King Tut‘s tomb? Too right, and it’s no myth or quackery. A pectoral found during Howard Carter‘s 1922 expedition to the boy-king’s funerary masterpiece is thought to contain the remnants of a meteor impact in the desert, thousands of years before the first stones were laid in Saqqara. The amazing story began 77 years after Carter’s discovery, when Italian geologist noticed something odd about a yellow-green scarab in the pectoral’s centre. Subsequent tests proved the lump of glass was older than any Egyptian civilization – a lot older, in fact.

After much research, experts traced the scarab back to the Great Sand Sea, 500 miles southwest of Cairo, in which there are huge lumps of glass poking out of the dunes. The general opinion is that a meteor hit the desert thousands of years ago, heating the sand enough to create lumps of glass. To give you an idea of the magnitude of this supposed impact, the first atomic bomb test created a thin layer of glass in the New Mexico desert – chunks of glass the size of human heads can be picked up in the Great Sand Sea.

Experts had long been put off the scarab’s extraterrestrial scent by Carter‘s own definition. In his records, the great explorer describes the jewel as being “greenish yellow chalcedony”. However, Vincenzo de Michele spotted that the gem was in fact natural desert glass in 1999, shooting him to the centre of one of Egypt’s great mysteries: a mystery not least because there’s no evidence a meteor has ever struck the desert.

“If this glass is of meteoric origin then there should be a crater of that age” – Farouk El-Baz

“If this glass is of meteoric origin then there should be a crater of that age,” says Boston University’s Farouk El-Baz. “But we did not find a smoking gun for silica (glass) there.” Chunks of glass were found in the Great Sand Sea by British surveyor Patrick Clayton, in 1932. “He ran into this funny area with this glistening stuff all over the place,” says son Peter. Could the scarab have come from some aliens who crash landed into our planet? There’s certainly no shortage of crackpot theorists who think Egyptians, Mesopotamians and Mayans traveled to the stars – could Tutankhamun have been one of Earth’s earliest cosmonauts? After all, we’ve got RoboScarabs roaming the pyramids!