Tutankhamon's tomb
Tutankhamon's tomb
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Everything began eight years before that memorable morning of november 4th 1922, when the excavators’ picks discovered the first of the sixteen steps that led to Tutankhamon’s tomb. Since 1914, LordCarnavan and Howard Carter had from the Egyptian government the permit to excavate in the valley of the kings, although, according to the experts and to the direction of the department of ancientness in Cairo, the place “didn’t offer any possibility of new discoveries”. But Carnava and Carter were of a different idea, although the reason on which they had their hopes of finding a tomb, precisely Tutankhamon’s one, were very fragile and based on finds from previous archaeological compaigns: a ceramic cup with the pharaoh’s name, a broken wooden case with little gold leaves with the same name, terracotta vases where the linen bandages from Tutankhamon’s funeral ceremony were put. The archaeologist’s confident instinct, the unshakable faith in his own luck and more than six years of tenacious researches guided Carter to the entrance of the tomb, among the remains of workers’ huts of the XX dynasty. Lord Carnavon was then in England but, called by a telegram from Carter, he reached Luxor twenty days later with his daughter to supevise the opening of the first door, which resulted already violated and sealed again. Ahead there was a corridor ten meters long full of debris, at the end of which the excavators found a second door with Tutankhamon’s seals broken: even it, in remote epochs, had been passed by clandestine visitors. Carter made an opening in the top left corne and introduced a candle and what he saw left him stupified: he had before his eyes the fullfillment of every archaeologist’s dreams. When november 27th the door was finally opened, even Lord Carnavon, his daughter Lady Evelyn and the Egyptologist Callender, who had arrived at the news of the discovery, saw by a strong electric leght, precious cases sparkle, a gold throne, alabaster vases, strange gold heads of animals guarded, one before the other, by two statues with gold aprons and sandals; but among so many treasures there was no sarcophagus nor a mummy! The discovery of another door, the third one, that had marks of breaking and a following sealing made their hopes rise, although they didn’t understand why the thieves bothered to penetrate beyond the third door, before taking what they could from the previous room. And the surprises weren’t over yet. A little side room was full to the brim with ornaments and precious objects of every kind, removed and partly damaged by mysterious visitors. The material already found was enormous, and the work of classification, of cataloguing, removing and preserring that had to be begun was great. With the first-class experts, consultancy (photographers, designers, chemists, historians, engineers, botanists), sent from the best american and european universities and museums, the first object was unburied december 27th and the work to remove it went ahead for almost two months: the antechamber alone held about seven-hundred pieces and some cases required, alone, whole weeks to be emptied of the precious objects, arms and clothes. There were three cumbersome coffins, a throne with a decorated back and four carriages that, which for their size, couldn’t be introduced in one piece in the tomb, had been sawed into various pieces, that the thieves had then scattered about. For the middle of February in 1923, the antechamber was cleared and the second door, whch they hoped hid the mummy could be opened. February 17, twenty people (members of the government and scientists) had been admitted inside Tutankhamon’s tomb to be present at the opening of the door behind which they supposed the mummy was, while Carter began to remove the layer of rocks in complete silence. As soon as the opening was wide enough to introduce an elettric light, before his eyes a great vision appeared. It was a wall of solid gold that later resulted to be the front wall of the most precious and biggest mortuary coffer ever discovered. Two hours of hard work allowed the disoverers to penetrated in the sepulchral chamber, and the coffin appears all covered in gold, on the sides of which two azure majolica shiny panels were insterted covered by magic signs. Its size was so great that it left them stupified: 5,20 x 3,35 x 2,75 m. The great doors in wings of the eastern part were easily opened because thay weren’t scaled, but the second beautiful coffin they enclosed, had a seal: intact! The mummy hadn’t been violated. Tutankhamon rested in his tomb exactly as he had been put in it thirty-three centuries earlier. The present ones’ emotion was so deep, that the adjacent chamber of the treasure (that held artistic objects of incalculable value) was hardly noticed. The successive surveys around the discovery lasted many years. In 1926 the gold coffin was opened and the following year the four coffins one inside the other, wer extracted and separated, in total, made of about eighty walls; their transport required eighy-four days of hard work. The last coffin held the enormous casket obtained by a single block of yellow quartz , covered by a granite slab. Inside there were linens, under which the king appeared. It wasn’t yet the mummy, but a gold portrait of the young pharaoh: the head in “tutto tondo” had the face in pure painted gold, the eyes in aragonite and ossidiana, the eyelids and the eye brows in lapislazuli; even the hands were in “tutto tondo”, the body was instead worked in bas-relief. When on november II th 1927, Tutankhamon’s mummy was given to the experts, it was immediately evident that the oils and resins had hardened and glued everything. Except the face, the feet and the hands that were covered in gold, the oxidation of the resin mixtures had completely carbonized the tissues and the bones.
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