The tomb I found was a pharaoh’s tomb carved out of the rock in a distant valley not far from the city of Thebes known as the Valley of the Kings. The tomb was hard to find because it was completely hidden away without any obvious entrance. The young Egyptian king Konpakhamen was buried there. He reigned around 1335-1325 B.C. The tomb was of the same type as most royal tombs of the period (known as New Kingdom) (Calvert, “Ancient Egypt, an Introduction”). In particular, a staircase and a lengthy hallway were leading to the rooms full of treasures (Puigdevall 20). Typically for Egyptian tombs, the tomb had the paintings of afterlife scenes on its walls, namely on the walls of the burial chamber. In particular, the west wall depicts a journey of the sun in the underworld as well as portrays the twelve hours of night. It also featured a scarab beetle, which symbolized the Egyptian deity of the rising sun (Moore 75). The east wall in the burial chamber showed the burial of the young pharaoh, namely the ceremony known as the Opening of the Mouth. It also shows the pharaoh’s being welcomed to the afterlife by various gods. The southern wall also shows young Konpakhamen being welcomed by the deities. All the walls in the burial chamber have a bright yellow background and all paintings are done in vivid colors. Also, the walls of the tomb were covered in spells which had to protect the mummy from robbers (Moore 76).
In the tomb, the king’s mummy was found. It lay within a nest of 3 coffins. The innermost coffin was made of gold while the outer coffins were made of wood and gold (Puigdevall 37). The outer coffin had a humanlike shape and reminded a Russian nesting doll because of the two more coffins lying inside. The coffins were each tightly fitted inside the other. The coffins were also stuck together because of the tarry black substance – an ointment – which had been ritually poured over the coffin during the funeral (Pletcher 315).
The king’s mummy was wrapped in linen. The cloth was fastened with inscribed golden bands. It had multiple pieces of jewelry upon it as well as a variety of amulets. The amulets were placed in the king’s mummy for protection. They were made with help of magic, and they were made from semiprecious stones, faience, wood, metal, and gold (Puigdevall 38). The head of the mummy had a golden mask on it. All in all, there were 140 objects on the mummy, including daggers, bracelets, toe sheaths, and the golden finger among other things. These three coffins as well as the golden sarcophagus (Konpakhamen’s death mask) were surrounded by four shrines made of hammered gold over wood and covered in text. All this virtually filled this burial chamber.
Another important chamber in the tomb was the treasury chamber. It contained boxes with seals, inside which there were around 500 objects. In the treasury, the four canopic jars were found (Puigdevall 20). The canopic jars were inside a gilded shrine. They contained the embalmed internal organs of the dead king. Only the heart was left in the body since the ancient Egyptians believed that the dead person needed heart to think just as living people did. Besides, they believed the heart was needed in the body because it was focal in the weighing of heart ceremony which determined if the deceased person was able to enter the afterlife. As to the canopic jars, they had the following organs inside: the liver, intestines, lungs, and stomach. The organs were all kept in special embalming fluid. The lids of the jars were shaped like the pharaoh’s head. The treasury chamber also had two small caskets, each containing an unborn mummified child. These fetuses were his unborn children (Woods & Woods 59).
The remaining room, the annex, was filled with furniture, statues, weapons, clothes, chariots, staffs and many other various things. Overall, there were as many as 2,000 objects of this sort in the chamber (Pletcher 314). Since the ancient Egyptians believed that the journey to the afterlife took a lot of time, they supplied the deceased with food. In Konpakhamen’s tomb, there were six large jars of wine and ten baskets of fruit. Moreover, since ancient Egyptians believed in the importance of look fine in the afterlife, they put over fifty various garments in Konpakhamen’s tomb, including tunics, headdresses, scarves, and gloves. All were made of linen. They also placed fans to keep the king cool. The fans were made of ivory and ostrich feathers. The three chariots were meant to help the king reach the afterlife and move there (Woods & Woods 13). Likewise, the walking sticks, all of which were mad of ebony, gold, silver, and ivory, were meant to help the deceased walk to the destination. Next, the weapons found in the tomb were meant to protect the young king on his dangerous journey to the afterlife. Among those were huge shields and throwing sticks resembling boomerangs. The latter may have been also put to help the deceased hunt for birds in the afterlife. In addition, a board game was found in that chamber. It was called Senet and was meant for two players (Woods & Woods 34). One of the players had to be knocked off during the play. The game was necessary to prevent the king from being bored. Finally, the furniture, including beds, thrones, chests, and stools, was meant to provide the king with the possibility to relax in the afterlife.
- Dr. Amy Calvert, “Ancient Egypt, an Introduction,” in Smarthistory, August 8, 2015, accessed March 22, 2019, https://smarthistory.org/ancient-egypt-an-introduction/.
- Moore, Shannon. King Tut’s Tomb. ABDO, 2014.
- Pletcher, Kenneth (Ed.). The Britannica Guide to Explorers and Explorations that Changed the Modern World. Britannica Educational Publishing, 2009.
- Puigdevall, Federico. The Secrets of Ancient Tombs: Tutankhamun’s Tomb and Other Ancient Tombs. Cavendish Square Publishing, 2017.
- Woods, Mary & Michael Woods. The Tomb of King Tutankhamen. Twenty-First Century Books, 2008.
