DISCOVERING TUT

The saga continues

About the author
◦ Ann Williams is a former senior writer for National
Geographic magazine and online news, where she covered
the world and all that’s in it for almost three decades.
◦ She specialized in archaeology, writing features that took her
from Egypt to Alaska, a monthly piece for the Ancient Worlds
section of the magazine, and news stories on the latest
archaeological discoveries.
◦ Williams received a B.A. in classical and Near Eastern
archaeology from Bryn Mawr College and an M.A. in West
Asian archaeology, with minors in Egyptology and Akkadian
cuneiform, from the University of Toronto.
◦ She and her husband live in Silver Spring, Maryland, and
travel whenever they get the chance.
The Egyptian history
◦ The history of Egypt has been long and wealthy.

◦ The civilization of Ancient Egypt was located along the

Nile River in northeast Africa. The Nile was the source
of much of the Ancient Egypt's wealth.

◦ the history of Ancient Egypt into three major kingdoms

called the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, and the
New Kingdom.

◦ The Ancient Egyptian Empire began to weaken in about

700 BC. It was conquered by a number of other
civilizations. The first to conquer Egypt was the
Assyrian Empire, followed a hundred or so years later
by the Persian Empire.

◦ In 332 BC, Alexander the Great of Greece conquered

Egypt and set up his own ruling family called the
Ptolemaic Dynasty. Finally, the Romans came in 30 BC
and Egypt became a province of Rome.
WHAT ARE MUMMIES?
◦ The afterlife was an important part of Ancient Egyptian culture. One of the ways they prepared for
the afterlife was to try and preserve the body as long as possible. They did this through a process
called embalming. These embalmed bodies are called mummies.

◦ Embalming-it is the process of introducing a disinfectant solution to the internal environment of the
body when someone passes away .

◦ A mummy is a dead human or an animal whose skin and organs have been preserved by either
intentional or accidental exposure to chemicals, extreme cold , very low humidity or lack of air so
that the recovered body does not decay further if kept in cool and dry conditions.

◦ In the Egyptian religion, the body was needed in order for the soul or "ba" of the person to unite with
the "ka" and body of the person in the afterlife. The body was an important part of the afterlife and
they wanted to preserve it forever.
Mummification Process
◦ Announcement of death
◦ Embalming the body
◦ Removal of brain
◦ Removal of internal organs
◦ The canopic jars (a covered jar used in ancient Egpytian burials to hold the entrails
and other visceral organs from an embalmed body)
◦ Drying the body out
◦ Wrapping the body
◦ The final procession(continued...)
The final procession:
◦ Friends and family walk through the
town crying on their way to the tomb.

◦ The more the mourners the more the

dead's chance to entering the after
world.

◦ The book of the dead containing 200

spells and instructions for reaching
eternal life, canopic jars and belongings
were placed in a burial chamber.

◦ Weighing of the heart was done. The

heart was considered the powerful part
of the person and also centre of one's
being.

◦ Heart was never removed from the

body as it was used to judge the deeds
one has done in his life.
Fun facts about Egyptian mummies

◦ Over the past few thousands of years, many of the Egyptian mummies have been
destroyed in interesting ways. Some were burned for fuel, some were ground into powder
to make magical potions, and some were destroyed by treasure hunters.
◦ The heart was left in the body because it was considered to be the centre of intelligence.
The brain was thrown away because it was thought to be useless.
◦ Sometimes the mummy's mouth would be opened to symbolize breathing in the afterlife.
It is probably this custom that led to the superstition that mummies come back to life.
◦ Mummies are studied by scientists without unwrapping them by using CAT scan and X-Ray
machines.
What are Pharaoh?
◦ Pharaoh is the common title of the monarchs of ancient
Egypt from the first dynasty until the annexation of
Egypt by the roman empire in 30BCE.
◦ The Egyptians believed their pharaoh to be mediator
between gods and men.
◦ After their death pharaoh become divine.
◦ He owned a large portion of Egypt's land and directed
its use, was responsible for people's economic and
spiritual welfare.
◦ His will was supreme and he governed by royal decree.
◦ As a divine ruler the pharaoh was a preserver of the god
given order called Maat(in ancient Egypt meant
personification of truth, justice and the cosmic order .
The ruling age and family

Tutankhamun was the

He ascended to the When he became the
son of Akhenaten
throne in 1333BC, at the king, he married his half-
(formerly Amenhotep IV)
age of 9 or 10, taking the sister, ankhesenpaaten,
and one of Akhenaten's
throne name who later changed her
sisters , or perhaps one
Nebkheperure. name to ankhesenamun.
of his cousins.
Family line
◦ Amenhotep III — Tut’s father or grandfather — was a powerful pharaoh who ruled for
almost four decades at the height of the eighteenth dynasty’s golden age.
◦ His son Amenhotep IV succeeded him and initiated one of the strangest periods in the
history of ancient Egypt. The new pharaoh promoted the worship of the Aten, the sun
disk, changed his name to Akhenaten, or ‘servant of the Aten.
◦ After Akhenaten’s death, a mysterious ruler named Smenkhkare appeared briefly and
exited with hardly a trace. And then a very young Tutankhaten took the throne King Tut
as he’s widely known today.
◦ The boy king soon changed his name to Tutankhamun, ‘living image of Amun,’ and oversaw a
restoration of the old ways. He reigned for about nine years and then died unexpectedly.
Tutankhamun
(1341 BC – 1323 BC)
◦ The most famous pharaoh of all time is King
Tutankhamun.
◦ He ascended the throne at the tender age of
nine or 10 but his reign only lasted from
1332 BC to 1323 BC.

◦ Although the young king introduced many

religious reforms he was not well renowned
for his achievements as a ruler. His fame
comes more from the discovery of his nearly
intact tomb.

◦ Tutankhamun’s death is still a matter of

controversy as no conclusions have been
drawn as to how he died, but his mummy was
important for Egyptologists to conduct
valuable research into the process of
mummification.
Facts about Tutankhamun
◦ Tutankhamun was buried in worlds most expensive coffin which would be worth well over
one million euro.
◦ Tutankhamun's heart was missing , instead he was provided with an Amuletic scarab.
◦ Recent analysis suggest a dagger recovered from his tomb had an iron blade made from
meteorite.
◦ Tutankhamun's death mask was orignally made for Nefertiti and the mask read
"Ankhkheperure beloved of Akhenaten).
◦ There were about 5398 items found in his tomb.
◦ Almost 80 per cent of Tutankhamun's burial equipment orignated from the female Pharoah
Neferneferuaten funerary goods.
About his coffins:
◦ He was laid to rest laden with gold and eventually forgotten.
◦ His coffins were investigated by Howard carter, in the first one he found a
shroud adorned with garlands of willow and olive leaves,wildcelery,lotus petals
and cornflowers, the faded evidence of a burial in march or april.
◦ For his journey to the great beyond, he was lavished with glittering goods,
precious collars, inlaid necklaces and brackets, rings, amulets, a ceremonial
apron, sandals, sheaths for his fingers and toes.
◦ He was also buried with everyday things he'd want in the afterlife:board games, a
bronze razor,linen undergarments, cases of food and wine.
Who discovered king Tut's tomb?
◦ British archaeologist Howard Carter and his workmen discover a step
leading to the tomb of King Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.
◦ When Carter first arrived in Egypt in 1891, most of the ancient Egyptian
tombs had been discovered, though the little-known King Tutankhamen,
who had died when he was 18, was still unaccounted for.
◦ After world war I, Carter began an intensive search for “King Tut’s Tomb,”
finally finding steps to the burial room hidden in the debris near the
entrance of the nearby tomb of King Ramses VI in the Valley of the Kings.
◦ On November 26, 1922, Carter and fellow archaeologist Lord Carnarvon
entered the interior chambers of the tomb, finding them miraculously
intact.
◦ Thus began a monumental excavation process in which Carter carefully
explored the four-room tomb over several years, uncovering an incredible
collection of several thousand objects.
◦ The most splendid architectural find was a stone sarcophagus containing
three coffins nested within each other. Inside the final coffin, which was
made out of solid gold, was the mummy of the boy-king Tutankhamen,
preserved for more than 3,000 years. Most of these treasures are now
housed in the Cairo Museum.
Valley of kings
ZAHI HAWASS
◦ Zahi Hawass is an Egyptian archaeologist,
Egyptologist, and former Minister of State
for Antiquities Affairs. He has also
worked at archaeological sites in the Nile
Delta, the Western Desert, and the Upper
Nile Valley.
◦ He conducted a CT scan of King
Tutankhamun's Mummy in 2005.

◦ He was the second one to examine king

tutankhamun's Mummy after Howard
carter discovered it in 1922.
How did king Tut die?
◦ There are many theories as to what killed king Tut. He was tall but physically frail, with a
crippling bone disease in his clubbed left foot. He is the only pharaoh known to have been
depicted seated while engaged in physical activities like archery.
◦ Traditional inbreeding in the Egyptian royal family also likely contributed to the boy
king’s poor health and early death. DNA tests published in 2010 revealed that
Tutankhamun’s parents were brother and sister and that his wife, Ankhesenamun, was
also his half-sister. Their only two daughters were stillborn.
◦ Because Tutankhamun’s remains revealed a hole in the back of the skull, some historians
had concluded that the young king was assassinated, but recent tests suggest that the hole
was made during mummification.
◦ CT scans in 2005 showed that the king had an infected broken left leg, while DNA from
his mummy revealed evidence of multiple malaria infections, all of which may have
contributed to his early death.
THANK YOU
Group-William Shakespeare
Made by- Aditya Yadav
Ishan Singh
Akarsh Bajpai
Snehil Sah
Ritish Jindal