King Tut’s Treasures
Wooden Guardian Statue of the King
This life-sized statue of Tutankhamun, with piercing golden eyes, gold clothing and contrasting black skin, was one of two sentries that Howard Carter found guarding the sealed entrance of Tut’s burial chamber. Would you have dared mess with it?!
Miniature Canopic Coffin
The afterlife was incredibly important to the Ancient Egyptians. They believed that by preserving a dead person’s body – through the process of mummification – the soul would live on in the afterlife forever. During the mummification process, the internal organs were removed, wrapped in linen bandages and placed in containers called canopic vessels. Usually these were jars, but sometimes the organs were stored in miniature golden coffins. This beautiful coffin (left) contained King Tut’s liver. Wow!
Gilded Wooden Bed
Experts think this gold-covered bed (below) was made for King Tut’s funeral. The Ancient Egyptians believed that the dead were merely asleep and that they woke up when they were ‘reborn’ in the afterlife. To ensure the Pharaoh’s safe passage into the afterlife and to keep evil forces at bay, divine figures were carved on to the bed – in this case Bes, a god who frightened away evil spirits from newborn babies, and Tauret, the hippo goddess. Sweet dreams!
Silver military trumpet
Two trumpets were found inside the tomb of Tutankhamun. It is said that the trumpets are magical. The first time one was blown after their re-discovery, the lights went out in Cairo’s Egyptian Museum – and a few months later war broke out in Europe. The trumpets were played again before the Six Day War in 1967, before the 1990 Gulf War and the Egyptian revolution of 2011. Some people have blamed these weird coincidences on the curse. Spooky!
source: natgeokids.com/
