Got a Condo Made-a Stone-a

The Brussels Expo recently featured a King Tut exhibit. It wasn't the real thing, but we went to see it and it was a good replica. Apparently the "real" stuff is all over the place. Until the 1960's, most of it was in the Cairo Museum.

In the '70's and '80's, many exhibits traveled the globe, mostly in Russia, the UK, and the US. It is still possible to see it somewhere even today.

Just some quick geography.

You may remember the Ancient Rome map in one of my "Rome posts" that showed the River Nile and Alexandria, Egypt. Cairo is on the Nile and is about 3 hours south of Alexandria. Probably just below that "T" in EGYPT.

Here's a close-up of the area along the Nile River. King Tut's tomb is near Luxor (like the Vegas hotel :)

And just one more map I thought gave some perspective on where this is on the globe.

His tomb was encased in these gold boxes.

One inside the other like nesting dolls.

This was the final one.

The "nesting" didn't stop there. Then he was in this.

This is all real gold. You can see all the hieroglyphs which covered all those huge gold boxes as well. I read about hieroglyphs on wikipedia and still do not have a full understanding of how it all works. I guess it's sort of like Chinese symbols which don't simply translate into English. If you'd like to know more . . . hieroglyphs.

Anyway, then his body was in this one.

The famous mask covering his face.

The detailed stonework and gold inlay is amazing.

This is an Anubis (Greek) or Inpu (Egyptian) - a jackal-headed god associated with the afterlife usually portrayed as half jackal/half man.

We definitely got a glimpse of how elaborate the burials of the pharaohs (King Tut was a pharaoh) were and how it was all centered on the afterlife. Nearly everything in the tomb was to be used in an afterlife where one would need furniture, shoes, and chariots.

This is the throne he would use in the afterlife.

No one knows for sure how King Tut died, but the consensus is that he'd broken his leg shortly before his death and it likely became infected. Tests on his remains also showed the presence of malaria so the combination probably led to his death.

There was only one pair of shoes exhibited and boy were they elaborate. Those aren't painted, they are inlaid. The audio guide we listened to said King Tut had over 100 pairs of shoes. I didn't think that was so many :) I wonder what his wife had back in her "closet".

Actually, they didn't have closets, just box after box after box to keep everything in.

By the way, he (King Tut) was married to his half-sister. They lived a long, long, long time ago. King Tut lived from 1341 BC to 1323 BC - only to the age of 18 years and he was ruler for the last 10 of those.

The couple had two children, both stillborn. Their bodies were also found in his tomb.

Another of the hundreds of elaborate decorative items to be used in the afterlife.

Perhaps one of the most interesting parts of the exhibit may have been the way the tomb was discovered. Despite excavators declaring there was nothing left to find in the Valley of the Kings, Howard Carter, who had worked in Egypt for over 30 years, was certain there was the tomb of King Tutankhamun yet to be found.

Carter and his sponsor, Lord Carnarvon, began excavating in 1914, but were interrupted by WWI. Work resumed, but after years of funding, Lord Carnarvon became dissatisfied giving Carter one more season to find the elusive tomb.

On November 4, 1922, they found the tomb that had been largely undisturbed for nearly 3,000 years. It was to be the most intact and preserved of all the tombs in the Valley of the Kings.

This is a map of the Valley of the Kings. KV62, "KV" meaning Valley of the Kings and "62" is the exact area of King Tut's tomb.

We went to the Brussels exhibit with our neighbors who've lived in Belgium all their lives, traveled a good bit and have been to Egypt more than once, the first time more than 20 years ago. They encouraged us to see Egypt while we are still in Europe. I read that to see the pyramids, you can walk, take a horse and buggy or ride a camel. Three choices. Given this and the fact there's been some unrest there of late, I don't know when I'll be ready to see Egypt.

Up until now, this video is about all I knew of King Tut . . .