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Ancient Egypt Magazine

Volume 5 issue 5 April/May 2005

NETFISHING
ANCIENT EGYPT explores the WORLD WIDE WEB ...

As we go to press with this April/May edition of ANCIENTEGYPT, the breaking news is the publication of the results of the CT scan made of the boy king Tutankhamun’s mummy. A full discussion of the findings will be given in the next issue of AE in June 2005 – but I thought it might be useful in this issue to take a look at what the Web has to say about Tutankhamun and his tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

Tutankhamun is undoubtedly the most famous Egyptian king, mainly due to the stunning and beautiful treasures which were discovered in his tomb by Howard Carter in 1922. Despite the vast number of items which were found, they tell us very little about the actual life of this young man. We do not know who his mother was, nor do we know the reason for his death at such an early age. Speculation about his death has been rife, especially since 1998 when Bob Briers published his book The Murder of Tutankhamun, which caught the public’s imagination. This theory has sparked at least two TV pseudo-documentaries examining the cause of Tut’s death – both coming to the conclusion that a piece of broken bone within the skull was the result of a ‘death blow’ to the back of his head. In both cases the probable culprit was seen as Tutankhamun’s successor, the pharaoh Ay.

Questions about the death still need to be answered but the views of one of the experts who interpreted the results can be read on the webpage: www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=105&sid=5589474

General overviews of the life and short reign of Tutankhamun can be found at many sites, several of which are well worth having a look at. As a starting point:

The TourEgypt Site – Tutankhamun www.touregypt.net/featurestories/tut.htm

Egyptvoyager – Tutankhamun www.egyptvoyager.com/features_tutankhamun_pg1.htm

The Amarna Site – Tutankhamun www.akhet.co.uk/amarna/tutankh.htm

Tutankhamun http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~ancient/tut1.htm

Wikipedia Page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutankhamun

King Tut One www.kingtutone.com/tutankhamun/

Guardians Tutankhamun Page http://guardians.net/egypt/tut1.htm

National Geographic magazine published a full account of the discovery and opening of the tomb, by Howard Carter, in their February 1923 edition. Their ‘as it happens’ account is now reproduced on-line and it makes fascinating reading at: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/egypt/

The BBC History pages are also a useful source of information. Readers will be pleased to learn that our own ANCIENTEGYPT Editor, Bob Partridge, supplied images of ‘Tutankhamun’s Treasures’ for their on-line service. These photographs of the tomb objects can be viewed at: www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/tutankhamun_gallery.shtml

The precious objects discovered in the Tomb are now preserved in the great collection of Cairo Museum, in Egypt, but they can be viewed on-line at: http://www.interoz.com/egypt/museum/tut.htm

The Science Museum, in London, also attempted a reconstruction of the face of Tutankhamun (based on techniques actually developed in Manchester) and their results can be viewed at: www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/antenna/tutankhamun/

Tutankhamun – Anatomy of an Excavation www.ashmol.ox.ac.uk/gri/4tut.html

The best site to visit for details and photographs of the Tomb itself, KV62 in the Valley of the Kings, is the Theban Mapping Project’s pages at: www.thebanmappingproject.com/sites/browse_tomb_876.html

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