The Tomb Of Tutankhamen Essay, Research Paper
What does the tomb of tutankhamen and its
contents show about the Egyptian concern for the afterlife?
Tutakhamen’s tomb, and the artifacts inside
are an indication of the concern the Ancient Egyptians held for the after-life
of their king. In 26th Nov. 1922, the English archaeologist Howard Carter
opened the virtually intact tomb of a largely unknown pharaoh: Tutankhamen.
This was the first, and to date the finest royal tomb found virtually intact
in the history of Egyptology. It took almost a decade of meticulous and
painstaking work to empty the tomb of Tutankhamen. Around 3500 individual
items were recovered. When the Burial Chamber of Tutankhamen was officially
opened, on 17 February 1923, the Antechamber had been emptied. It
had taken near fifty days to empty the Antechamber; the time required to
dismantle and restore the contents of the Burial Chamber including the
gilded wooden and the sarcophagus was to be greater, and the work was not
completed until November 1930, eight years after the original discovery.
One must examine both the tomb itself, and its contents, to see the connection
between the tombs and burial rituals and the doctrine of eternal life.
The royal tombs were not merely homes in the hereafter for the kings, as
are the private tombs of commoners and nobility. Instead the tombs are
cosmological vehicles of rebirth and deification as much as “houses of
eternity.” As the king is supposed to become Osiris in a far more intimate
way than commoners, he is equipped with his very own Underworld. And as
the king is supposed to become Rê in a way entirely unavailable to
commoners, he is equipped with his very own passage of the sun, whether
this is thought of as the way through the underworld or through the heavens.
Tutankhamon’s tomb, hurriedly prepared
for the premature death of the king at the age of only about 18, is, as
Romer says, a “hole in the ground,” compared to a proper royal tomb. The
theme of fours is conspicuous in Egyptian religious practice. Tutankhamon’s
tomb contains four chambers. The burial chamber, with a ritual if not an
actual orientation towards the West, is the chamber of departure towards
the funeral destinies. The internment of the body certainly is the beginning
of the sojourn of the dead, and the Egyptians saw the dead as departing
“into the West.” The room called the “Treasury” is then interpreted to
have a ritual orientation towards the North as the “chamber of reconstitution
of the body.” Since the most conspicuous object in the Treasury was a great
gilt sledge holding the shrine containing the canopic chest, which holds
the king’s viscera, this could well suggest the problem of reassembling
the king’s living body.
That task, indeed, has a very important
place in Egyptian mythology. After the goddess Isis had retrieved her husband
Osiris’s murdered body from Byblos, their common brother, Seth, the original
murderer, stole the body, cut it into pieces, and tossed them in the Nile.
Isis then had to retrieve the parts of the body before Osiris could be
restored to life. Her search through the Delta, which is in the North of
Egypt, seems to parallel the “sacred pilgrimage” to cities of the Delta
that Desroches-Noblecourt relates as one of ritual acts of the funeral,
as many of the other objects in the Treasury seem to be accessories for
that pilgrimage.
For the sovereign to be reborn it was
necessary that a symbolic pilgrimage be made to the holy cities of the
delta. The principal halts of the journey corresponded almost exactly to
the four cardinal points of the delta where these cities were situated.
Sais, to the west, represented the necropolis where the body was buried;
Buto to the north, with its famous canal, was an essential stage of the
transformations within the aquatic world of the primordial abyss, evoking
the water surrounding the unborn child; and Mendes to the east whose name
could be written with the two pillars of Osiris, the djed pillars, evoking
the concept of air. There, said the old texts, the gods Shu and Tefenet
were reunited, or again, according to the 17th chapter of The Book of the
Dead, that was where the souls of Osiris and Re had joined. Finally, the
southern-most city which completed the cycle of Heliopolis, the city of
the sun, symbolizing the fourth [sic] element, fire, where the heavenly
body arose in youth glory between the two hills on the horizon. [Christiane
Desroches-Noblecourt, 1963, p. 238-9]
As these four cities parallel the four
rooms of the tomb itself, we seem to have a nice series of parallel symbols.
If Sais, in the West, was significant for its necropolis, then Sais, like
the burial chamber, can represent the departure into the West. Buto itself,
the northernmost city, then represents the site of the actual “reconstitution
of the body.” What followed Isis’s reassembly of Osiris’s body was its
revivification. Mendes, in the East, where the sun rises, would then seem
to be the locus for that, with the associations, especially with Osiris.
In the tomb, the small “Annex” is then associated with this ritual stage,
the “chamber of rebirth.” The ritual pilgrimage then ends at Heliopolis
in the South, where the king, having been reborn, reassumes his throne,
as Desroches-Noblecourt views the “Antechamber” of the tomb as the “chamber
of eternal royalty.”
Overall, the tomb may be divided into
three parts: The Inner Tomb, which means the burial chamber and its side
rooms, however elaborate; the Middle Tomb; and the Outer Tomb. In the Outer
Tomb, six parts may be distinguished: four passages, the “Well,” and the
optional “well room.” The four passages originally consisted of two deep
stairs and two sloping corridors. The outer stair might not now be considered
part of the tomb proper, since it merely led up to the sealed entrance
of the tomb; but the Egyptians saw it as already part of the tomb and named
it the “god’s first passage,” or the “god’s first passage of the sun’s
path.” All the corridors, indeed, were thought to represent the passage
of the sun god Rê through the twelve caverns of the underworld in
the hours of the night, prior to his rebirth at dawn–the precedent for
the rebirth of the king. Consequently, when decorated, they at first held
excerpts from the Amduat, the book of “That Which is in the Underworld,”
or the later “Book of Gates.” As the emphasis slowly shifted with time
from the association with the underworld to an association with Rê
himself, another work, the “Litany of Rê” made its appearance.
The stair of the “god’s third passage”
was thus originally a room with the stair in its floor. As the stairs later
became ramps, and as the descent of the passages leveled out by the XX
Dynasty, the “god’s third passage” was revealed as having a ritual as well
as a practical meaning; for the flat spaces of the original room were preserved,
even when they had been reduced to no more than long niches in part of
the walls of the third passage. These were called the “sanctuaries in which
the gods of East and West repose”. “East and West” refer to the ritual
orientation of the passage, East on the Left when facing out of the tomb
(as the Egyptians saw it), West on the Right.
The fourth passage eventually acquired
two niches at the end, called the “doorkeepers’” niches.
The “Well” itself is a feature that
has excited considerable interest. The Egyptians called the Well the hall
of “waiting” or “hindering. The function of such a room, as symbolic of
the whole tomb, provides a ritual locus for rebirth. The “Ba” soul in earlier
representations flies up the shaft of the tomb and out into the world.
All that is added in the royal tomb is the king’s trip through the underworld,
the four entering or, as the Egyptians also saw them, exiting passages.
The “Hall of Waiting,” with or without the well itself or the lower well
room, typically shows scenes of the king meeting the gods–one of the motifs
of the burial chamber in Tutankhamon’s tomb–and this is often shown when
decoration has not been completed elsewhere in the tomb, as in that of
Thutmose IV. This would indicate some importance to the function of such
a part of the tomb.
This brings us, through the sealed door,
to the Middle Tomb. As the “Chariot Hall” or “Hall of Repelling Rebels,”
it contains the equipment needed for the king to live an ordinary life
and perform his kingly duties once reborn, i.e. actual chariots, beds,
clothing, etc. Some have labeled it the “chamber of eternal royalty.” One
might call it the “living room” of the tomb, the opposite of the burial
chamber with its uniquely funereal equipment. It then may be significant
that the rest of the tomb is accessed through the stair or ramp dropped
from the floor. If the spirit of the king comes up from the crypt, entering
the Chariot Hall is like rising into the upper world. It is at that point
that we might divide the whole tomb into the Upper Tomb and the Lower Tomb.
The Lower Tomb is about death and rebirth; the Upper Tomb is about the
new life and access to the world (the Chariot Hall and the Outer Tomb,
both the shaft of the Well and the outer passages). Significantly, the
wall of the Chariot Hall above the passage down (the “another god’s first
passage”), often displays an “Osiris shrine,” which signal an emphasis
on Osiris.
Once freed of its contents, it became
possible to examine the wall paintings in the only decorated room in the
entire tomb, the burial chamber. The walls had a yellow background, almost
the colour of gold, as if underline the name that ancient Egyptians gave
to the burial chamber – the ‘Golden Room’. The surface of the paintings
was in an excellent state of preservation though it was speckled with innumerable
tiny circular stains due to the development of colonies of micro-organisms.
The decoration quite simple and ordinary in style: the northern wall, seen
on entering the room, features Tutankhamen in the centre, wearing the dress
of living, holding the sceptre and the ritual mace, before the goddess
Nut, depicted in the act of performing the nyny ritual. This central scene
is flanked by two others: on the Tutankhamen’s is shown dressed Osiris
in the presence of Pharaoh Ay, his successor. Ay, wearing the costume of
the sem-priest and the distinctive skin of a panther, officiates at the
rite of the ‘Opening of the Mouth’, through which the deceased is revived.
Tutankhamen is shown with his head draped in the nemes, and, followed by
his ka, standing before Osiris. On the adjacent western wall, are illustrations
of passages taken from the Book of Amduat, showing the voyage of the sun
barque through the 12 hours of the night, represented by 12 deities with
the faces of baboons.
The eastern wall illustrates the transport
of the royal sarcophagus, set inside a shrine mounted on a sledge, drawn
by 12 characters, of whom two are dressed differently from the others,
indicating a superior social standing. The south wall was painted last,
and is a scene of Tutankhamen, accompanied by Anubis, in the presence of
the goddess Hathor. The centre of the room is now occupied by the quartzite
sarcophagus containing the outermost coffin. The last part of the tomb,
the Annex, appears not to serve any ritual function.
The contents of tomb are also an indication
of the importance the Egyptians placed on the afterlife.
It is not necessary to examine all
the contents of the tomb, as this would be a painstakingly long and arduous
task. To see the significance the Egyptian’s placed on the after-life,
one need only examine a few of the articles found.
One of the two life-sized statues which
stood guard at the sealed door of the Burial Chamber, on the north side
of the Antechamber. The two statues, almost identical except for their
headgear, are made of wood, painted with black resin and overlaid with
gold in parts. They depict the pharaoh, or rather the pharaoh’s ka, in
a striding pose and holding a mace in one hand and a long staff in the
other. On the gilded triangular skirt, is written that this is the ‘royal
ka of Harakhty’, the Osiris Nebkheprure, the Lord of the Two Lands, made
just. Two life-sized wooden statues intended to protect the eternal rest
of the Pharaoh.
Tutankhamen’s mask, made of solid gold,
was placed directly upon the pharaoh’s mummy, and had the function of magically
protecting him. This beautiful object weighs 10 kg and is decorated with
semiprecious stones (turquoise, cornelian and lapis lazuli) and coloured
glass paste. The pharaoh is portrayed in a classical manner, with a ceremonial
beard, a broad collar formed of twelve concentric row consisting of inlays
of turquoise, lapis lazuli, cornelian and amazonite. The traditional nemes
headdress has yellow sripes of solid gold broken by bands of glass paste,
coloured dark blue. On the forehead of the mask are a royal uraeus and
a vulture’s head, symbols of the two tutelary deities of Lower and Upper
Egypt: Wadjet and Nekhbet.
A very fine shabti of Tutankhamen, portrayed
holding the heqa-sceptre and the nekhakha-flail, and inscribed with a text
from Chapter 6 of the Book of the Dead. This passage specifies the functions
of these mummiform statuettes, made of wood, terracotta, faience or metal,
and in some cases left in the tomb in their hundreds. The shabtis (a name
that means ‘answerers’) were intended to work in the Afterlife in place
of the deceased, who could command them by reciting a special spell. In
the New Kingdom especially the shabtis were considered as chattels, not
unlike slaves. In Tutankhamen’s tomb, a staggering total of 413 shabtis
was found, arranged in 26 coffers placed in the Annex and in the Treasury,
but only 29 of them were inscribed with the text of the formula from the
Book of the Dead.
With the canopic chest, as seen in fig
1, the theme of fours in Egyptian thought and ritual is the most conspicuously
manifest. While the embalmed heart was returned to the chest of the deceased,
the liver, lungs, stomach, and intestines were separately packaged, coffined,
and stored. Each of these was then under the protection of one of the Sons
of Horus, Imset (or Amset) for the liver, Hapi for the lungs, Duamutef
for the stomach, and Kebekhsenuf for the intestines. Stone canopic chests
typically have four chambers for the four coffins, closed with four stoppers,
which themselves are either in the form of four human or of one human and
three animal heads. With Tutankhamon we are fortunate to have the further
equipment of the gilt shrine and sledge for the canopic chest, and the
four guardian goddesses who watch over the whole, each identified by a
symbolic device on her head: Isis watching over the liver from the southwest,
her sister Nephthys watching over the lungs from the northwest, Neith,
the ancient goddess of Sais, watching over the stomach from the southeast,
and finally Serket, a scorpion goddess, watching over the intestines from
the northeast. The figures of these goddesses are masterpieces of art,
now available in endless reproductions.
Tutankhamen’s royal Golden Throne was
found in the Antechamber. The throne was made of wood covered with sheet
gold, and adorned with semiprecious stones and coloured glass paste. His
wife, Queen Ankhesenamun, whose head is adorned with two tall plumes and
a sun disk, stands before the pharaoh, languidly seated on a throne; the
queen places one hand on his shoulder while in her other she proffers a
vase of scented unguents. The rays of the sun god Aten shine upon the royal
couple and endow them with vital energy. The influence of Amarna art and
religious conceptions can be clearly seen in the sensitivity and naturalism
of this scene. There was also a wooden shrine covered with thick gold foil,
set on a wooden sledge encased with silver leaf, found in the Antechamber
of the tomb. Originally it must have contained a gold statuette of the
pharaoh, stolen during one of the two episodes of tomb-robbery which took
place in antiquity. The walls of the shrine are covered with scenes executed
with exquisite craftsmanship depicting scenes of hunting and everyday life,