Tutankamen

(Baden's 1999 Mediterranean Jaunt / Overview)

postcard
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The Cairo Museum was right downtown, and downright huge. Our tour group spent about 2.5 hours in the museum, but I think 2.5 days may have been somewhat more reasonable. After our tour ended a week later, I spent another afternoon in the museum by myself. The museum had an extensive King Tutankamen exhibit, with two big halls, and another adjoining room with the valuable stuff, including this gold sarcophagus. It was amazing that King Tut had by far the smallest tomb, as he died when he was only 17, and from that one tiny tomb came all those treasures. One can only imagine what an important king's tomb contained, and I guess it would be equivalently valued in the billions today.

King Tutankamen's mummy had an elaborate gold mask, and that was inside this solid gold sarcophagus weighing 113 Kg. The artwork was quite elaborate, being decorated with inlaid jewels, stones, and paint. This image was scanned from a postcard, as cameras were not allowed in the museum.

This sarcophagus was inside a guilded wooden one, which was then placed inside a stone sarcophagus, which was still in the tomb near Luxor with the mummy, as the atmospheric conditions were better for its preservation there. The stone sarcophagus was then surrounded by four consecutively larger guilded wooden crates which just fit inside his tomb.

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