Humans are fascinated by gore and violence, but even more so the mysterious and unsolved. Interest in these disturbing and unpleasant subjects is called morbid curiosity, and it has gripped millions of people throughout the ages. I am one of those people. My name is Hallie, and this is the Morbid Curiosity Podcast.
In 1914, Howard Carter finally achieved the right to excavate in the Valley of the Kings, a secluded ravine that became the repository for the earthly remains of ancient Egyptian royalty during the 18th to 20th dynasty. Rock-cut tombs of pharaohs and powerful nobles had already been found in the valley, which sat just across the Nile from Luxor, which the ancient Egyptians called Thebes. Though many archaeologists feared that the valley's secrets had all been unearthed, Carter was certain there were places that hadn't yet been searched, particularly in the central floor of the valley. He was convinced beneath the ancient flood debris lay the tomb of a little known king called Tutankhamun.
Several finds from previous excavations bore the name of Tutankhamun, including a strange collection of large earthen pots which were filled with broken pottery, bags of powder, and dried flowers. What was more, the entrance to nearby tomb KV55 bore seal impressions associated with Tutankhamun, suggesting it had been closed during his reign. Carter hypothesized that if Tutankhamun had buried his predecessor here, he might have chosen a similar location for himself. Carter was financed by an English aristocrat named George Herbert, Earl of Carnarvon, who had faith Carter would find a tomb and the treasures known to be inside.
Before Carter and his team could start digging, however, World War I broke out. Archaeological activity slowly resumed after the war, and in November of 1917, Carter was finally in the Valley of the Kings. In those days, the Valley of the Kings resembled a quarry, dotted with 30-foot tall piles of broken stones, waste from previous excavations. Before he could investigate the triangular patch of the central valley floor that he'd chosen for his search, Carter had to clear tens of thousands of tons of debris.
Only then could he begin digging through to the untouched layer of ancient flood debris. To remove the debris, Carter borrowed a railway track from the antiquity service, with trucks that were pushed along the rails by hand. His team of local workmen and boys, the unsung backbone of all Egyptian archaeology, used picks and hoes to fill the baskets, emptied them into train carts, and pushed them down the track, all by hand. Month after month of backbreaking work, these men moved mountains of stone, clearing hundreds of square feet of the valley.
The waste debris had sat for so long, it was often fused with the natural soil below. They had to watch out for charcoal and fish bones, signs of the untouched layers of earth. Toward the end of Carter's first season excavating, the laborers uncovered the remains of several ancient workmen's huts, dating to the 19th dynasty, just after Tutankhamun's time. The grouping was located right in front of the tomb of Ramses VI, which dated to around the same time.
The huts were undisturbed, which supported Carter's theory that no one had penetrated the layer of ancient flood debris since the 2nd millennium BCE. If there were an undiscovered 18th dynasty tomb somewhere nearby, beneath those ancient huts was the perfect place to look. However, Carter decided to carefully check each unexcavated part of the valley first. Why he didn't immediately begin excavating underneath the huts is unknown.
Some of his contemporaries thought perhaps he was trying to first settle scholarly questions on the dating and origin of previously discovered tombs. Whatever the reason, Carter worked elsewhere, discovering nothing, for five long seasons. Still, Carter enjoyed every minute. He wrote of the joy of the 20-minute donkey ride from the valley to base camp, when the noise of his donkey's footsteps was interrupted only by the booming of a desert eagle owl or the occasional howl of a jackal.
In 1922, Lord Carnarvon was ready to end their partnership. Carter hadn't found the riches that previous excavators had. Carter finally told Carnarvon about the potential site beneath the workmen's huts. He also mentioned that Herbert Winlock, an Egyptologist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, had been studying the debris-filled KV55 jars inscribed with Tutankhamun's name when he realized that they were the leftover materials used in Tutankhamun's embalming.
Ancient Egyptians didn't throw away anything involved in the sacred process of mummification. Instead, they carefully gathered all the rubbish and buried it close to the relevant tomb. Some of the jars contained natron salts and linen wrappings, while others held broken pottery, animal bones, and flower necklaces, which are likely the remains of Tutankhamun's funeral banquet. With Carnarvon's support, Carter returned to the valley for one final season in October of 1922.
He started excavations exactly where he left off in 1918, by the workmen's huts in front of the tomb of Ramses VI. He spent some time uncovering more huts, noting their details, then removing them to clear the three feet or so of soil that covered the limestone bedrock. On Saturday, November 4th, Carter arrived at the dig site and found the team of workmen strangely quiet. The foreman, an Egyptian man named Ahmed Garigar, told him the workers had discovered a step, cut into the bedrock under one of the first huts they'd cleared.
They all set to work, and soon a steep, sunken staircase was recognizable. By sunset on Sunday, they had revealed the upper part of a door made from rough stone and covered with plaster. The official seals of the royal necropolis of the 18th dynasty were still intact on the plaster. The tomb had never been opened.
Carter broke through the plaster and removed the stones from the upper right corner of the door and peered in. Beyond the door was a passage filled with stones and rubble, more evidence that the last people to enter had been the priests who sealed it, not thieves. Ecstatic, Carter reluctantly closed the hole in the door. He knew his sponsor had to be there for the next steps.
He sent a cable to Carnarvon at his home at Highclere Castle to tell him the good news. While they waited for Carnarvon to arrive, Carter's team had to protect the find from looters. They covered up the door and steps and rolled boulders over the entrance. Carnarvon and his daughter Evelyn arrived in Luxor on November 22nd, and work on the site resumed.
It took two days to reach the door again. The entire door was cleared of rubble, revealing seal impressions containing the cartouche of Tutankhamun, the king's official seal. By November 26th, the door and the 30-foot-long corridor beyond had been cleared and another door was revealed. Once again, Carter made a small hole in the top corner.
He lit a candle and pushed it through the hole to check that the air was safe to breathe. Reassured that the air wasn't poisonous, he widened the hole and peered inside. Carnarvon and Garigar waited anxiously behind them. Candlelight flickered over a multitude of objects.
Long shadows and shining reflections met his eyes. The story goes that Carnarvon couldn't bear it any longer. Can you see anything? he demanded.
Carter wrote in his 1923 account of the discovery that he responded, yes, wonderful things. The team widened the hole and crowded together to peer into the room. What they saw still stands as one of the most amazing archaeological discoveries of all time. Two ebony statues of a pharaoh wreathed in gold stared back at them.
A golden throne, alabaster vases, an overturned chariot, finely carved chairs, a black shrine adorned with gilded snakes. The room was stacked with objects. None of it looked to be in any sort of order. News of the discovery spread like wildfire.
On November 29th, Carter held an official opening of the tomb's antechamber attended by various Egyptian and foreign officials and a reporter from the London Times. The world was fascinated. Egyptomania enveloped the Western world. Archaeology and the popular view of it was changed forever.
But Carter had an even bigger challenge ahead of him. He now had to record, remove, and conserve thousands of fragile artifacts from the packed room, all while the world watched him. The Valley of the Kings became a small village. Carter hired professionals to assist him, such as chemist Alfred Lucas, conservator Arthur Mace, and a photographer.
He used several nearby empty tombs for different purposes, such as a darkroom and a conservation laboratory. Stabilizing the objects was incredibly difficult, as many were so fragile that they fell apart when touched. Meanwhile, tourists and journalists flocked to Luxor by the thousands. They went to the newly discovered tomb and sat around it.
About once a day, to the delight of these visitors, Carter's team carried the most recently stabilized artifacts out of the tomb to the lab on wooden stretchers. Over the next eight years, Carter carefully worked his way through four densely packed chambers. By the time he was finished, he had cataloged and conserved more than 5,000 items. Before he had cataloged everything, however, he came face-to-face with the owner of the tomb.
The burial chamber lay just next to the antechamber. Its walls were covered in paintings, and the room housed four nested gilded shrines. At the center of which was a massive sarcophagus of pink quartzite. Reliefs of goddesses were carved onto each corner, protecting the sides and ends of the casket with their outstretched, winged arms Anatomists, to make more accurate measurements, they estimated that Tutankhamun, who was now going by the nickname King Tut, was about 18 at the time of his death, of slight build, and about 168 centimeters, or 5.51 feet, tall during life.
After the examination, the dismembered mummy was placed on a wooden tray filled with sand, packed with cotton wool and fabric bandages. The beaded linen skullcap on the head and the broad collar on the chest were treated with a layer of wax and left in place. The body was then returned to the outermost coffin within the sarcophagus on the 23rd of October, 1926. 150 objects were found within the layers of bandaging on the royal mummy.
This included personal jewelry worn by the king in life, ceremonial items of clothing, weapons, funerary jewelry, and amulets that were consistent with those mentioned in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the book of practical instructions and spells used by embalmers to ensure the afterlife of the pharaoh. If you want to know more about mummification and ancient Egyptian funerary rituals, you can listen to our previous three-part series, Death in Ancient Egypt. Since the discovery of the tomb and the unwrapping of the mummy, researchers have gained insight into who King Tut was, although there are still some unanswered questions. Before I get into the details, however, an ad must play.
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Tutankhamun's mummy is the only royal mummy ever to be found entirely undisturbed. Despite this, we still know very little about him. Mystery also surrounds the cause of his death. King Tut was born in the reign of Akhenaten, an outlier of a pharaoh who tried to convert all of pagan ancient Egypt to a monotheistic religion honouring the sun god Aten.
This conversion upset everything from religion to politics, as Akhenaten suddenly closed all temples not dedicated to Aten and moved the capital to Amarna. This era of instability is called the Amarna period of the late 18th dynasty. I might do an episode about this period in the future. Please let me know if you're interested.
Tutankhamun's original name was Tutankhaten, meaning the living image of Aten. His ancestry is debated, as there are no surviving inscriptions that name his parents. He was a prince, as evidenced by a fragmentary inscription from Hermopolis, which refers to Tutankhaten, the king's son. Most researchers believe he was a son of Akhenaten, or perhaps his successor, Smenkare.
Inscriptions from Tutankhamun's reign refer to him as the son of Amenhotep III, Akhenaten's father, but this would only be possible if Akhenaten's 17-year reign included a long co-regency with his father, a theory that is no longer supported. Tut's mother is also unknown. It's been suggested that she was Akhenaten's chief wife, Nefertiti, Amenhotep III's daughter, Beketaten, or one of Akhenaten's two daughters, Meritaten and Meketaten. We know Tut was nursed by a woman named Maya, as evidenced by inscriptions from her tomb at Saqqara.
Between 2007 and 2009, DNA testing was carried out by a team under the leadership of Egyptologist and former Egyptian Minister of Tourism and Antiquity, Zahi Hawass. These tests identified Tut's father and mother as the mummy from tomb KV55, thought to be Akhenaten, and the Younger Lady, an anonymous mummy cached in the tomb of Amenhotep II, known as KV35. These two mummies were shown to be full siblings by DNA testing, both children of Amenhotep III and his chief wife, Ti. The identity of the Younger Lady is unknown, but it's thought that she cannot be Nefertiti, as Nefertiti was not Akhenaten's sister.
However, some researchers claim that Nefertiti was Tutankhamun's mother, and that the genetic closeness between the KV55 mummy and the Younger Woman is due to three generations of first-cousin marriage, making Nefertiti a first cousin of Akhenaten. It should be noted that the reliability of genetic data from mummified remains is not 100% accurate, as DNA degrades over time. Whatever the case, Tutankhamun became pharaoh around 1332 BCE at the age of 8 or 9. As he was so young, he likely relied heavily on advisors.
His chief advisor was also the leader of the military, Horemheb. The military had stopped supporting Akhenaten's new religion before his death, and it's likely Horemheb advised Tut to reverse the changes made by Akhenaten. Tutankhaten changed his name to Tutankhamun, both to distance himself from Akhenaten and to honor the previous head god, Amun. This change illustrates King Tut's move away from his father's religious changes, returning Egypt to its former polytheistic beliefs.
King Tut formally condemned his father's actions in a carved stela found at Karnak, which is known as the Restoration Stela and is dated to year 4 of Tut's reign. The stela states that Akhenaten's religious revolution was a disaster, causing the gods to abandon Egypt. The stela went on to proclaim the re-establishment of the traditional cults and restoration of priests and temple staff to their former positions. This act likely cemented his power.
Tut also began restoring older monuments that were damaged during the Amarna period, and reburied his father's remains in the Valley of the Kings. The royal court abandoned Amarna and returned to Memphis, the previous seat of royal administration. With Amun and the other gods restored, Thebes once again became the religious center of Egypt. King Tut then married Ankhesenpaaten, one of Akhenaten's daughters, who later changed her name to Ankhesenamun.
They had two daughters who unfortunately died at or soon after birth and were buried in his tomb. DNA testing has suggested that the anonymous mummy KV21A is the mother of King Tut's daughters, but the data is not statistically significant enough to allow her to be securely identified as his only known wife, Ankhesenamun. The tomb of Queen Ankhesenamun has not yet been found. King Tut's death marked the end of the royal bloodline of the 18th dynasty.
While King Tut's riches were incredible, the tomb was unusually small for a pharaoh's burial. The contents were divided among the passage corridor, the burial chamber, the antechamber, and two rooms now called the annex and the treasury. It's possible that the tomb was small because the pharaoh died unexpectedly, leaving no time to carve out a larger tomb. It's also possible that the tomb wasn't intended for the pharaoh at all.
Surviving letters indicate that after King Tut's death, Ankhesenamun tried to remain on the throne, but was eventually forced to marry Tutankhamun's royal vizier, Ay, who then became the pharaoh. Ay was soon unseated by Horemheb. Both men tried to take credit for King Tut's restoration of the traditional cults of Egypt and tried to erase all evidence of the Amarna period rulers. As for the cause of his death, King Tut's mummy has been studied intensely for information about his general health and any conditions that may have contributed to his death.
Analysis has been complicated by the poor condition of the mummy and the damage caused during its disarticulation and removal from the coffin. In 1968, a portable X-ray machine was used to re-examine the mummy. Unfortunately, it was revealed that it had deteriorated since it was last photographed by Carter's team in 1926. The beaded skullcap had disappeared, as had most of the skin on the head.
The eyelids had been destroyed and the ears were broken off. It was noted that several ribs and the front of the king's chest, including the sternum and clavicles, had been sawn off and removed. Stray beads from the large beaded collar were seen scattered in the torso on the X-rays. There were also several pieces missing, fingers and toes, as well as the king's penis.
The additional damage to the mummy and the removal of the skullcap and collar likely occurred during the Second World War, when security had lapsed around the mummy. The X-rays did give some insight into the process of mummification. There were two levels of resin residue inside the skull. One was introduced when the body was lying on its back, leaving residue at the back of the head.
The other when the head was tilted far back, leaving residue at the top of the skull. Several fragments of skull found in the resin are thought by some to indicate that the king was He was tall, or 1.67 meters, and had a variety of medical conditions and illnesses, including malaria and Kohler's disease, a rare bone disorder of the foot, which likely explained the canes. Hutan Ashrafian, a clinical lecturer in surgery at the Imperial College London, stated that Tut would have walked with a limp, had a slightly longer than normal skull, somewhat enlarged breasts from a condition called gynecomastia, caused by hormonal imbalances, buck teeth, and would have been relatively skinny. The question that is always eventually asked about the tomb of King Tutankhamun is, what about the curse?
Several tragedies did occur to people involved in the opening of the tomb. Within months of the discovery, Lord Carnarvon became ill and died. Despite Carnarvon already being frail and unhealthy, it didn't take long for people to connect his death to a mummy's curse cast on him for disturbing the tomb. Newspapers perpetuated the myth that the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb awakened a curse that killed those who helped find it.
Stories of the curse of the pharaohs or the mummy's curse claim it causes bad luck, illness, or death. These stories go back to the 19th century, but multiplied after the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. Despite popular misconceptions, no curse was found inscribed in the pharaoh's tomb. There are some instances of genuine curses appearing on or in ancient Egyptian tombs, such as the Mastaba tomb of Kentika Ikeki from the 6th dynasty at Saqqara.
However, they are generally directed towards the priests in charge of protecting the tomb, rather than potential robbers. Since the mid-20th century, many authors and documentaries have argued that the curse is real, in the sense of having scientifically explicable causes, such as bacteria, fungi, or radiation. However, most scientific researchers agree that Egyptian curses are primarily a cultural phenomenon and have no basis in reality. That doesn't mean they haven't been studied, though.
A 2002 study in the British Medical Journal, or BMJ, examined the lives of those who entered Tutankhamun's tomb shortly after its discovery. On average, those who entered lived to the age of 70 and lived an average of 20 years after being inside the tomb. Those numbers match up with the average lifespan at the time. Another study showed that of the 58 people who were present when the tomb and sarcophagus were opened, only eight died within a dozen years.
One of the last survivors was Lady Evelyn Herbert, Lord Carnarvon's daughter. She lived another 57 years after being present during the opening of the tomb. The tomb of Tutankhamun is still famous today. Now known as KV62, the tomb is a major tourist attraction, though entry is strictly managed, as changes in humidity brought about by people passing through the tomb can damage it, as well as its wall paintings.
The Griffith Institute maintains a detailed archive of material from the excavation of the tomb, much of which can be accessed on the Institute's website. Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities also has a virtual tour of the artifacts from Tutankhamun's tomb, which are on display in the Egyptian Museum. I highly recommend checking out these online sources if you want to know more. King Tut's mummy is fascinating, as are most mummies, because death is fascinating.
It's something we all go through, but no one knows anything about. That's why mummies, especially King Tut, draw out our curiosity. The Morbid Curiosity Podcast is produced by H. Lloyd.
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