The Mystery of Home of King Tut

Tutankhamun was only the age of nine when he became king of Egypt during the 18th dynasty of the New Kingdom (c. 1332–1323 B.C.E.).

His story would have been lost to history if it were not for the discovery of his tomb in 1922 by the archaeologist Howard Carter in the Valley of the Kings.

King Tut’s tomb actually proved to be a breakthrough in understanding ancient Egyptian royal life, as the tomb held an unprecedented amount of artifacts and treasure, most notably a golden mask found within his sarcophagus.

Tutankhamun ruled after the Amarna age, when the pharaoh Akhenaten, Tutankhamun’s probable father, turned the religious attention of the kingdom to the worship of the god Aten, the sun disc.

Howard Carter was running out of money to support his archaeological digs when he asked for funding for one more season from his financial backer, the fifth Earl of Carnarvon. Lord Carnarvon granted him one more year

Tutankhamun’s sarcophagus (a box-like stone container) held not one but three coffins in which to hold the body of the king. The outer two coffins were crafted in wood and covered in gold along with many semiprecious stones, such as lapis lazuli and turquoise.

The inner coffin, however, was made of solid gold. 

The death mask is considered one of the masterpieces of Egyptian art. It originally rested directly on the shoulders of the mummy inside the innermost gold coffin. It is constructed of two sheets of gold that were hammered together and weighs 22.5 pounds (10.23 kg).

Four months after discovering King Tut’s tomb and all of its luxurious contents, Howard Carter’s patron, Lord Carnarvon, swiftly passed away.

This led journalists to popularize “The Curse of the Pharaoh” with the belief that hieroglyphs found within the tomb promised untimely death to those who disturbed the pharaoh’s resting place.

Howard Carter sent his close friend, Sir Bruce Ingham, the gift of a paperweight. This paperweight was made of a mummified hand with bracelet, which supposedly held an inscription of “cursed be he who moves my body”.

Not long after receiving his gift, Sir Ingham’s house caught fire and burned to the ground. Upon rebuilding, the house was struck by a flood.

George Jay Gould also fell victim to this explicable “curse”. A wealthy financier, Gould visited Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1923, and immediately fell ill after his return. Never fully recovering, George Jay Gould, contracted pneumonia and died shortly after.

Are each of these deaths purely coincidence or tragic result of King Tut’s curse? We’ll leave it for you to decide.

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