Midwest Adventures: Budget Friendly Fun
The Search For King Tut
Ancient History Unveiled In Trip To Egypt
Every visitor to Egypt takes a picture of the pyramids at Giza.
By MARY O'BRIEN Special to the Journal & Topics Newspapers
When I was a child, I learned that Egypt was the desert home of the last surviving Wonder of the Ancient World - the pyramids and sphinx at Giza. It didn't occur to me then that I would one day see them for myself but when I finally did land in Egypt, I did what every tourist does - I went to Giza. The pyramids are as they are always pictured, only slightly the worse for wear after 4000 years, but they still take your breath away.
It comes as a shock when you realize that those enduring monuments rise not in some faraway desert, but just minutes from Cairo, a city of 18 million. Another surprise is the relatively small size of the sphinx. Usually cleverly photographed from below with a pyramid in the background, it only seems to be massive. It was carved from bedrock when the pyramids were built and through the centuries, it's repeatedly had to be dug out from covering sand. The lion's body is 150 feet long and its pharaoh head only 40 feet high. Not exactly puny, but The Great Pyramid is about 450 feet high and weighs about 6 million tons.
It was my seven-year-old granddaughter who told me about the sphinx when she learned I was going to Egypt. She, like many Americans, had turned on to ancient Egyptian mysteries when she saw a Saturday Night Live DVD featuring Steve Martin performing his iconic "King Tut." She loved the song and the hieroglyphic dance movements and she became interested in the exotic lives people lived a millennium or three ago.
Interest in the "Boy King" began in the 1920s with the discovery of his tomb and its fabulous contents. Current interest started in 1977 when the Field Museum and other museums around the world showcased a blockbuster exhibit, " Treasures of Tutankhamun," that drew 1.4 million Chicago visitors over its 4-month run. Again in 2006, "Tutenkhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" opened at the Field and continues to be shown in cities across the U. S.
But who was King Tut? And why was he so famous? His short reign ended with his death at nineteen, too young for significant achievements, especially since Egypt was in turmoil during that time. Tut's father was the infamous pharaoh, Akhenaten, who claimed there was only one god - the sun god, Aten. His subjects believed in many gods and revered them all. Akhenaten purged the old cults, destroying temples and defacing statues. He moved his court away from the time-honored capital of Thebes and ignored the defenses of Egypt's frontiers. His son, Tutankhamun, became king at the age of nine, and for most of his reign, his advisors made the necessary decisions. A recent CT scan of his mummy has revealed a badly broken, probably infected leg. It could have happened when he was racing his chariot - like any other teenage pharaoh. But Tut was king when the capital was returned to Thebes and the old gods were restored.
When British archeologist Howard Carter discovered his tomb in 1926, 20th Century newspapers and radio broadcast the news worldwide. The discovery of the immense treasure inside the tomb was an immediate sensation. In the eyes of the modern world at least, King Tut became famous because his tomb was preserved virtually intact. The discovery came at an opportune time for Howard Carter. His financial backer, Lord Carnarvon, was on the verge of withdrawing funds for his five-year search in the Valley of the Kings, where many other royal tombs had been found, most of them already sacked by grave robbers.
Sun-baked and rocky, the desolate, inhospitable valley across the Nile from ancient Thebes became a royal burying ground because so many of the earlier pharaohs' graves had been robbed. Ancient Egyptians were preoccupied with death and life thereafter. Kings were mummified and interred in elaborate coffins, their tombs filled with treasure to ease their journey to the afterlife. So the tombs in the valley were hidden behind sealed entrances and covered with rocky debris. But the thievery persisted. After his untimely death, Tut had been buried in an unfinished tomb that was well concealed and smaller than most. Said to be the last royal tomb that will ever be found in the Valley of the Kings, it is the richest ever discovered.
With time and funds running out, Howard Carter had finally uncovered what was obviously the entrance to a tomb. After digging his way down a stairway, he came upon a door that bore the cartouche of Tutankhamun. His heart fell when he saw that it had been opened and then resealed. He expected to find that long ago grave robbers had pillaged this tomb as they had the others in the valley, but there were signs that the thieves may have been intercepted. And at the end of the passageway, there was another door.
The archeologist telegraphed his benefactor and Carnarvon came to the site as quickly as possible so that he could be present at the opening of the tomb. Carter chipped away at an upper corner of the door, making a hole big enough for him to stick a candle through the opening. He looked inside and he was speechless.
"What do you see?" asked Lord Carnarvon.
"I see wonderful things!" was the answer. It was not the burial chamber, but a large anteroom where an immense treasure had been disturbed by grave robbers who must have been caught before they could carry it away. There was gold and silver, ebony and alabaster, jewelry made of amethyst, turquoise and lapis lazuli, sculptures of animal gods to guide and protect, statues of the king, a golden throne and golden chariots, alabaster jars that still contained the scent of perfumes and precious oils, and toys that the "Boy King" must have played with just a few years before he died. In another room that was undiscovered by the thieves was a similar treasure trove. It took two and a half months to photograph and remove more than 1700 objects from these rooms. You can see many of them in fascinating display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
There remained one more door - the tomb itself. As Carter and Carnarvon removed the stone slabs at the entrance, they were mystified by what appeared to be a solid gold wall that filled the small room to within two feet of its four walls. It was a box-like shrine, nine feet high. It held three more boxes, also overlaid with gold and packed one inside another. Inside the last was a stone sarcophagus containing three mummiform coffins. Two of these are at the Egyptian Museum and the last, made of solid gold, remains in the tomb. In it, still rests the Boy King's body.
I toured Egypt by way of a Nile cruise, on one of over 300 "floating hotels" that cruise the river, docking at ports adjacent to prominent ancient sites. It's convenient and comfortable. You get a private room and bath, three meals a day and guided tours of the temples and tombs.
For an extra fee, you can enter King Tut's guarded tomb and go through now empty rooms to see the burial chamber. The pricey fee is to discourage visiting because mere human presence is damaging to the 3000-year-old painting on the plain rock walls. And there are more elaborate tombs included in the general admission. These, especially that of Ramses VI, are larger and their sculpted walls still hold amazing color. That's unusual, but even when the paint has faded, The Egyptian gods and goddesses, kings and queens live on in chiseled stone on ancient tomb and temple walls.
I didn't pay the fee to see Tut's tomb. Obviously, I was fascinated by his story, but that's a small part of Egypt's deep history. Just across the Nile from the Valley of the Kings was Thebes, the spiritual home of the ancient civilization, a city that doesn't exist any more.
But two magnificently restored temples show its former glory. One is beautiful Luxor, where there's a statue of Tutankhamun and where there was once a pair of soaring pink granite obelisks - until Napoleon stole one of them and planted it on the Place de la Concorde.
A mile away is huge, sprawling Karnak, enlarged by a succession of pharaohs through a period of 1300 years. Everything at Karnak is mammoth, especially the Hypostyle Hall with its 134 giant sculpted pillars, each one so large it takes ten people with arms outstretched to surround it. Both temples at Thebes lay ¾ buried in sand until the mid-19th century when their excavation started.
Now both are at risk from salt and water damage. The water table, rising ever since the Aswan High Dam was built in the 1960s has caused considerable erosion to their foundations. You can only hope they can be saved.
Who knows what still lies buried under Saharan sands? Or even under the sea where the remains of the court of Cleopatra were found in 1996? One thing is certain. More secrets will be uncovered.
For more information visit www.egypt.travel.com or www.nile-cruise-egypt.com