treasures that were found with tutankhamun

Among the many objects from this tomb which remain unparalleled in Egyptian art are two small figures of the king, one in gold and the other in silver, the feet in each case being socketed into a plate of the same metal as the figure. Beneath the plate is a tubular shaft of silver or of gold. They were found, wrapped in fine linen and bound together, on the floor between the two outermost shrines which protected the king's coffins. Apart from their material, the two figures are almost identical in every respect.

The gold figure, which is shown here, is cast solid and chased. It shows the king wearing only the blue crown and a pleated kilt with ornamented apron suspended from a girdle. His throne-name is engraved on the clasp of the girdle. The upper part of the body and the feet are bare. Nothing in the dress of the king indicates the purpose of the object. His crown (khepresh), sometimes incorrectly called the war-helmet, first appears on monuments as a royal headdress at the end of the Seventeenth Dynasty and is commonly worn by Tutankhamun's predecessors in - the Eighteenth Dynasty in many different circumstances: in battle, in religious and secular ceremonies and in private life. He is represented wearing the same kind of pleated kilt shooting ostriches from his chariot, in some of the scenes on the small gilded shrine and on the gilded wooden figures.

The position of the hands, with their backs facing towards the front, is an exceptional feature in figures with a close-fitting kilt; normally this pose is found only when the kilt is of a different type with a triangular frontal projection. Perhaps this variation is but an extension of the regular practice of Egyptian sculptors, when carving in relief, of avoiding whenever possible depicting the hands in profile. In form, this piece immediately suggests the standards carried by priests and officials in state and religious ceremonies. As a rule, however, such standards consist of a long stave surmounted by a cult­ object resting on a flat base.

The cult­ objects include birds and animals sacred to particular gods and, exceptionally, even mummiform figures, but not human figures. Furthermore, the staves are considerably longer than those of this piece and its companion in silver. Possibly they were more in the nature of wands than standards, or conceivably marking­ pegs used in some ceremony. The unmistakably childlike appearance of the king might suggest that the ceremony was his coronation, but why they should have been made of two different metals and how they were employed cannot be explained. Nevertheless his age and consequently his shortness of stature may account for the reduction in length of the stave.

An inscription on the handle of this fan states that it is made of 'ostrich feathers obtained by His Majesty when hunting in the desert east ofHeliopolis'. Stumps of the feathers may still be seen in the holes on the outer edge of the palm. When complete it consisted of fifteen white and fifteen brown feathers, arranged in alternate colours. The feathers had been almost entirely devoured by insects when it was found on the floor of the Burial Chamber between the two innermost of the four golden shrines which shielded the coffins of the king. It is made of wood covered with sheet-gold. Embossed on each face of the palm are lively scenes of the king hunting the ostriches.

On the obverse he is shown riding in his chariot and shooting with his bow at two ostriches, one of which is already on the ground. His Saluki hound, in hot pursuit, is about to dispatch the birds. The king wears a short wig with two streamers, a short leopard-skin corselet and a kilt with ornate apron. On his left wrist is an archer's leather bracer. In' order that his hands may be free to use his bow, he has put the reins around his body.

The richly caparisoned horses, depicted in full gallop, have closely trimmed manes, and ostrich plumes and sun's disks fixed ,to the headstalls of the bridles. An object, shaped like an animal's tail and suspended near the shoulder behind the girth, is found on horses of his period when decked for ceremonial occasions; its function is not clear and it may be merely decorative. The chariot is a light vehicle reminiscent of a curricle, made of wood and fitted with a sun's disk on the front of the pole.

Two cases, one for bows, are strapped to the body of the chariot inside the wheels. The quiver for the arrows is suspended from the back of the king's girdle, its handle resembling a long tail. Behind the chariot is the hieroglyphic sign for 'life' (ankh), with human hands and feet, carrying a fan of the same kind as this fan. The inscription above this composite figure 'may all protection of life attend him' (the king), although a common formula, is probably intended to emphasize the symbolical nature of the figure.

Within the bow are two hiero­ glyphic signs meaning 'possessor of a strong ami;, a regular epithet referring to a king, but here with special application to his strength with the bow. The remainder of the field is occupied with desert flowers, perhaps thistles, and the inscrip­ tion: 'The Good God Nebkheperure, given life for ever like Re'. On the reverse side of the palm the king is shown returning from the hunt. The spirited horses are held in check, the reins being now in the king's hands together with his bow and a whip. He himself has put on a long pleated garment and what appears to be a shoulder-wrap with 'feathered' fringes.

The form of the 'feathers' does not suggest that they are ostrich plumes, as some writers have supposed. Two attendants in front of the chariot carry on their shoulders the two ostriches shot by the king. In view of the weight of these birds (about 345 pounds fully grown if they belong to the species Struthio Camelus L which existed in Egypt until some 150 years ago), it is not likely that the scene, at least in detail, is to be interpreted literally.

The explanatory inscription, which fills most of the upper part of the field, reads: 'The Good God who secures (the quarry) in hunting, who strives and engages in combat in every desert (or, 'who campaigns and fights against every foreign land '), who shoots to kill like (the goddess) Bastet, his horses are like bulls when they convey the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, the Lord of the Two Lands, possessor of a strong arm, Nebkheperure, given life for ever like Re'.

The group of hieroglyphic signs immediately behind the quiver 'given all life' is probably to be taken separately and not as part of the main inscription. Fans of this kind were regularly carried by attendants in royal processions at court and in religious ceremonies, their modern counterparts being the flabella borne in processions in Rome behind the Pope when seated on the sedia gestatoria. The characteristic features are the long handle terminating in a knob at the lower end and in a stylized papyrus or lotus flower at the top, a semicircular or elongated palm and several long ostrich plumes. They were used chiefly as sun­ shades. Another type of fan, carried as a symbol of office, generally had a shorter handle and a single ostrich plume.

One of a pair of identical emblems found in the north-west and south-west corners ofthe Burial Chamber. The upper part, made of wood overlaid with gesso and gilded, represents a pole terminating in a lotus bud and an inflated animal-skin suspended on the pole by a copper wire tail ending in a papyrus flower.

The base consists of a solid alabaster (calcite) stand in which the pole is fixed. Inscribed on the base are the name and titles of Tutankhamun 'given life for ever and ever' and the epithet 'Beloved of Anubis who presides over the embalming booth'. In very remote times this fetish belonged to a god named Imiut, meaning 'He who is in his wrappings', who was eventually identified with Anubis the jackal-god of embalming. An early example, found in 1914 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art near the pyramid of Sesostris I (C 1971­ 1928 Be) at El-Lisht, was placed in a wooden shrine.

Like the emblem in Tutankhamun's tomb, it consisted of a wooden rod and an alabaster stand, but the headless animal-skin was real and it was stuffed with linen. It was however wrapped in bandages like a mummy, linen pads being placed within the bandages as packing to fill the irregularities between the skin and the rod. The stand, which resembled a vessel, was about two-thirds full of a bluish-coloured substance, completely dried and considered to be some kind of ointment. It is easy to see how the god acquired the name 'He who is in his wrappings'. Tutankhamun's emblems represent a later development, not uncommon in Egyptian tomb equipment, in which a model was used in place of the object itself.

A spell in the Book of the Dead ends with the instruction that it is to be recited 'over a collar of gold inscribed with the spell and placed on the neck of the deceased on the day of burial' . The vignette which accompanies the spell represents a bead collar with falcon-head terminals.

No single element in the painted decoration of mummiform coffins occurs so consistently as the broad bead collar, with or without the falcon-head terminals at the level of the shoulders. Most of the other decorative features were varied both in character and in arrangement according to the fashions of the time and, perhaps, the wishes of the purchasers, but the collar on the neck remained essentially unchanged with the utmost regularity.

Tutankhamun's three mummiform coffins were no exception to the rule, and in addition seventeen actual collars were placed on his mummy within the linen bandages which covered his neck and chest. Some of these collars were com­ posed of beads, but the majority were made of gold, either decorated with cloisonne work or plain with the details engraved.

Two examples of the plain type, both cut out of single sheets of gold, are displayed in this exhibition. One reproduces a collar of five contiguous rows of upright cylindrical beads, laid side by side, and a lower border of beads imitating white lotus buds. At each end of the collar is a terminal bar, to which the suspensory strings are connected. A falcon head is mounted on the top of each bar. It is the distinguishing feature which signifies that the dead king was under the protection of the falcon-god Horus.

The other collar represents the cobra-goddess Wadjet with wings of a falcon or a vulture. Wadjet was the tutelary goddess of the predynastic kings of Lower Egypt whose sanctuary lay at Buto (the Greek equivalent of the Egyptian name 'House of Wad jet') in the north-western Delta. Both these collars were suspended from the neck by single strands of gold wire to which a small counterpoise (miinkhet), also made of gold, was attached, so that it hung down from the nape of the neck.

The central motif in this gold cloisonne pectoral is a scarab of translucent greenish-yellow chalcedony which serves as the body of a falcon with wings out­ stretched. It has the forelegs of a scarab and, at the back, falcon's legs of gold. In both talons it grasps the hieroglyphic sign for 'eternity' (shen) and in one an open lily, while the other holds a lotus­ flower and buds. Bordering this motif on each side is a cobra with the sun's disk on its head and a long tail extending upwards to form an outer frame for the tops of the falcon-wings.

A band of blue and red disks stretches from one cobra to the other beneath the winged scarab. In Egyptian symbolism the sun-god could be represented both as a scarab and as a falcon. Composite forms of two related symbols were common in Egyptian iconography as a way of indicating two originally separate concep­ tions which had been fused in the course of time. The designer of this pectoral, having produced a twofold symbol of the sun, repeated the technique, but less effectively, in the case of the moon. Above the winged scarab, supported by its front legs and the tips of its wings, is a gold bark, its hull inlaid in the centre with turquoise.

That it is the bark of the moon is shown by the left 'Eye of Horus' which was one of the symbols of the moon, the right 'Eye of Horus' being a symbol of the sun. Two cobras with sun's disks flank the eye, perhaps as symbols of Upper and Lower Egypt, on both of which the moon shines. The eye alone would have been enough to indicate that the bark belonged to the moon, but the artist has added to it the disk and crescent of the moon. The disk is appropriately made of silver and applied to its surface are small golden figures of the ibis-headed moon-god Thoth, the king and Re-Horakhty, the two former wearing the moon's disk and crescent and Re-Horakhty the sun's disk with uraeus.

As a kind of fringe at the base of the pectoral are the blue lotus-flowers, poppies, complex buds and papyrus flowers, all separated at the point where the stem joins the flower or the bud by roundels of concentric circles. This pectoral was found in the same casket as the necklace of the rising sun. It is inlaid with carnelian, lapis lazuli, calcite, obsidian, turquoise, red, blue, green, black and white glass.

Close to the necklace with a vulture­ pectoral in the wrappings of Tutankhamun's mummy lay a second necklace of a more elaborate design. Its rectangular gold pectoral is decorated with three upright scarabs inlaid with lapis lazuli, their front legs attached to the top of the frame, which is shaped like the hieroglyphic sign for 'heaven' (pet). Engraved on its outer face is a row of stars. The sides of the frame are formed of two was sceptres and the base consists of a bar ornamented on the outer surface with twelve marguerites, the petals of which are made of dark blue glass and the centres of gold. Suspended from the bottom of the bar like a fringe are four blue lotus flowers, three large buds and three (originally six) small buds.

The lotus flowers and the large buds are inlaid with carnelian, felspar and dark blue glass and the smaller buds with carnelian only. Above each scarab is a metal disk, the two outer disks of gold alloyed with copper representing the sun (re) and the centre disk with a crescent of gold alloyed with silver representing the moon. Beneath each scarab is the hieroglyphic sign for 'lord' (neb) inlaid with felspar. The gold undersides of the scarabs are finely modelled and the backs of the neb signs delicately chased. Contiguous circles of dark blue glass with gold centres take the place of the marguerites on the back of the base of the frame.

Egyptian jewellers often modified regular symbols or motifs for reasons which are not always apparent, though space and artistic effect were generally governing factors. In this pendant each scarab group was probably intended to suggest the name which Tutankhamun adopted when he succeeded to the throne, Nebkheperure, but the three vertical strokes which should stand between the beetle (kheper ) and the basket (neb) are missing. Also, in the middle group, the sun's disk (re) is replaced by the lunar disk and crescent. In hieroglyphic writing it is possible to repeat the same sign three times to indicate that a word is in the plural, instead of adding the three vertical strokes to the single sign, and thus the three scarabs may, by allowing for artistic licence, be explained as performing the function.

The word itself means the different 'forms' (kheperu) which a god or a dead person could assume, and it is possible that the emphasis given by the threefold repetition was intended to assist, through the processes of magic, in the realization of those metamorphoses. The substitution of the lunar disk and crescent for the sun's disk is a sportive variant which is exemplified again in the winged scarab pectoral no 42. Five strings of gold beads, together with a few beads of blue glass, make up the straps - now shorter in length than they were originally - on which the pectoral was suspended from the king's neck.

A gold counterpoise inlaid with glass is joined to the upper ends of the straps by spacer-fastenings on which winged cobras are engraved. In the centre of the counter­ poise is a figure of the god of 'Millions of Years', Heh squatting on a mat and holding with raised arms a cartouche bearing the inscription 'The Good God Nebkheperure chosen of Amon-Re'. He is supported on one side by the amuletic signs for 'stability' (djed) and 'prosperity' (was) and on the other side by the royal cobra with the white crown of Upper Egypt to which the curved frontal projection of the red crown of Lower Egypt has been added.

Concealed beneath the twelfth layer of the linen bandages which enveloped the king's mummy were three necklaces with pendant-pectorals, one lying over the centre of the thorax and the others supporting it on the left and right sides. The middle pectoral bore the Eye of Horus flanked by a vulture and a cobra, the pectoral over the right side of the body was in the form of a falcon with wings curved upwards and a solar disk with uraeus on its head, and the third pectoral was the one shown here. It represents a winged scarab holding in its forelegs the lunar disk and crescent and in its backlegs the basin. Between the scarab and the basin, attached to each of them, are three gold bars. The whole piece is made of solid gold decorated on the outer surface with cloisonne work of lapls lazuli, carnelian and turquoise-co loured glass. In the lunar disk alone the gold is alloyed with silver. All the details of the elements in its composition are finely engraved in the gold base on the inner surface.

It is evident that the pectoral represents the throne-name of Tutankhamun, Nebkheperure, but two of its elements are not the regular hieroglyphic signs used for writing the name. The basin (Heb) has been substituted for the basket (neb) and the lunar disk and crescent (lah) for the sun's disk (re). In both cases the substitutions can be explained as examples of artist's licence, but the basin may have been intended to suggest the idea that the king would live to celebrate many festivals (Jeb). Carter thought that the moon's disk was intended to counterbalance the sun's disk of the falcon necklace on the opposite side of the central pectoral. He remarks, however, that all these pectorals showed signs of friction and it seems unlikely that they would have been worn as a pair by the king during his lifetime, though he may well have worn them individually.

Chains of plaited gold wire connect the pectoral with two inlaid gold lotus flowers and a heart-shaped pendant separated by two carnelian beads. The pendant is inlaid with a cartouche bearing the king's name written in the normal manner and two uraei, one on each side of the cartouche. Since the lotus flowers have five holes and the pectoral is provided with a similar number of eyelets at the tops of the wings, it is probable that the suspensory chains were originally intended to consist of five strands of gold beads.

Tutankhamun's mummy was bandaged in layers, the appropriate amulets and jewellery being placed in each layer so that the innermost layers contained his personal possessions. This necklace was suspended from his neck between the eleventh or the twelfth layer, close to the mummy, and therefore very probably it was a piece which he had worn during his lifetime. The pendant consists of a representation of the vulture-goddess of Upper Egypt, Nekhbet, with the outer ends of the wings folded downwards resembling a cloak. It is made of solid gold encrusted, on the obverse, with lapis lazuli, apart from the lesser coverts of the wings, which are encrusted with carnelian edged with green glass, and the tips of the tail feathers, which are also encrusted with carnelian. In its talons it holds the hieroglyphic sign for 'eternity' (shen), inlaid with carnelian and blue glass.

The gold head, turned sideways, and the neck are delicately rendered in a most realistic manner, the effect being heightened by the wrinkled occiput, the obsidian eyes and the lapis lazuli beak. On the chased reverse, a miniature necklace and pendant are modelled in high relief. The pendant is composed of the king's cartouche sur­ mounted by the sun's disk and ostrich plumes, flanked by two uraei. Fastenings for the suspensory chains are attached to the upper edges of the wings. The chains are formed of rectangular links of gold and lapis lazuli inlaid, on the obverse, with concentric circles of coloured glass and bordered on the outer sides with minute gold and glass beads. Some of the lapis lazuli links had decayed before the necklace was found. The clasp consists of two falcons with heads turned backwards and resting on their scapules.

Made of gold encrusted with lapis lazuli, felspar, onyx, carnelian and green glass, they are connected by a gold tenon on the inner side of one bird which slides into a gold mortise on the inner side of the other bird.

Nekhbet, whose name means 'She who belongs to Nekheb', was originally simply the local goddess of Nekheb, the modern Elkab on the east bank of the Nile about halfway between Luxor and Aswan. She owed her importance in dynastic times to her previous adoption by the predynastic kings of Upper Egypt, whose seat lay at Nekhen (Hierakonpolis) across the river from Nekheb. According to tradition, the last of these kings, Menes, completed the conquest of Lower Egypt, the patron deity of whose kings was the cobra-goddess Wadjet, and united the two kingdoms under his sovereignty.

The vulture and the cobra thus became the symbols of this unification and also the tutelary deities of the kings. Their heads were often placed side by side on the front of the headdresses worn by kings on state occasions, and on the headdresses of their statues and other representations. Frequently the entire cobra was reproduced in this setting, and they were also depicted singly, as the vulture in this pendant. It is said that this species of vulture (Gypsjulvus) has its habitat at the present day in Middle and Upper Egypt and farther south, but is seldom seen in Lower Egypt.

These emblems were found separately, the crook in the Antechamber and the flail in the Treasury. The flail is historically the more interesting because it bears on the gold cap at the base of its handle the king's name in its early form of Tutankhaten, together with his throne-name Nebkheperure, thus showing that it had belonged to him while he was still a child but after he had ascended the throne. Since a flail was one of the symbols held by Egyptian kings in some of their coronation ceremonies, it is at least possible that this object was the actual flail used by Tutankhaten in his coronation at EI­ Amarna when he was about nine years of age and before he was crowned at Karnak.

The crook is inscribed on both the termi­ nal caps with the throne-name only - a difference which, in spite of the equality in size of the two objects, may indicate that they were not originally made as a pair. A second pair and an odd crook, all oflarger size, were found in the same wooden box as this flail. All three crooks are composed of alternating cylindrical sleeves of metal overlaid with gold and dark blue glass upon a bronze core. The handle of the flail, as far as the angular sleeve at the top, is similarly composed, but the gilded beads in the thongs of the swingle have wooden cores.

Although the crook and the flail were most often represented as emblems of the god Osiris, they were also carried on some ceremonial occasions, besides the corona­ tion, by the reigning Pharaoh. Very occasionally the crook was held by Viceroys of Nubia and also by Viziers. A painted scene of tribute from Asia in the tomb ofTutankhamun's Viceroy of Nubia, Huy, shows the king holding both the crook and flail in his left hand and the sign for 'life' (ankh) in his right, while the Viceroy holds a crook, but no flail, in his left hand and a single ostrich plume in his right.

Only rarely is the flail shown in the hands of priests or officials and such instances are limited to scenes of royal jubilee festivals. Notwithstanding these sporadic exceptions, the crook and the flail were essentially Osirian emblems, though possibly not so in origin. Osiris is believed to have acquired them from Andjeti, the local god of a town in the Delta named Djedu, who was represented in human form with two feathers on his head and holding the crook and flail in his hands. At a very early date in Egyptian history Osiris absorbed Andjeti and adopted his insignia. Osiris, however, was regarded not only as a god but also as a deified deceased king and consequently his insignia, particularly the crook and the flail, were treated as symbols of royalty.

It is not difficult to imagine how a shepherd's crook could have acquired the symbolical significance of rulership. Its, name in Egyptian is heqat and the most common word for 'ruler' is heqa. Not unnaturally it has been compared with the crozier, the pastoral staff of ecclesiastical appurtenances. A flail (called nekhakha), however, seems out of character for a kindly and beneficent god like Osiris and for this reason some authorities prefer to regard it as a ladanisterion, a flail-like instrument used until the present day by shepherds in the Mediterranean region and elsewhere for collecting ladanum, a gummy substance excreted from the leaves ofthe cistus plant. According to classical writers it was used in the preparation of incense and unguen ts. This suggestion, which was proposed by Professor P. E. Newberry who helped in the clearance of Tutankhamun's tomb, is plausible, but, as yet, there is no clear evidence that the cistus plant grew in Egypt in pharaonic times.