The treasures of all Egypt - 40 centuries look up

The treasures of all Egypt – 40 centuries look up

Walking into this treasure house of a museum, and knowing that it houses what is arguably the most spectacular exhibit in any museum in the world – the golden mask of the boy king; the Pharaoh Tutankhamen, one is constantly distracted, even whilst looking over the other magnificent trove of Upper and Lower Egypt contained within the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

What would probably pass for major exhibits in another museum, here pale into insignificance compared to the granite statues of the great and the godly. The stela of different events in ancient Egypt portray a world that predates almost everything. Alchemy – from the Arabic Al Kheme, meaning ‘of Egypt’, was born here as Pharaohs believed that base metal could be turned into gold. The science of geometry and al-gebra were certainly used to construct the pyramids, and the means - mechanical, to move blocks weighing tons, or, as some now think, to cast the blocks of which the pyramids are built, was certainly known and expertly carried out in those early days of the Old Kingdom.

Realising that these pyramids, though magnificently colossal, were in fact useless at their main task – preventing the treasures and bodies of dead Pharaohs seeking the way to the afterlife, from being robbed, the kings of the New Kingdom went up the Nile to Thebes, now Luxor, to inter their great kings with their booty in what they imagined to be sufficiently remote locations to be safe for all eternity.

Howard Carter discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamen at the very end of two years of fruitless, backbreaking effort. His sponsor and provider, Lord Caernarvon, had all but given up and was ready to recall Carter before he looked in one last place, below the huts of excavation workers, ironically, to arrive at his ‘day of days’ when he went into the tomb and saw its magnificent contents.

That trove is here for all to see, in a temperature controlled, guarded room where everything is behind glass and guards stand by to protect these last accompanying artifacts to the Pharaoh. I could only wonder what has been lost from the other tombs in the Valley of the Kings, as well as from the pyramids at Giza. Here are the things the young king had to accompany him to the afterlife, entombed with him in what was one of the smaller tombs. What did the fabulous tombs of the mightiest contain?
Robert L. Fielding