English Lord Carnarvon - the heir to a huge fortune, collector and athlete - was also one of the first motorists. He barely survived one of the car crashes, and since then his dreams of the sport have been abandoned. To improve his health, the bored lord visited Egypt and became interested in the great past of this country. For his own amusement, he decided to do excavations himself, but his own attempts in this field proved fruitless. The money alone was not enough for such a case, and the knowledge and experience of Lord Carnarvon were not enough. He was recommended to seek help from Howard Carter, who came to archaeology in a completely different way.
In 1914, Lord Carnarvon saw the name of Tutankhamun on one of the earthenware cups found during excavations in the Valley of Kings. The same name was on the gold plate of a small hiding place. These findings forced the Lord to exhaust the Egyptian government's permission to search for the tomb of Pharaoh. The same physical evidence also supported H. Carter when he was in a state of despondency over a long, but unsuccessful search.
But first, the members of Lord Carnarvon's expedition decided to clear the Valley of Kings of sand. They laid rails, and on this narrow gauge, they rolled carts, tonne by tonne of sand and crushed stone. The tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamen was searched by archaeologists for seven long years, but in the end, they were happy.
The sensational news flew around the world in early 1923. In those days, crowds of reporters, photographers, and radio commentators rushed to the small and usually quiet Egyptian town of Luxor. From the Valley of Kings hourly rushed by phone and telegraph summaries, messages, notes, essays, reports, reports, articles ...
Eighty-four days' journey to Tutankhamun's inner golden coffin - through four outer arks, a stone sarcophagus and three inner coffins - finally reached the point where they saw someone who for a long time was only a ghostly name for historians. But first, archaeologists and workers discovered the stairs that led into the depths of the cliffs and ended at the enclosed entrance. When the entrance was cleared, it was followed by a corridor filled with limestone fragments, and at the end of the corridor - another entrance, which was also bricked up.
After making a hole in the masonry, Howard Carter put his hand in there with a candle and clung to the hole. I didn't see anything at first," he wrote in his book. - The warm air rushed out of the room and the candlelight flashed. But gradually, when his eyes got used to the darkness, the details of the room began to slowly come out of the darkness. There were strange figures of animals, statues, and gold - gold shone everywhere!
When Lord Carnarvon and H. Carter entered the first room, they were stunned by the number and variety of objects that filled it. There were chariots, bows, quiver with arrows and gloves for shooting; beds, also upholstered with gold; armchairs covered with the smallest inserts of ivory, gold, silver, and gems; magnificent stone vessels, richly decorated chests with clothes and jewelry. There were also boxes of food and vessels with dried wine.
The first room was followed by others, and what was found in the tomb of Pharaoh exceeded the most daring expectations of the expedition participants. Here there were magnificent works of ancient Egyptian art.
Ruthless time destroys a lot, in addition, the thieves visited the tomb in ancient times. Countless treasures, which were provided to the deceased lords, their families and important dignitaries, have long attracted greedy robbers. Neither terrible spells, nor careful security, nor mountain pyramids, nor cunning tricks of architects (disguised traps, bricked up cameras, false moves, hidden stairs, etc.) helped against them. But thanks to a happy confluence of circumstances, the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamen remains the only one that has survived almost intact.
The fact that Carter's expedition discovered the tomb was an unparalleled success in itself. But fate smiled at him once more, and in those days he wrote: "We saw something that has not been awarded to any man of our time.
Only from the front chamber of the tomb English expedition took out 34 containers full of priceless jewelry, precious stones, gold and works of art. And when the members of the expedition penetrated into the burial chambers of Pharaoh, they found here a wooden gilded ark, and in it another - an oak ark, in the second - the third gilded ark, and then also the fourth. In this fourth one, there was a sarcophagus of a single piece of the rarest crystal quartzite, and in it, there were two more sarcophagi.
Now the treasures from the Tutankhamen tomb are exhibited in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and occupy ten halls, the area of which is equal to the football field.
Tutankhamun had two statues of Ka, which were carried in the funeral procession in a row of honor - immediately after the pharaoh's sarcophagus. In the funeral chambers, these statues stood on the sides of a sealed door leading to the golden sarcophagus.
The Ka is the life force that the gods bestow upon every mortal at birth. This power was invisible but depicted in the form of someone who was inspired. With the death of the man Ka left his body, but still cared about his master. Ka's well-being, in turn, depended on the condition of the deceased's body, so much importance in ancient Egypt was attached to embalming.
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