Summary of Discovering Tut: The Saga Continues
Discovering Tut: The Saga Continues written by A.R. Williams Talks about an attempt to conduct a forensic reconstruction of Tut’s mummy. He talks about his experience with his team members during the diagnostic imaging of the mummy with a CT scanner. The account presents expectations of archeologists and their experience with cultural stigma attached to ancient objects during this event. The account captivates us with the thrill of finding answers to the mystery of Tut’s death. Also, the archeologists are worried about being subjected to the pharaoh’s curse for taking out his dead body out of the tomb. Tutankhamun, commonly known as Tut worldwide, was the last heir of a family that ruled Egypt for years. His tomb was found in 1922, and many speculations have been made about his abrupt and mysterious death. He died as a teenager. The author and his team set out to find new clues about his life and death with the help of a CT scan that would help them with an accurate forensic reconstruction of the boyish pharaoh. Discovering Tut Summary is a part of BYJU’S CBSE Summary. Students can also visit CBSE Notes for more information and learning materials on CBSE Class 11 English syllabus.
CBSE Class 11 English Discovering Tut: The Saga Continues Summary
The author talks about the day when the mummy of Tut was put under a CT scanner. It was arranged to find out the reasons behind the pharaoh’s untimely death more than 3,300 years ago. It was 6 p.m. in the evening on the 5th of January, 2005. It was a cloudy atmosphere with strong winds creating dust devils as Tut’s mummy was taken out from his cemetery in the Valley of the Kings. The afternoon saw the usual tourist traffic that came to pay respects to the dead pharaoh. Most tourists pondered over the sudden death of the pharaoh in his teens, while others wondered if the pharaoh’s curse of death or misfortune on those who disturbed him was true.
As the mummy was brought out, the Secretary General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, observed that it was in a miserable state due to what Carter did to it in the 1920s. Howard Carter was a British archaeologist who discovered Tut’s tomb in 1922 after many years of futile searching. Carter went through the contents in hurry and carelessness. The discovery of Tut’s tomb by Carter made it the richest royal collection to be ever found. The excitement that followed the discovery of the stunning artefacts of gold, buried along with the pharaoh to ensure a resurrection, still lingers today.
Carter took months to record the pharaoh’s funerary treasures. Then he went on to investigate the three nested coffins. The first one had a shroud adorned with leaves and flowers, indicating a burial that took place in March or April. When Carter reached the mummy, he saw that Tut’s body was cemented to the bottom of his gold coffin because of the ritual resins. He tried to separate the body from the coffin by putting it in the sun. It did not work. So, Carter had to chisel the body away from the coffin’s surface. The author defends Carter for this act, saying that if Carter had not done that, thieves would have ripped Tut’s mummy apart for gold.
The author talks about the use of computed tomography, which can create a three-dimensional virtual body during scanning with the help of X-rays. Forty years after the investigation by Howard Carter, an anatomy professor X-rayed the mummy to reveal that the pharaoh’s breast bone and front ribs were missing. The CT scan helped reveal two very important questions about Tut’s death – how he died and how old he could have been during the time of his death. Amenhotep III – Tut’s father or grandfather – had ruled for almost four decades, after which he was succeeded by his son Amenhotep IV. The latter promoted the worship of Aten, or the sun disk, and changed his name to Akhenaten. He moved the capital from Thebes to the new city of Akhenaten – formerly known as Amarna. He shocked the people by attacking a major god named Amun.
After Akhenaten, a new ruler named Smenkhare appeared and ruled for a brief period of time. Young Tut sat on the throne after him. He changed his name to Tutankhamun or the ‘living image of Amun’ and restored the old ways. He ruled for nine years and died an unexpected death.
While scanning, an eerie detail was found in the resulting image of Tut’s head. The scanner stopped functioning twenty minutes into the scanning process due to the presence of sand in a cooler fan. A guard joked nervously that it could be a curse of the pharaoh. Two plastic fans were brought in to finish the scanning process. The pharaoh was put back in his place within less than three hours of scanning. A technician pulled up images of the pharaoh on a computer screen. Everything seemed anatomically correct. Zahi Hawass felt relieved. He was not able to sleep the previous night because he was worried about discovering some terrible reason behind Tut’s death.
By the time the author and his team left, they found the cold winter air still and quiet. They could see the constellation of Orion above the entrance of Tut’s tomb. According to the Egyptians, Orion is the soul of Osiris – the god of the afterlife. It seemed to watch over the boy king.
Conclusion of Discovering Tut: The Saga Continues
Discovering Tut Summary gives an overview of the various intricacies involved in any archaeological project. Working with new people in new places could be challenging. It is about how we deal with those situations with wit and understanding. Discovering Tut: The Saga Continues is set in a geographically different environment where the author is accompanied by historians from Egypt as well. They are all curious about the answers they might unravel in connection to Tut’s death. While taking out the mummy for the CT scan, they find it in a ransacked state – the result of a previous excavation by British archaeologist Howard Carter. The scanner stopped during scanning because of sand in a cooler fan. These kinds of events intensified the nature of the experience along with the fluctuating weather before and after the CT scan.
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