We talked a lot about different sites, artifacts, and events in ANP 455 over the course of the semester. However, I found the tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamun to be the most significant. He may have been a relatively insignificant pharaoh (his reign only lasted 10 years and not much occurred during that time). I think that this discovery is significant/interesting for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, his mummy reveals a lot about Egyptian health and disease. Tut’s parents were brother and sister, making him the product of incest. This caused the young pharaoh to have many different kinds of genetic disorders, disabilities, and other health issues. Scoliosis, Klippel-Feil Syndrome (where two of the vertebrae in the neck fuse together; however, all of Tut’s vertebrae were fused, making the movement of his neck impossible), clubfoot, and a cleft palate were all things that King Tutankhamun had to deal with throughout the course of his short life. It is interesting that, even though his body was afflicted with so many different things, he was still the most powerful man in Egypt (even though his reign was a short one). Another interesting thing bioarchaeologists and biological anthropologists found when studying his mummy is that he suffered from malaria multiple times throughout his life. According to them, this is the oldest genetic proof of this disease that has been found thus far. We may not know exactly how far back the history of malaria goes, but King Tut has given us evidence that it (at least) goes as far back as ancient Egypt.

The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb is also significant because it was the only one relatively undisturbed by grave robbers or other parties. Gold jewelry, thrones, weapons, food and drink, canes, clothing, chariots, and other funerary goods were left with him in his tomb and remained there until it was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922. Even though he was a minor pharaoh (nowhere near as noteworthy as Ramesses II or Seti I), he was still buried with luxurious goods to take with him into the afterlife. This allows archaeologists to see what a royal tomb would have looked like when it was sealed and make interpretations about how this would differed between rulers like Tut and rulers like Ramesses II. This transitions into Egyptian ideas about the afterlife. The discovery of King Tut’s tomb allowed archaeologists to more closely examine Egyptian religion and how they thought about life after death. Seeing as how Tut’s tomb is the only royal burial that had been undisturbed, scholars are able to see the kinds of things that ancient Egyptians believed the king would need for his journey to the afterlife.