King Tut’s Treasures return to Africa
After up to eighty years spent in the custody of its illegal owners, a handful of the treasures and artefacts stolen from the Egyptian boy-king Tutankhamun’s tomb are finally returning home to Africa
Although most of the items fit in the palm of a hand, Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt, hailed the return as “a wonderful gesture.” The artefacts include two rings bearing the name of the boy-king, a miniature black-bronze dog with a gold collar, and a broad necklace with purple-blue beads. At 32 centimetres by 12 centimetres, the necklace is the largest of the 19 artefacts returned to Egypt by the British Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) on November 10. Museum Director Thomas Campbell said in a statement that evidence shows “without a doubt” that the objects, which entered the possession of the British between 1922 and 1940 originated from Tutankhamun’s tomb. “These objects were never meant to have left Egypt,” he said.
British Archaeologists discovered the tomb, its door intact with an unbroken royal seal in 1922 but Egyptologists say the grave was robbed soon after construction in 1324 B.C. through an outer wall. At the time of the excavation, Egypt allowed excavators to keep most of what they found. However, after a decade of excavations in the Valley of the Kings, where pharaohs were buried between the 16th to the 11th century B.C., it became clear that its content was a national treasure. The Egyptian government initiated action to keep artefacts in the country and the area has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979.
Tutankhamun was born in 1341 BC, the son of Akhenaten (formerly Amenhotep IV) and one of his sisters. As a prince, he was known as Tutankhaten. His original name, Tutankhaten, means “Living Image of Aten”, while Tutankhamun means “Living Image of Amun”. In hieroglyphs, the name Tutankhamun was typically written Amen-tut-ankh, because of a scribal custom that placed a divine name at the beginning of a phrase to show appropriate reverence. He ascended to the throne in 1333 BC, at the age of nine, taking the reign name of Tutankhamun and died nearly 3,000 years ago. His reign was brief (around 1333-1324 B.C.) but he lives on in the popular culture. From his mummy, scientists reconstructed an image of his face. His gold death mask has toured in exhibitions worldwide. In February 2010, scholars analyzed Tutankhamun’s mummy and concluded that the boy-king died of an infected leg fracture and malaria at the age of 19 years. Tutankhamun was one of the few kings worshipped as a god and honoured with a cult-like following in his own lifetime. A stela discovered at Karnak and dedicated to Amun-Re and Tutankhamun indicates that the king could be appealed to in his deified state for forgiveness and to free the petitioner from an ailment caused by wrongdoing. Temples of his cult were built as far away as Kawa and Faras in Nubia. The title of the sister of the Viceroy of Kush included a reference to the deified king, indicative of the universality of his cult.
If Tutankhamun is the world’s best-known pharaoh, it is partly because his tomb is among the best preserved, and his image and associated artefacts the most-exhibited relics are among the most travelled artefacts in the world. They have been to many countries including the USA, USSR, Japan, France, Canada, and West Germany. The Metropolitan Museum of Art organized the U.S. exhibition, which ran from November 17, 1976, through April 15, 1979, and was seen by more than eight million people. Some of the stolen artefacts from the tomb are currently on display in New York at the Discovery Times Square Exhibition centre as part of the “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” exhibition through January 2011. Thereafter, they will be exhibited at the British Met until June 2011, and afterwards returned to Cairo’s Egyptian Museum. With the rest of the Tut collection, their new home will be at the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza, scheduled to open in 2012.
The British Metropolitan Museum has about 36,000 Egyptian objects dating from the Paleolithic to the Roman period.
Wikipedia, AllAfrica.com
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