No comments The painted Burial Chamber
The only room to be decorated was the burial chamber, whose four walls are painted with scenes of Tutankhamun’s funeral and the Underworld. On the east wall, the king’s catafalque is drawn on a sledge to the tomb. The south wall shows him being welcomed into the Afterworld in the company of Hathor, Isis and Anubis. The west wall (upon which the others are focused) has extracts from the ‘Book of the Amduat’ (That Which Is in the Underworld) and the squatting figures of twelve baboons, representing the hours of the night through which the king will pass.
The north wall is the most interesting, however, for here the decoration falls into three groups. The first scene, on the right, shows Tutankh–amun’s successor Ay dressed in a priest’s panther skin and wearing the Blue Crown, performing the ceremony of the Opening of the Mouth on the king’s standing Osiride– form mummy. This painting is unique amongst royal tomb decoration. Next Tutankhamun is welcomed by the goddess Nut (who is normally found on the underside of the sarcophagus lid or over the whole ceiling of the tomb, arching her body protectively over the king). The final section of the north wall shows Tutankhamun, with his ka in close attendance, being embraced by Osiris in welcome to the Underworld.
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| Tutankhamun Tomb Paintings |
The entire decoration of the chamber had to be completed in less than 70 days, the period stipulated for the embalming process and burial.
Of the nest of three coffins in the sarcophagus, the innermost was of solid gold, the outer two of wood overlaid with gold. The king‘s mummy lay in the midst of all this splendour with its famous gold mask but, by comparison, the actual remains of the king himself were pitiful, the result of poor embalming. Beyond the painted burial chamber (the only decorated room in the tomb), through an open doorway guarded by a large recumbent wooden figure of the jackal Anubis, lay the Treasury. Here stood the great canopic wooden shrine enclosing the calcite canopic chest. The chest held four jars containing Tutankhamun‘s viscera, whose human-headed lids were modelled in the likeness of the king.
Hopes were high that amongst all the splendour there would be some important literary or historical documentation, but nothing of that nature was found. Apart from the king’s own remains, the most moving aspect of the tomb must surely be the two stillborn mummified foetuses of baby girls, aborted at five months and possibly eight or nine months, found in the Treasury. They must have been daughters of Tutankhamun by Ankhesenamun. Had either lived, she would have taken her mother’s place in due course as the Great Royal Heiress, carrying on the Amarna blood line – indeed, the whole later history of Egypt’s 19th Dynasty could have been changed.
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