Discovering Tut The Saga Continues Summary and Explanation

A.R. Williams is the author of the chapter Discovering Tut: The Saga Continues. In this chapter, the author introduces us to the king, who earned the throne in his teenage days. His name was Tut, and he was considered the last teenage ruler. Here the author has discussed how Tut's mummy and the tomb were discovered after an extended period and the observations of the research conducted by Howard Carter. 

Interesting Facts About Discovering Tut: The Saga Continues

In Discovering Tut, The Saga Continues Class 11, Tut, who later changed his name to Tutankhamun, was the last heir to the powerful dynasty which ruled Egypt for several years. Before moving any further, let's discuss some basic details of King Tut. These are as follows: 

• King Tut was also called Tutankhamun and Tutankhaten.

• He was born in 1341 BC and died in 1321 BC, at a very early stage. 

• He became king at the age of eleven years. 

• The AMUN and ATEN are the words attached to the name of King Tut, i.e, Tutankhamun and Tutankhaten. 

• Here, AMUN is referred to as the Egyptian God of Sun and Air. 

• ATEN is the Disk of the Sun. 

• These words were attached to king Tut's name because he used to worship these gods. 

• He was from the powerful Pharaoh dynasty, which ruled Egypt for centuries. Generally, Pharaoh is the Egyptian term for a King.

He died in his late teens, at the age of seventeen. His death is a mystery unsolved to date. Some speculate that it was murder, while others think of other probabilities. Tutankhamun was buried and forgotten with the passage of time until in 1922 his tomb was discovered by Howard Carter, whom we will discuss later in this summary.

80 years after Howard Carter's discovery of the tomb, in January 2005, at 6 pm, the mummy of Tutankhamun was taken for a CT scan. It was kept under Zahi Hawas, secretary-general of Egypt's Supreme Council of antiquities, when it reached there. According to him, the condition of King Tut's mummy was worse due to Carter's experiment on it. 

Now, who was Carter? Carter was the British archaeologist who discovered the mummy of King Tut in 1922. 

This Computed Tomography (CT) scan was done to reconstruct his death mystery through forensic and medical procedures. It was found that he had died more than 3300 years ago and was buried in a royal grave in the Valley of the Kings.

In the experiment conducted by Howard Carter, he observed several things buried with King Tut inside the grave. 

Carter found that the tomb was in the wealthiest royal collection ever seen. It has beautiful golden artefacts, board games, bronze razors, cases for food and wine, linen undergarments in its possession. Egyptians believed in life after death, and thus when they used to bury any powerful king, they filled their grave with lots of riches, like precious stones, jewels, gold, etc.

There was everything which the ruler would need in his afterlife.

Moreover, this process keeps artefacts and items that serve the idea of the afterlife and protects the dead body by mummifying them. Therefore, the body of King Tut was also mummified with these items. 

These were his funeral treasures. Later he began investigating the three nested coffins of Tut. The first coffin had Tutankhamun’s shroud covered with garlands of olive leaves, wild celery, lotus petals and cornflowers, which indicated that he was buried in March or April.

Carter believed that at the time of burying King Tut, people may have offered rituals. In those rituals, they must have used resins (a glue found in particular types of trees). After such a long period, those resins have turned hard and got stuck with the gold coffin of King's mummy.

Carter had many problems in loosening the resin that held the king’s shroud to the bottom of the coffin. It held the body extremely tightly. Carter tried using the hot sun of Egypt for loosening the resin, but even heating to 149 degrees of Fahrenheit would not help it melt. 

This made Carter terrified, and he started thinking of any other way to preserve the mummy so that no one else could harm the mummy of King Tut. And thus,  he had no other option but to cut the mummy from under the limbs and gold trunk otherwise thieves would rob it of its gold by cutting and ribbing the body’s limbs. This is why Carter chose the other way to protect the mummy of King Tut. 

Because of this action of Carter, Zahi Hawass said that the mummy's condition was worse.  

Archaeologists stated that advanced technology enabled them to examine the mummy more accurately. In 1968, almost forty years later, a professor of anatomy X-rayed the mummy’s body and discovered that the breastbone and front ribs of Tutankhamun were missing. 

One of the reasons that caused this finding could be the incident when Carter was trying to separate the mummy from its gold coffin and may have damaged the parts of the body. That is why those parts were missing. 

King Tutankhamun’s demise brought an end to his lineage. It was a great event in history. The author gives us a brief description of the ancestors of King Tut. Amenhotep III, Tut’s father or grandfather Amenhotep III, was an extremely powerful Pharaoh who ruled over a period of 40 years. His descendant Amenhotep IV had initiated a strange period in the history of Egypt. He changed his name to Akhenaten or the servant of Aten, the sun god. He promoted the worship of Sun God. 

During his rule, he moved the religious capital from Thebes to the new city of Akhetaten known as Amama. He shifted the capital to gain enormous power over the whole area and control it from one place. He attacked God Amun and smashed his temples and idols. It was a terrible time for the people of the kingdom.

During his later years, he had somewhat lost his sanity. A mysterious ruler called Smenkhkare ruled for some time after which the young ruler Tutankhamen assumed the throne.

King Tut ruled for almost nine years, made tremendous efforts for the welfare of people, and restored the lost glory of his dynasty. And thus, he was called the living image of Amun. He died unexpectedly at a young age. 

The Egyptian Mummy Project has listed down more than 600 mummies and is still counting.  Tut was one of the first mummies to be scanned to discover the mystery of his death.

While working on the scan of the mummy, the scanner had abruptly stopped working. Technicians assumed that it was the curse of the dead. And rumours were created that if anybody opens the pharaoh’s coffin, he will face the curse of King Tut.

But later, they came to know that the actual problem was with the coolers inside the scanner. The fans accidentally malfunctioned, and thus, the scanner stopped working, so it had nothing to do with the curse. 

After using spare fans for some time, the scan was made possible. By then, every member present there from the forensic team was trying to form the pharaoh’s face.  They were assuming the physical features of King Tut to resemble his face. After producing an image of the dead king, he was laid back in his coffin in the Valley of the Kings. He rested under the Orion constellation, which was considered the soul of Osiris or God of the afterlife according to Egyptians. Here, Author A.R. Williams amusingly describes people’s views of how God takes care of Pharaoh's body even after his death. 

So, this was a precise and short summary of Discovering Tuts. The Discovering Tut summary deals with the Egyptian pharaoh, Tutankhamun’s demise. The Egyptian culture, lifestyle and beliefs are evident from the narration by A.R. Williams. Discovering Tut summary Class 11  also talks about the curse on Tutankhamun’s tomb.

Final Remark

This chapter provides us with a detailed perception and understanding of the historical Egyptian culture. Moreover, we come to know about the Egyptians' belief in life after death. The gold in this chapter also resembles the wealth of the king's Tut dynasty. Burying gold with the body of the King indicates the belief of the people that gold will ensure rebirth.