Tutankhamen Mask, New Facts

One of the best-known objects to be brought out of Tutankhamun's tomb was his life-size golden death mask. Made from sheets of beaten gold and decorated with semi-precious stones, it is so valuable that it is considered to be one of the greatest treasures in the whole world. The mask was fitted over the young pharaoh's mummified head to protect him once the priests had finished their work. Further protection was added in the form of a magic formula, which was engraved on the shoulders and on the back of the mask.

Tutankhamun's body, complete with the death mask, was then placed inside a nest of three exquisitely decorated coffins, carved to this body and each one complete with a different face mask.

The first coffin was made out of gold, and the second and third were carved from wood, inlaid with gold. The world-famous golden death mask is said to represent an idealised face of the young pharaoh – and pays tribute to Tutankhamun's great position and power. On the mask, Tutankhamun wears the divine plaited beard, made from colored glass, expertly worked into a golden framework.

His wide necklace collar, made from lapis lazuli, quartz, amazonite and colored beads, is attached at each shoulder to a gold falcon’s head. Around his forehead he wears a vulture and cobra worked from gold, inlaid with semi-precious stones and colored glass. His eyes are made from obsidian and quartz and lined with inlaid blue glass.

The mask takes pride of place in the Tutankhamun collection at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and is seen by thousands of visitors every year.  

The Solar Boat Museum

It is situated to the south of the Great pyramid. It was established by Kamal El - Mallakh who was born in Assuit, Egypt , on October 26, 1918. He was a dedicated scholar of Egyptology and culture died in October 1987. It was built to contain the Solar Boat of the great king Cheops which was discovered by Kamal El Mallakh in 1954.

The museum is a humidity-controlled pavilion, containing a 141 feet long boat, one of the five boat pits sunk around Cheops's pyramid . The boat, made entirely of cedar wood, is over 120 feet long and is about 40 tons displacement.

It should be mentioned that there are boat pits near the pyramid of Cheops, 5 pits to the east of the Great Pyramids and 2 pits to the south. The reconstruction of the solar boats took 14 years, but was helped by U-shaped holes, allowing the boat to be stitched together by ropes or vegetable fibers. The boat is an impressive 141 feet long and 20 feet wide.There are many suggestions about the function of the solar boats, first it was used for the soul of the dead accompanied the sun on its eternal journey in the heavens around the world , so a boat or at least a model of a boat was included in every tomb. Moreover; it was used in religious events like pilgrimages and transporting the statue of a god.

Khufu Sun Boat

More than fifty years ago, boat pits were found next to the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. Entombed in the pits were ancient wooden boats that experts believe were intended to ferry Khufu, the pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid, into the afterlife. Soon, archaeologists will excavate the fragments of the second of these boats and try to reassemble it. In doing so, experts hope to learn more about the boat, which is one of the oldest vessels to have survived from antiquity.

The 4500 year old vessel is the sister ship of a similar boat that was removed in pieces from a pit in 1954. That boat was painstakingly reconstructed and is now on display in a museum built above the pit. The unexcavated boat is thought to be of a similar design to its sister ship, a narrow craft measuring 142 feet, with a rectangular deckhouse and long, interlocking oars that soar overhead. The cedar timbers of the boat's curved hull are lashed together with rope. While the unexcavated boat is believed to be smaller and less well preserved than the reconstructed ship, the two boats are considered to be among the most significant finds on the Giza Plateau.

Excavation of the second boat will begin in November, said professor Sakuji Yoshimura of Japan's Waseda University, who is helping to lead restoration efforts. He said that 600 pieces of timber from Lebanese cedar and Egyptian acacia trees are expected to be removed from the pit, and once the pieces of wood have been extricated, Yoshimura and Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities will begin reconstructing the boat.

John Darnell, an Egyptologist at Yale University, said that new research into the second boat could fill in some blanks about the significance of the two ancient vessels and could help to resolve a debate over their true purpose, which has remained somewhat enigmatic. Experts have been unable to determine whether the boats ever actually plied Nile River waterways or were of purely spiritual, figurative import.

"In Egypt, almost everything real had its counterpart meaning or significance in the spiritual world. But there's a lot of debate as to whether these vessels ever were used or not," Darnell explained.

Some experts believe that the boats were used in the water. It is possible, they say, that these were the funerary boats used to bring the pharaoh Khufu's embalmed remains up the Nile from the ancient capital of Memphis for burial in the Great Pyramid, his mausoleum. As evidence, they point to rope marks on the wood, which could have been caused by a rope becoming wet and then shrinking as it dried.