Tutankhamun's tomb shines after decade of renovations

By Mostafa Salem

 

A guard looks at ancient Egyptian drawings and the sarcophagus in the newly renovated tomb wall of boy pharaoh King Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt January 31, 2019. REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany

 

LUXOR, Egypt (Reuters) - A century after the tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered, revealing the mummified boy-king buried more than 3,000 years ago, it has re-opened, brighter and safer thanks to painstaking work to repair damage caused by dust, damp and visitors.

 

The intricate frescoes on the walls and ceiling were also restored to the pristine state they were in when British archaeologist Howard Carter first entered the tomb in 1922.

 

In a process that took 10 years and was delayed by political upheaval in 2011 when protests forced Hosni Mubarak from power, wooden flooring, lighting and ramps inside the tomb were all replaced: and that meant Tutankhamun himself had to be moved.

 

"It is an incredibly precious object, so it was a very stressful time to safely move the mummy," said Neville Agnew, communications director of the Los Angeles-based Getty Conservation Institute, which led the work.

 

"It was terrifying," he said of the operation to lift the mummy and its 250 kg (550-pound) case and carry it from the tomb by hand.

 

"Twelve men, chanting and carrying it up the ramp. I said: if one slips, it will slide and will kill somebody. They said: 'Don't worry'."

 

The ancient site in the Valley of the Kings had been renovated several times before, but perhaps never with this rigour.

 

Conservationists, architects, environmental specialists and scientists began with nearly five years of analysis that found environmental impact as well as visitor damage including graffiti, scratches and lost items.

 

"The water vapour produced by visitors' breathing affected everything in the tomb," said Hussein Shaboury, an arts professor at Alexandria University, adding that it had also been hard to breathe there.

 

"We had to change this and create a method by which fresh air enters the tomb, and air is circulated in a way where all the air in the tomb is changed in 30 minutes."

 

(Reporting by Mostafa Salem; editing by Sami Aboudi and Robin Pomeroy)

 

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-02-01

Well done!

 

This is priceless history that should be cared for.

more recent theories have come to light about the purpose of the great pyramids of egypt and they are fascinating

 

 

35 minutes ago, atyclb said:

more recent theories have come to light about the purpose of the great pyramids of egypt and they are fascinating

 

 

I've seen other similar videos on Youtube. As you say interesting but the automatic voice gets irritating.

 

The first time I heard of this theory was about 40 years ago so it is not a new idea, just one getting better coverage.

You do realise that the pyramids were already  1,300 years old when Tutankhamun was pharaoh.

22 minutes ago, lungbing said:

You do realise that the pyramids were already  1,300 years old when Tutankhamun was pharaoh.

In western ancient history, we tend to focus on the Greeks.

 However the basic early Egyptian pyramids were and are poorly built.

But they developed the concept of distance,  astronomy,  and math formulae.

Smart pyramids were built with Greek technology. The history of Egypt is intermingled with the Greeks.

 And later the Romans. 

1 hour ago, lungbing said:

You do realise that the pyramids were already 1,300 years old when Tutankhamun was pharaoh.

And did you realise that Cleopatra lived in time closer to us than to the construction of the great pyramids ? 

 

 

FYI:

- construction of great pyramids : ~2'500 BCE

- Cleopatra : [69, 30] BCE

- now : 2'019 CE

20 hours ago, mlmcleod said:

Well done!

 

This is priceless history that should be cared for.

Well trust the Arabs, look at what happened  to the middle heritage (Irak & Syria) during the last 20 years...

Good news story from Egypt. I saw King Tuts mask in 1972 exhibition in London.

Greeks are still complaining about the Elgin marbles .Lord Elgin found  the friezes laying scattered about the Acropolis with all the other rubble. They would have been lost to history if Elgin hadn't saved them and shipped them off to the British Museum after paying the all too willing Greeks. Now they want them back so Greeks can make money out of displaying them.

Greece's fault. British museum will never return something that rightfully belongs with it . Greeks smashed or re-used the bronze from most of their pagan statues handing down to us Roman copies.

They even stored gunpowder in the Parthenon .The Turks blew it up.

Greeks are useless eaters.

Edited February 2, 20197 yr by Lucius verus

59 minutes ago, Lucius verus said:

Greeks smashed or re-used the bronze from most of their pagan statues handing down to us Roman copies.

They even stored gunpowder in the Parthenon .The Turks blew it up.

 

False:

"After the Ottoman conquest, it was turned into a mosque in the early 1460s. On 26 September 1687, an Ottoman ammunition dump inside the building was ignited by Venetian bombardment. The resulting explosion severely damaged the Parthenon and its sculptures."

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenon

1 hour ago, Lucius verus said:

They would have been lost to history if Elgin hadn't saved them and shipped them off to the British Museum after paying the all too willing Greeks.

False. He paid nobody and it seems likely he lied about having permission to remove them:

^[3]" The Marbles were transported by sea to Britain. Elgin later claimed to have obtained in 1801 an official decree (a firman)^[4] from the Sublime Porte, the central government of the Ottoman Empire which were then the rulers of Greece. This firman has not been found in the Ottoman archives despite its wealth of documents from the same period^[5] and its veracity is disputed.^[6] "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles

Troll post removed.