The face of the best-known pharaoh in history is now
revealed after 85 years since his mummy was discovered and more than 3,300 years
after his death.
The Tutankhamun’s tomb stopped being a secret since its
discovery in 1922 by British treasure-seeker Howard Carter. Filled with gold
and semi-precious stones, the tomb amazed a whole world for almost a century. It
took five years for Carter to remove and catalogue the contents of the tomb. Yet
his face remained a secret being covered by a golden mask.
People’s thirst for seeing the mysterious mummy is now over.
Tutankhamun’s face is now unveiled in
The pharaoh’s body was removed carefully from a golden
sarcophagus and granite coffin in a small underground tomb and transferred it
to a climate-controlled glass case to keep it protected from dust and other
risky factors. Yet people get to see only his face and his feet. The rest of
the body remained shrouded, being in poor conditions.
The mummy has suffered several damages since it was discovered in 1922. It was broken into 18 pieces when British Egyptologist Howard Carter tried to remove the golden mask from his face.
The mummy was scanned two years ago when Egyptologists discovered that the
19-year-might have died from a serious infection. He seemed to have suffered a
fracture to his left thigh during a chariot hunting, which led to an infection
later causing his death. Mostafa Wazery, director of the
This is just one hypotheses of what might have cause Tutankhamun’s death. The real reason is still a mystery.
"We won't know for sure unless he rises from the dead," Hawass
said.
Scientists believe that Tutankhamun took the throne when he was eight or nine
and keep it for almost 10 years. He was the 12th and final pharaoh
of the 18th Dynasty, which seems to be "the last of the line of
a very important empire of warrior pharaohs," as Egyptologist David
Silverman, professor and museum curator at the
There are disputes on whether he was the son or half-brother of Akhenaton,
the “heretic pharaoh” who introduced a revolutionary form of monotheism in
Tour guides said that visitors have a new reason to come on the