Tutankhamun Golden Mask
Details of the Artifacts
The mask is 54 cm long, 39.3 cm thick and 49 cm high. It consists of two high carat gold ribbons, 3 mm thick, and weighing 10,23 kg. The mask consists of two gold alloys: a light 18,4 karat on the face and neck and a 22,5 karat gold on the remaining karat. This includes colored glass and gemstone inlays, including quartz of the eye and eyes, carnelian, amazonite, feldspar, and obsidian for pupils (Ross, 2016). An Egyptian hieroglyphic spell in 10 vertical and two horizontal lines is placed on the back and the shoulders. Eventually, the mask has a three-stringed collar with a gold and blue faience disks and uraeus clasps and lotus flower terminals.
The Outstanding Elements
The mask is the traditional portrait of the pharaoh. The royal insignia of a cobra and a vegetable are on his head, representing both Lower Egypt and Upper Egypt, respectively. He was wearing his headcloth (Wendrich, 2004). In almost every surviving ancient Egyptian work of art, the ears are pierced to hold earrings, a feature reserved for queens and children. The largest and perhaps most famous cache was the death mask of the king, which held over 20 pounds of gold. The cloak of leopard-skin, four-game boards, six chariots, 30 wine vats, and 46 bows were also buried with him to ensure that he was still powerful, healthy, and well-fed in the afterlife. King Tut did more in his death than all his fellow Pharaohs combined to promote modern study and interest in Egyptian history.
Reflection of Culture
The reason why Tutankhamun’s mask is so intact lies partly in the Egyptians’ attempts to enforce damnatious memory defined as a collective memory and history erasure throughout the Amarna period. What eternally damned Tut provides historians with an incredible wealth of information. Masks like Tutankhamun were created to cover the face in grandeur ceremoniously and to enable the spirit to acknowledge the body right after death. The deceased’s face has also been decorated with funerary masks (R., 2012). They were generally intended both to recognize the characteristics of the deceased and to create a connection through the mask to the spiritual world. They were sometimes used to force the newly dead spirit into the spiritual world. Masks were also made to protect the deceased by scaring malicious spirits.
Impact
The reign of the boy king was unnotable to Tutankhamun. At the age of nine when he went up to the throne, the country was still chaotic as Egypt decided to switch from its polytheist to a monotheistic one by his late father, Akhenaten. The young royal managed as his marionette, especially in his quest to reverse the policy of Akhenaten and restore the beloved Ottomans and their temples, seems to be a royal adviser named Ay. King Tut’s death must be accidental, historians say, and his grave rushed by the Pharaoh Ay who succeeded him. The pharaohs who followed Tut preferred to disregard his rule because he was tainted by the association with the religious upheavals of his father, even though he restored Amun (Ross, 2016). In a few generations, stone debris was obscured at the entrance of the tomb, built over and forgotten by the workers’ huts.
Posed Questions and Possible Answers
The history of the death and burial of king Tutankhamun is a mystery since the burial was more ceremonious than his life. It is understood that the king’s life was surrounded by controversy not to state his disability. It is also historical that he took over power at a tender age and struggled to revert the ill governance introduced by his family. Despite speculations that he never went for battles rather rallied his army to battles amidst numerous attempts to advance diplomatic missions, a question can be posed: How did king Tutankhamun lose his leg? Perhaps a potential answer would be that he was strapped on by a horse chariot during a battle. A defense to such an answer would be based on his reign over both the lower and Upper Egypt. The king had also a tough toll of restoring the Egyptian religious capital to Amarna from Thebes in addition to turning over the sole worship of Aten as ordered by his father Akhenaten. Besides his death treasures would be assumed to imply the impact he made during his reign that saw a restoration of glory for the Egyptian kingdom. If that would be the case then, such glory would call for his first-hand input in the advancement of battles hence losing his leg.