TUT ANKH AMON' TOMB

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Visiting Tut’s tomb is a rich experience

CAIRO, Egypt — He was a kid from a disgraced family, possibly assassinated and buried just off the beaten path in a tomb that, in Pharaonic terms, is a broom closet.



But Tut’s is among the most-visited holes in the ground of the Valley of the Kings, where the humidity down below makes the 105-degree September morning seem cool and refreshing when I re-emerge into the present.



The tomb is empty except for the boy king himself, tucked back into his sarcophagus in the wake of his most recent trip topside, for CT scans last January. Gazing in at the most famous teenager in world history, and the gods painted on the surrounding walls to guide him (and his two also-mummified children) to the netherworld, my mind reels at the tiny size of the burial chamber. How could all those coffins, shrines and relics possibly have been squeezed in here?



That staggering horde is what makes this poor little rich kid so famous. All his fat-cat neighbors were robbed blind over the centuries, leaving their huge crypts pretty much as we see them today, empty mausoleums.



Beyond and to the right I can see the opening into what was Tut’s Treasury, full of the most valuable riches when Howard Carter discovered this place in 1922. Another 2,000 artifacts were piled haphazardly around in the antechamber, where I’m now stooped, including a chariot. I saw most, marveled at many and touched some a few days earlier at the sprawling Cairo Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.



The most amazing are the four gilded nesting shrines in Cairo’s Tut display. The largest is the size of a small bedroom, with a sun canopy and three other shrines in descending size lined up along Tut’s main concourse.



Attia Shaban, our Egyptologist guide, explains that they were built inside the tomb itself, one over the top of the other, coffins within coffins, each with its own gilding, richly etched with drawings.



David Silverman, another Egyptologist with the Tut exhibit now in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., further adds that the limestone and shale cave must have been hewn out larger to allow worker access, and at least one stone wall built back up against the shrines to confound any discoverers.



It apparently worked. Although the outer chamber showed signs of grave robbers, the tomb and treasury caused a reassessment of ancient Egyptian wealth.



Meanwhile, in the fresh air above, Egyptologists and other would-be experts are waving the tourist crowds away from Tutankhamen’s tomb, describing it as an extra-cost disappointment.



Many of us make the trip anyway for bragging rights — and it’s the only tomb with a body in it. Sam Guy, an experienced traveler among our group, says that back home near Atlanta, neighbors will be more interested in his tale of Tut’s tomb than the huge and more renowned Seti I caverns we just climbed through. We make a final visual scan, and huff our way back up to the surface, where humidity is only 15 percent and the sweat dries off our bodies and clothes in minutes.



It’s midmorning and the daily tour-bus crowds, including ourselves, are reaching peak population. Guides like our Attia — he chafes at the label, being an accredited Egyptologist — deliver full-blown historical treatises to their impatient groups before pointing them toward the most interesting crypts. The group leaders are no longer allowed to lecture in the tombs — it created traffic jams down below, and the collective breaths turned the chambers into steam baths, and caused the paint to be stripped off the drawings and hieroglyphs (whose protective "varnish" is an egg-based coating).



There were a few things missing from Tut’s Cairo stash. Small typewritten cards scattered among the displays said certain pieces were on loan here and there — mostly on the tour presently at the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art. Among them is a 16-inch gold coffinette, normally inside the calcite canopic chest that contained all of Tut’s vital organs.



The three pyramids, built around 2600 B.C., are a stunning introduction to ancient Egypt. Photos and movies don’t quite prepare you for the massive scale and quiet dignity. The oldest and largest is Cheops, more than 450 feet tall, whose blocks are each man-sized. Alongside it is a new building housing the Solar Barque, the oldest boat known to man that once ferried the pharaoh’s mummy to its final resting place, suspended in mid-air.



The middle pyramid, built by his son Chephren, still has a remnant of the outer, smooth limestone facade at the top. The smallest is the tomb of Chephren’s son, Menkaure.



The three main pyramids are surrounded by smaller tombs of queens and other royalty. At the base of the hill is the Sphinx, equally impressive, who today stares across a short field at Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Cairo, a jumbled and still-expanding metropolitan area of nearly 20 million, has begun to crowd inside the monuments’ shadows.



But just a few miles upriver, near the ancient capital of Memphis, the very first pyramid of Djoser stands out above small villages and crop fields. Djoser’s Step Pyramid is surrounded by the remnants of a wall, and other monuments, and is an engrossing afternoon jaunt. Luxor is where all the main attractions lie. We spend several days there visiting the Valley of Queens as well as the Kings, passing the Colossi of Memnon, tall and regal amid crop fields on the wide west bank. On the east bank, just up the banks from central Luxor, is the fabled Temple of Karnak. Attia’s lecture in the huge Hypostyle Hall is even longer than usual, and his pointer more active. Every cartouche full of hieroglyphs has an interesting meaning. He describes how obelisks were cut from rock above Aswan and brought downriver, details the progression of pharaohs and queens, and finally turns us loose to explore what amounts to a religious city, an ancient Vatican of the god Amun. A long boulevard flanked by statues of lions once connected Karnak with the smaller Temple of Luxor on the southern edge of town, where we are able to visit a well-preserved holy of holies, the innermost temple of the gods Posted by South Sinai Travel: - 10:28 am - November 7th, 2005