King Tut's Gold

Treasures

Because the ancient Egyptians saw their pharaohs as gods, they carefully preserved their bodies after death, burying them in elaborate tombs containing rich treasures to accompany the rulers into the afterlife. When King Tutankhamen's tomb was discovered in 1922, despite rumors that a curse would befall anyone who disturbed it, its treasures were carefully catalogued, removed, and included in a famous traveling exhibition called Treasures of Tutankhamen.

At first I can see nothing. Darkness closes in around me, thick and tangible. I blink to clear it, to see something in its depths, but there is nothing. The air seems lifeless, melancholy, filled only with shadows. 

Presently, my eyes grow accustomed to the light. Details of the exhibit room in the Field Museum in Chicago emerge slowly - strange animals, statues, ornaments, jewels. The glint of gold is everywhere. 

The Treasures of Tutankhamun. It is nothing short of magnificent.

The gold sarcophagus of the boy king who was only nineteen years old when he died is in a larger room. I pause for breath as the stunning death mask, a striped headdress typically worn by pharaohs in ancient Egypt, comes to view. At the end of the broad collar are terminals shaped like falcon heads. Regal.

It originally rested directly on the shoulders of the mummy inside the innermost gold coffin. The inscription reads, Constructed of two sheets of hammered gold.
Total  weight: 22.5 pounds. Dazzling.

I grimly observe a small wood and ebony chair with lion paw legs. He likely used that as his royal seat, I mumble in a quiet voice.

I narrow my eyes at the sight of a golden ceremonial dagger and sheath. What for? Protection in the afterlife? Of course. It is meant to be an answer, but it sounds like a question. I give out a laugh, a little bark.

And yet, despite all the royal glimmer, I experience a yawning emptiness that I hope my face does not show. There is an odd dissonance, a vibration, as though my foot had hit a loose board setting something in motion, making the morning seem sad. 

Maybe because I just remembered the story about a certain man who, when he died, took his gold bricks to heaven. When he arrived, the angel looked at him in astonishment saying, You brought pavement?