A gold mask worth 10 trillion, one-seventh of the world's GDP, such a valuable mask was found in a small mausoleum that had been ignored for 3,000 years, and the tomb robbers stole more than 60 mausoleums in the Valley of the Kings, but the small mausoleum was not found.
So what happened to this mask? Today, let's walk into this tomb of Tutankhamun and see the story of that year.
In 1917, Lord Cañaphon applied for the excavation privileges of the Valley of the Kings, and after approval, he funded Howard Carter to lead a team to the Valley of the Kings in search of a pharaoh's mausoleum called Tutankhamun.
Tutankhamun became a monarch at the age of nine, but he was always a puppet until his sudden death at the age of 18, about the cause of his death, everyone is also divided, some people say that he was assassinated, some people say that he died of family genetic diseases, but there are too few historical records about him, so few people do not believe that his tomb really exists, which also makes his mausoleum not suffer from the destruction of tomb robbers, survived.
Although most people do not believe that Tutankhamun's mausoleum does not exist, there is still one person who has always believed that the mausoleum exists, and this person is Howard.
He was bent on finding the Tutankhamun Mausoleum, and after receiving the patronage of Lord Kana, he led his team to the Valley of the Kings in search of the mausoleum. After five years of excavation, Howard's team found nothing, and if there was no progress, it would be equivalent to all the money in these five years, which made Lord Kanafon angry, and he released harsh words, if in the last year they still did not find anything, then he would stop funding.
Perhaps the sky was touched by Howard, and just over a month before the end, Howard's team finally discovered Tutankhamun's mausoleum.
Howard found a section of stairs leading to the underground behind a cliff, and he had a hunch that the next discovery would shock the world.
The next day, Howard's team carefully dug down and finally saw the stone door at the end of the stone steps, and the three-thousand-year-old hemp rope on the door announced that the mausoleum had not been found.
Howard informed Lord Kanaphon, and he arrived with his daughter. Howard lit a candle and entered the mausoleum through the newly opened hole in the stone door, stunned by what he saw.
The Tutankhamun Mausoleum they found was the only pharaoh's mausoleum that had not been stolen, this mausoleum was small, but it was full of rare treasures, golden chariots, golden seats, gold chests, etc. Just to enter the mausoleum, Howard and others spent a month to clear a way to stand.
When the people entered the burial chamber, they were greeted by a huge golden cabinet, which was a wooden outer coffin wrapped in pure gold, and when the first layer was opened, it was lined with pure gold rose knots, followed by three or four or five layers of boxes made of pure gold, and it was not until the sixth floor that they saw the inner coffin, which was made of purple-red stone and the side was also carved with the pattern of angels, which was very exquisite.
Howard and the others finally saw the real Pharaoh's coffin after opening the inner coffin, this humanoid coffin has 3 floors, the mummy lies quietly in the ninth layer, the whole cabinet used a total of 110 kilograms of gold before and after, but these are not nothing, until the last lid was opened, everyone was stunned.
This is a humanoid coffin with a gold mask, the entire mask is made of 11 kilograms of pure gold, the eyes are made of obsidian and quartz, which looks particularly divine, while the eyebrows, beard and eye sockets are made of fine lapis lazuli, and the other parts are inlaid with precious gems such as turquoise and carnelian, and the expression is quiet and has a hint of sorrow.
In order to achieve the effect of permanent preservation, the ancients who created this mask did not use any dyes, but used gold and natural gems, which neither faded nor made the mask look exactly like the new one. On the back of the mask, Howard found egyptian hieroglyphs carved on it, which he learned after research was the Book of the Dead.
This golden mask looks exactly like Tutankhamun himself, Tutankhamun has a scar on his face, and there is also a small scar in the same position on this mask, which is almost a perfect restoration of Tutankhamun's appearance.
This gold mask is estimated at $10 trillion, which is now the world's most valued cultural relic, which has reached one-seventh of the current global GDP, and if all the money of the world's top 2,000 rich people is put together, it is not enough to buy this mask.
The gold mask is now engraved on the back of an Egyptian coin as a national symbol of Egypt.
In addition to this priceless treasure in the coffin, there were two golden daggers, one of which was made of pure gold, and the other was a handle made of gold and a blade made of iron, and the value of this gold handle iron blade was very high, because the ancient Egyptians at that time did not make iron at all, and even the element of iron was almost never seen. According to experts, the iron on this dagger should have come from meteorites found near the Harriger oasis in the same period, and they have the same proportion of elements.
Next to the coffin is a long-withered bouquet of flowers that Tutankhamun's wife, Ankasan Naman, gave him, in other words, the bouquet of flowers is the dog food that Tutankhamun and his wife sprinkled on future generations 3,000 years ago.
In the burial stuff is also a golden cheetah bench, which is made of stucco to look like a cheetah, and then pasted with gold, and there are two lines of tear marks at the corner of the cheetah's eyes, which are made of blue lapis lazuli, which expresses infinite respect for the king.
The bed in the burial chamber was framed in ebony and then gilded with gold, and the mattress was woven from palm vines, which was also the bed that Tutankhamun used during his lifetime.
The gold seat was also precious, and in front of the chair was studded Tutankhamun's wife who was oiling his body, and their clothes were inlaid with sterling silver, because silver ore was rarer than gold at that time.
The burial chamber also has a pair of gold slippers and four jars of snowflake marble statues in which Tutankhamun's heart is stored, but the statues look a bit strange like women.'
At the same time, Howard discovered other strange places in the mausoleum. The first is that the scale of this mausoleum is too small, the open door is the front hall, there is a miscellaneous room behind the front hall, and the right is the burial chamber, according to Egyptian tradition, the tomb of the male pharaoh should be on the left side of the front hall, the tomb of the female pharaoh is only on the right, and what is more strange is that the walls of the front hall are pink, which seems abnormal for a man.
Experts studied Tutankhamun's mummy and found that there were no ear holes in his ears, and on the gold mask it was obvious that there was an ear hole in the position of the earlobe, which was usually left by the female pharaoh after wearing earrings.
In addition, some of the funerary items in the mausoleum are also very feminine.
Why does a male pharaoh's mausoleum have so many things related to women?
This brings us to Tutankhamun's mother-in-law, Naftiti, one of the most mysterious and beautiful female pharaohs in Egyptian history, the most powerful and powerful woman, who can be called the Wu Zetian of ancient Egypt. She offended too many people during her lifetime, violating the male-dominated aristocratic class at the time, so in her later years, Nafertiti lost her rights, so after her death, it is likely that she will be buried hastily.
Tutankhamun's mausoleum is most likely the one built for Nafertiti.
Tutankhamun's parents were close relatives married, from birth, he had a congenital defect in his left leg, at that time he was accidentally injured in the field, resulting in a fracture of his left leg, causing a series of complications, coupled with his own epilepsy, malaria and other diseases, so he died young, it was too late to build a mausoleum, so he was buried in Nafertiti's mausoleum.
In 2015, Egyptian archaeologists detected by radar that there were two more dark chambers behind Tutankhamun's burial chamber, one of which was slightly larger and about the same size as Tutankhamun's burial chamber, most likely Nafertiti's burial chamber.
But there are exquisite frescoes on the walls, so it is impossible to knock on the walls to enter the dark room, if you can really open these two dark rooms, it will solve another big mystery in The history of Egypt, the world may also see The unique face of Nafertiti.
Howard and his team reported the discovery, which immediately caused a sensation around the world. Five years of excavation, eight years of cleaning up cultural relics, ten years of moving to the Cairo Museum, the world can't help but sigh, this small mausoleum of only 110 square meters is simply a museum of ancient Egypt.
Most of the more than 5,000 artifacts cleared out were prepared for herself by Naftiti, but what she never expected was that these treasures were eventually used on Tutankhamun, and it was because of these yin and yang errors that we could witness these exquisite artifacts.
The treasure is in the world, and with it comes a mysterious curse. Before Opening the Chamber, Howard saw the cursed words on the box outside, and the Wings of Death would descend on those who dared to disturb the pharaoh's sleep, but these words did not change Howard's determination to enter the Tomb.
Just a few months after the burial chamber was opened, Lord Cahnauphon suddenly fell ill and died, and in the same year, his son died in the room, and it wasn't long before Howard's partner died.
This sent the whole team into a panic, and it seemed that the pharaoh's curse was beginning to be fulfilled.
But Howard still didn't believe in the curse, because he himself was the one in the whole party who knew the excavation plan best, and he personally knocked down the sealed wall of the burial chamber, and if there was a curse, he must be the first to be cursed by the pharaoh. But in fact he had nothing to do.
Talking about the death of people around them, because they themselves suffer from diseases, coupled with bad weather in Egypt, excavation conditions are also very poor, closed for 3,000 years in the burial chamber, more or less there will be viruses and bacteria, their aggravation is also expected, think about these, then the real question is, how did Tutankhamun die?
Some historians have speculated that Tutankhamun was assassinated or poisoned, but there is no evidence to prove this, after all, there are too few records about him.
There are still two dark rooms that have not been opened, and there is a good chance that there is a coffin of this female pharaoh named Nafertititi, and what secrets she still has that still attracts the world, but we believe that one day in the future, someone will be able to personally enter the tomb to unravel the secrets of Nafertiti.
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