The Treasures of Tutankhamun

Tutankhamun, Pharaoh of Egypt, died and was buried 3,300 years ago.

Exactly 50 years ago, his body was discovered in his unplundered tomb.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of this, the greatest archaeological discovery of all time,

50 of the treasures from Tutankhamun's tomb have been brought to Britain.

BOAC and the RAF mounted a classic cloak-and-dagger operation

to fly the exhibits secretly to London.

The M4 motorway from Heathrow Airport into London was closed to other traffic.

Maximum security precautions were taken.

All bridges were kept clear by police.

The heavily guarded convoy sped into central London,

arriving at one o'clock in the morning at the British Museum.

Some weeks went by before it was announced that the treasures of Tutankhamun had in fact arrived.

For Dr Eiddon Edwards, keeper of Egyptology,

this was a moment almost as nerve-racking as the first moment of discovery 50 years ago.

For the Egyptian experts travelling with the treasures, and Ian Pearson,

in charge of packing and transportation, it was the culmination

of many months of planning and skilled work.

The press and television were invited to witness

the unpacking of the most spectacular of all the treasures.

It was the golden face mask of Tutankhamun himself,

one of the greatest works of art of the ancient world.

For the visitors at the British Museum this summer, it will be the prize piece

in what could turn out to be the greatest exhibition of the century.

TRUMPET PLAYS

Treasures of Tutankhamun, and the gold and bronze trumpet

found in Tutankhamun's tomb welcomes us to this marvellous exhibition.

Tonight, Chronicle is privileged to invite you inside the British Museum for an exclusive view

of an exhibition that people are queuing up to see at the rate of over 32,000 a week.

Tutankhamun has been in the headlines ever since the sensational news of the discovery

of a virtually unplundered tomb in Egypt broke on an astonished world.

It was announced in an exclusive story in the London Times of November 30th 1922.

"An Egyptian treasure, great find at Thebes, by runner to Luxor."

But even the London Times, which, along with the Sunday Times, is jointly sponsoring this exhibition

with the trustees of the British Museum,

even they didn't know then just how great a find it was.

The archaeologists at that time were just on the threshold of discovery, and it wasn't for several months

before the full extent of the treasures was revealed.

Well, tonight, here in the British Museum, we too are on the threshold of discovery.

The exhibition takes us into the heart of ancient Egypt, the Valley of the Kings at Thebes,

for it was here that the British archaeologist Howard Carter searched for the last tomb of Tutankhamun

for several seasons on behalf of Lord Carnarvon, a wealthy sportsman and patron of the arts

who had gone to Egypt to convalesce after a motoring accident

and developed an interest in Egyptology.

They became familiar figures in the Valley of the Kings

as they drove to their excavation sites for six fruitless seasons.

Success came in November 1922 when Carter's workmen came across

the top of a flight of steps hewn into the rock.

It turned out to be the entrance to a tomb.

It had been buried under the debris and huts of the builders of a later tomb,

and so there was a chance that it had not been plundered.

At the bottom of the steps, a plaster door with the seals of the necropolis guards apparently intact.

Behind this door was another passage,

and beyond that, when Carter made a hole through a second door,

he caught a glimpse of wonderful things,

a fantastic jumbled treasury of furniture and works of art and everywhere, the gleam of gold.

It turned out that robbers had managed to burrow into the tomb after the burial and ransacked it,

but they'd been disturbed in time, and the tomb was virtually intact.

The excitement was enormous.

People flocked to the Valley of the Kings from all over the world, emperors and scholars and tourists.

The Times newspaper had the exclusive contract for the coverage of the story

as it developed day by day, and they really went to town on it.

But even more sensational revelations were to come,

for in one wall of this antechamber of wonderful things was a doorway, plastered up and sealed.

On either side, two statues of Tutankhamun himself stood sentinel,

and when the antechamber had been cleared, it was time to break down this door.

A privileged few were allowed to attend.

One of them was Alan Gardner, the leading Egyptologist of his day.

Gardner described the occasion in a letter that he wrote to his wife on February 17th 1923.

"The scene was a little theatrical.

"First Carter got up and said a few words.

"He was terribly excited, and there was a quiver in his voice.

"'Perhaps,' he said, 'in a few minutes we'll find Tutankhamun

"'buried in all his glory.'

"Then he set to work with crowbar and chisel to cut away the plaster.

"It was quite half an hour, full of tense excitement,

"before a hole large enough was made to reveal anything of the content of the chambers.

"Then Carter took an electric torch and threw in a ray of light.

"'I see a great golden shrine,' he said."

Well, as it happened, there was not one shrine, but four, fitting one inside the other like Chinese boxes.

And inside, the coffin of Tutankhamun - again not one, but four, one inside the other.

And inside the fourth one, the mummified body of the king.

As the bandages were cut away, dozens of personal ornaments

and possessions came to light, until finally all that remained

of Tutankhamun, boy king of Egypt, 3,300 years after his death, was this.

And so the king had been found. But what had he been like in life,

this relatively insignificant pharaoh who had died about the age of 18?

Well, his tomb was a sort of lumber room of his life,

and as Howard Carter methodically sorted his way through all the material,

a picture began to emerge of the king

whose statues had guarded his own mortal remains.

Today his wooden statue still stands sentinel at this exhibition.

He's precisely as large as life.

He was five foot six inches tall, judging by his mummified remains.

His face and body are coated with black resin

to symbolise regeneration, like the dark soil of Egypt herself.

The royal headcloth and the collar are covered with gold leaf,

and so are the pleated kilt and the odd, jutting apron that he wears.

In one hand, he carries a ceremonial mace,

and in the other, his left hand, a long staff.

Tutankhamun, he was so very young when he died, just a snub-nosed boy

with sticking-out ears, but from the jumbled contents of his tomb,

we can trace an outline at least of his brief life

from the cradle to the grave.

When he was just out of the cradle, this child's chair was made for him,

a little footstool to go with it.

There's no inscription on it, but why else should the priest

in charge of the funeral have put it into that antechamber of wonderful things

if it hadn't been a favoured memento of the king's childhood?

It's made of ebony imported from tropical Africa inlaid with ivory ornamentation.

The lion's paw legs, for instance, have ivory claws.

And the sides have decorated panels in gilt,

like this ibex on its knees.

The footstool had been much repaired, with patches of new wood

on the front, back and sides.

It's a charmingly intimate object to find in a tomb,

but not a particularly princely chair, one would think,

for a child who became pharaoh at the age of only nine.

But another momento of childhood certainly was princely,

a heavy gold bracelet found in a special jewellery box in the tomb.

It's decorated with a finely moulded gold scarab

inlaid with lapis lazuli.

The wrist fastening is so small

that it could only have been worn by a child, not a grown man.

And since it was in the special jewellery box,

it must surely have been Tutankhamun's personal possession.

But who was Tutankhamun?

We get a clue, perhaps, to his identity from this little painter's palette.

Inscriptions show it was made for the eldest surviving daughter

of Nefertiti and the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten,

and this princess had been married to Akhenaten's co-regent, Smenkhkare.

Later, she became Tutankhamun's sister-in-law when Tutankhamun came to the throne,

but would she have presented the new pharaoh with such a child's toy?

Was Tutankhamun perhaps her little brother

as well as her brother-in-law?

Family relationships in ancient Egypt were extremely complex.

Succession to the throne passed through the female line,

and the one sure way that a son could ensure his succession

was to marry his own sister.

It's a little hard to remember that Tutankhamun was still a child

when he was crowned king,

but these superb pendant earrings were a sign of his youth,

for only boys wore earrings in those days.

These massive pendants, each about five inches long, are made of gold

and inlaid with semi-precious stones,

and in the centre a duck's head of translucent blue glass.

The fastenings show signs of friction, indicating much wear,

so Tutankhamun probably wore them until he was 12 or 14 years old.

When Tutankhamun became king, he ceased to be a boy and became a symbol.

He was little more than a political puppet in the upheavals

that followed the controversial reign of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten,

who was his father-in-law and perhaps also his father.

And this modest but elegant cedar and ebony cabinet symbolises the change.

It would look not out of place in any Victorian drawing room,

but it is, in fact, a political document.

Inscriptions show that it was a piece of Tutankhamun's own furniture,

but also that he had by now been converted back to the old religion of the Sun God Amun

that Akhenaten had tried to overthrow in favour of the Sun Disc, the Aten.

The black symbols are the life signs, the ankh,

but the inscriptions also claimed, quite dishonestly, that Tutankhamun was a mighty king

who subdued foreign lands, capturing those to the south

and trampling those to the north, slaughtering his enemies.

Tutankhamun had grown up - for the record, at least.

He was literally stepping into a dead man's shoes.

In this curiously shaped bow-fronted box, the knob on the front of the box

bears the name of Tutankhamun,

but there had originally been another name there and erased,

that of Tutankhamun's predecessor,

Smenkhkare, whom Akhenaten had appointed co-regent but who seems to have died not long afterwards.

Well, I don't suppose the palace carpenters had any particular political sensibilities.

"The king is dead, long live the king! Hand me that sandpaper, will you?"

It was this incredible amount of furniture found lying higgledy-piggledy in the chambers

of the tomb that gives us our clearest picture of the life led by the young king Tutankhamun.

This fine wooden casket, with its decorative ivory plaques,

shows a king and his queen shooting in their pleasure garden,

both at ducks and at fish.

A scene of domestic bliss fit for any king,

Tutankhamun sits on a cushioned chair firing off arrows.

Notice how the artist didn't feel he could let the arrow or bow string

to obscure the royal face, with rather peculiar results.

Meanwhile, the queen sits at his feet,

a lotus flower in one hand and an arrow in the other,

which she's about to hand to her lord and master.

Tutankhamun seems to have been very keen on the bloodsports.

The ostrich feathers of this ceremonial fan have long since decayed,

but according to the inscriptions they were obtained by his majesty

when hunting in the desert east of Heliopolis,

and both faces of the palm are embossed with lively scenes of the king on an ostrich hunt.

On one side, he's in his chariot, assaulting two stricken ostriches on the right.

At the same time, he's being shaded by a small ankh figure

in the left-hand corner, holding just this sort of fan.

On the other side, he's returning home in triumph, while two servants of superhuman strength

carry home the dead ostriches, each of which weighed 345lb.

Among the 143 personal possessions that had been tucked

into the bandaging of the mummified body, were two daggers.

One of iron and one of beaten gold.

The gold dagger was probably for ceremonial use,

it's a beautiful use of craftsmanship.

The sheath in particular is elaborately decorated with cameos

and wild animals biting their prey.

When he wasn't engaged in blood sports, the young king clearly enjoyed gaming.

There were no fewer than four gaming boards found in his tomb.

The top board on this table was for a game called Senate, which seems to been something like Halma.

There are 30 squares, some inscribed with hazards and bonuses.

It was a game of chance.

The moves were determined by throwing knuckle bones or else casting sticks.

One figure has remained rather shadowy all this while.

Tutankhamun's queen.

Her name was Ankhesenamon, and she was the daughter

of the heretic pharaoh, Akhenaten and the beautiful queen, Nefertiti.

Now, it looks as if she may have married her father when her mother disappeared from court circles.

And then after her father died, she married Tutankhamun,

who may have been her brother, in order to regularise the succession.

And in this magnificent golden shrine, we see her in a number of scenes with her husband.

When Tutankhamun went hunting birds with a boomerang, she was always there, just behind him.

Or else she was at his feet,

handing him an arrow while urging him to spare a nest of fledglings.

At home, she rests her elbow most informally on his knee

while he pours her a drink into her hand.

Or else, she is tying his floral collar for him before going to a party.

Everywhere, she is the dutiful and submissive wife.

But she seems to have been quite a character in her own right.

She had had two children by Tutankhamun,

but they were both stillborn and their tiny mummified bodies were buried in Tutankhamun's tomb.

After Tutankhamun died, she was in no mood to retire into widowhood and obscurity.

It seems that she wrote a letter to the King of the Hittites,

saying, "Send me one of your princes to marry and I shall make him King of Egypt."

But her plot was foiled, the mail-order bridegroom

never reached his destination, no doubt ambushed on the way.

They played for very high stakes in those days.

These pastoral hunting scenes conceal the reality of power politics

in the Egypt of the 18th Dynasty, just as carefully as the artist once again

concealed the bow string behind the bland royal face of Tutankhamun,

even though firing the bow in that position would have taken his head off.

Now, despite this occupational hazard, Tutankhamun seems to have been inordinately fond of hunting,

if one goes by the fact that some 50 bows were found in his tomb.

This one is one of the most elaborate, it's a composite bow,

that's to say it is laminated with sinew and tree bark, which gave it a greatly increased range.

And it's intricately decorated with animal and flower motifs inlaid with gold.

There was also a number of boomerangs, most of them fully practical,

although this one made of ivory and capped with gold at one end,

was probably made for ritual purposes.

They used the boomerangs to stun birds rather than kill them.

This helped solve the problem of keeping their meat fresh in hot weather.

This bronze trumpet overlaid with gold is probably the nearest

that Tutankhamun ever came to military action.

We heard its notes at the start of this programme.

TRUMPET SOUNDS

This one sound, we can be sure,

is precisely the same sound as the ancient Egyptians themselves heard.

It's rather shorter than a modern trumpet, it's got no valves

and its mouthpiece is a cylindrical sleeve

with a silver ring at the outer end, fixed to the outside of the tube.

The lowest note of which it is capable is D.

And this is definitely Tutankhamun's trumpet, for his name is on it

and he is depicted on it, helmeted, receiving the blessings of the gods.

One elaborate piece of jewellery,

a pectoral with solar and lunar emblems,

seems to summarise the immense complexity

of the symbolism of kingship and deity which Pharaoh represented.

The central motif is a winged scarab beetle of chalcedony

which is also a falcon. These are both symbols of the sun god.

With its front legs, the scarab falcon of the sun

supports a golden boat,

which carries a silver disc and crescent of the moon.

With its back talons, the falcon scarab of the sun

grips the hieroglyphic sign for eternity.

Every single piece in this complex work has a meaning, a hint, a clue.

The whole adds up to a kind of anthology of myth and religion

in ancient Egypt, a cosmic cryptogram

in which the boy king had to carry a fearful burden of divinity.

But above all, he was a human being.

A person with whom today we can identify with in passion and affection.

Three fine, gilded statues show the King in the full prime of his youth,

erect, lithe and dignified all at once.

This statuette shows the King wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt.

In his left hand he holds a long, crooked staff, the Good Shepherd of Egypt.

In his right hand he carries a flail, another emblem of royalty.

He stands there, regal and upright, every inch a king.

In this second gilded statuette,

the King wears the white crown of Upper Egypt.

What's surprising here, is the King is shown with female breasts.

Now, Tutankhamun's father-in-law, Akhenaten was physically deformed.

He was always represented as having breasts and a swollen pot belly,

like Tutankhamun here. It's a bit of a mystery.

Either this isn't Tutankhamun, or it was made to emphasise

the blood kinship between him and Akenaten

by means of an artistic convention.

Another unusual aspect of this sculpture,

is that the statue of the King

is standing on the back of a leopard painted with a black resin varnish.

Nothing in Egyptian mythology gives any clue to its significance.

But the lope of the leopard is beautifully reproduced

and the moulding of the leopard's face is superb.

But the outstanding sculpture of the King

is this lithe and active representation of Tutankhamun, the harpooner.

Most Egyptian statuary consists of stylised poses.

Here, the sculptor catches a moment of perfect physical co-ordination.

The body poised in the most realistic way.

Tutankhamun balances himself on a papyrus boat

to hurl a harpoon at a hippopotamus.

The harpoon and the coil of rope in his left hand are made of bronze.

But this is no ordinary hippopotamus hunt,

Tutankhamun is performing a religious rite

in which the hippopotamus is the embodiment of Seth, the god of evil.

In this brilliant reflecting room, we get a marvellous glimpse

of the young king in action

with all the vigour and grace of an athlete.

But, in the flower of his youth, the boy king died.

We have no idea why or how.

He may even have been murdered, for there were ambitious and ruthless men who coveted his throne.

Whether by accident or design,

his death certainly took people by surprise.

Whatever happened, at the age of 18 or so, after a reign of only nine years,

the next sculpture of the King is an effigy of death.

Pharaoh, lying on his funeral bed after mummification, wrapped in a shroud

and bandaged with inscriptions.

At each side of the carved wooden figure,

a human-headed bird and a falcon,

spread their protective wings across his chest.

These were two of the forms which the disembodied King

might adopt when visiting his own mummified remains.

The process of mummification took 70 days.

The internal organs were removed and treated with natron

to prevent putrefaction and then carefully wrapped in separate linen packages

and encased in four, beautifully fashioned miniature coffins of solid gold.

This one, we think, held Tutankhamun's lungs and it is an exact replica, in miniature,

of the second of the mummiform coffins in which the King himself was buried.

And yet, curiously enough, the inscription on the inside

shows that it was originally made for his predecessor, Smenkhkare.

The miniature coffins were placed in four cylindrical compartments

in a magnificent chest carved out of a block of alabaster.

And each compartment was stoppered with a bust in full royal regalia.

Once again, this is probably a portrait of Smenkhkare

and the striking facial resemblance to Tutankhamun

suggests they must have been at least half brothers, as well as brothers-in-law.

At every stage of the mummification of the body itself,

large quantities of ointments and unguents were applied.

Some 50 alabaster vases for unguents were found in the tomb -

many of them marvellously ornate - with a capacity of some 400 litres in all.

But nearly every one of them was empty.

Unguents were extremely precious, made from animal fats and resin or balsam, and cedar oil,

perfumed with flowers and left to mature like vintage brandy.

The tomb robbers in antiquity ignored many things that we would think more valuable

and stole unguents instead, leaving behind the beautiful alabaster vases

with their own thieving fingerprints on one of them.

Eventually, 70 days after death, the King's mummified remains left the aptly-named House of Vitality.

A painted wooden model of a barge found in the tomb symbolises

a journey across an isle that his predecessors had to make 1,000 years earlier.

It was the start of the last journey to the Valley of the Kings and everlasting life.

After the ceremonies of internment were over, the King's journey to the other world

would be accomplished with the help of a sacred cow associated with Hathor,

tutelary goddess of the Theban necropolis in which Tutankhamun's tomb was sited.

The divine cow is also represented in one of the most spectacular

of the exhibits here, a magnificent gilded bed.

Dr Edwards, you managed to bring these exhibits over from Cairo

for this exhibition. What is the significance of this particular bed?

Well, it's not, as you can see, just an ordinary bed for sleeping in.

It is a magical bed.

And its significance is really shown by the inscription on the top of the mattress.

There, it tell you that the King is under the protection

of a goddess, Isis-Meht.

Now, the goddess Meht, who was associated with Isis in this case, was a lioness goddess.

Now, that doesn't really quite make sense when you've got two cows, one each side of the bed.

But there were, of course, two other beds of this kind found in the tomb.

One of them did have lioness signs.

If you look at the inscription on that, you will find that the King

is under the protection of the sacred cow, Mehturt, which, again, does not make sense.

Clearly, what happened was that when these beds were made at the factory,

the craftsman put the inscription

on this mattress which should have gone on the lioness bed

and on the lioness bed, the inscription which should have gone on this one.

It's nice to see that they were human and could fail occasionally.

Oh, yes, that happened not infrequently.

Anyhow...

now that we know who the cow was the purpose of the bed becomes clear.

Because Mehturt was the form of Hathor

on which the King, the Sun God,

when he ceased being king on earth, mounted to heaven,

rather like a chariot of fire.

And so, Tutankhamun no doubt hoped that he would rise to heaven

lying on this bed.

One of the aspects of this exhibition that I find most intriguing, Dr Edwards,

is that every single object in the tomb had a purpose,

a significance, like this splendid alabaster casket, for instance.

Yes, indeed, this illustrates it very well.

Howard Carter found this casket with its contents undisturbed.

They were, first of all, a layer of linen on the bottom and then some hair.

And, most interesting, I think, of all, two balls of human hair wrapped in linen.

Now, one way by which the Egyptians

indicated the signing of a contract

was by the exchange of balls of hair by the contracting parties.

Now, in this casket, if you look at the head end, under the knob,

you will see there are three cartouches.

Two of them have the names of the King,

one has the name of the Queen.

There were thus two people.

And it makes one ask whether the fact that you have two balls of hair

and two names, whether one ball did not belong to each person named.

The King and the Queen.

If so, what was the contract that was signed?

At first, I thought it was the marriage contract

and then I realised that the names in the cartouches

were not those that they used at the time of their marriage.

However, they are the names that they used at the time of the coronation.

And I think it is possible,

I won't say more than that, that this was part of the coronation ceremony,

a contract signed then.

A lock of human hair to seal a coronation,

such then was the king Tutankhamun, this obscure boy king at the tail end of a dying dynasty,

who acted out his brief charade of immortality before death caught him in his teens.

History has no cause to remember him,

except as a symbol of the restoration of an old order.

It was only the accident of his survival that has made him so intensely memorable.

It was archaeology, as much as religion, that has given him a second lease of life.

So, let's now tread the path that 2 million visitors or more will be treading before this summer is out.

A walk back through eternity.

Because Tutankhamun was the only Pharaoh of ancient Egypt for whom the elaborate rituals,

designed to transcend death and oblivion, really worked.

His grave survived undisturbed for more than 30 centuries.

And now, thanks to the Department of Antiquities of the Arab Republic of Egypt,

who have loaned these 50 priceless treasures of Tutankhamun for this display,

we can see for ourselves the astonishing grandeur

of the Egyptian concept of royal immortality.

Everything here is 3,300 years old.

Everything is genuine, just as it came from the tomb.

And Tutankhamun here, sentinel to the last, symbolises it.

And, first glimpse,

the handsome black and gilded holy cow that carried him to heaven.

The painted model boat, carved from a single block of wood,

to symbolise that last journey on the Nile.

And here is the floral unguent vase of alabaster,

incorporating the symbolic statement "100,000 times eternity."

A container for the unguents which gave a man's earthly remains at least a kind of immortality.

And another delightful unguent vase carved in the form of a lion,

its chest inscribed, albeit incorrectly, I am told,

with the names and royal titles of Tutankhamun and his determined widow.

The painted alabaster casket we've been discussing with Dr Edwards,

the coronation contract of the man that the inscriptions name as the "Good God, Lord of the two lands"

and the woman they call, "The great royal wife."

and here...look, here is the dream of immortality made explicit.

This is a carved wooden statuette of the god Ptah,

the principal god of the ancient capital city of Memphis.

And down there on the pedestal, in yellow paint, you have the precise promise,

"The good God, Tutankhamun, beloved of Ptah, Lord of truth, given life forever."

He was given life forever.

And we ought to stop here too. This is a marvellous little thing.

This translucent alabaster chalice,

carved in the shape of a single bloom of the white lotus.

The inscription round the rim of the bowl,

"May thy ka live and mayst thou then spend millions of years,

"our lover of Thebes, sitting with thy face to the north wind.

"thine two eyes beholding happiness."

Millions of years.

Well, he's had 3,300 already, and that is something to be going on with!

And there is the miniature canopic coffin

in which his lungs lay breathless and the canopic stopper of alabaster...

of Smenkhkare.

Now, we've already contemplated this effigy of death,

but what I didn't mention before is that this particular piece

was a funeral gift of the superintendent of building works in the necropolis.

A gentleman called Maya.

And we probably have him to thank for the fact that the tomb robbers

of antiquity were foiled soon enough to leave this great treasure trove intact for posterity.

And then, standing just behind him,

we have a shabti figure of the King. It's a sort of deputy, or substitute

to carry out some of the more arduous duties expected of one in the next world,

like tilling the fields or digging the garden.

The bed of the divine cow, the one that got the inscriptions mixed up.

Must have taken the edge off his magical properties a bit!

Incidentally, there were no fewer than eight beds in all

in Tutankhamun's tomb, including a sort of folding camp bed

This is what I think of as the Bond Street room, the fine furniture department.

This handsome piece has got a couple of carrying poles attached,

a relic from the days when you could get porters,

but it is, in fact, a unique survival of a portable chest.

And the inscriptions,

they, as usual promise that Tutankhamun will live as long as the sun and be born daily, like the sun.

We have our elegant Victorian cabinet with its bombastic boastings about Tutankhamun.

And this much more intimate child's chair, with its worn and patched foot stool.

And this funny bow-shaped box, I wonder what it held?

Probably hats.

And the child's palette and the gaming table

and a very uncomfortable-looking ornate royal chair.

Then, one remembers from the scene on the ornamented chest here, that when Tutankhamun went out

on shooting practice at the ducks and the fish in the lake,

he used a cushion on his stool.

The golden shrine, with its domestic scenes of the King and his queen.

Originally, inside that shrine there was a solid gold statuette of the King.

That was one that the robbers of antiquity did get away with.

But they didn't get away with these,

these three statuettes of the King in the prime of his youth.

The King, erect and regal...

the King as the harpooner...

in his papyrus boat,

going for the hippopotamus.

And this strange statuette of the King,

the statue standing on the leopard's back.

If the furniture room was Sotheby's, We are now in Tiffany's,

a chamber of magnificent jewellery and personal ornaments.

The gold collar.

How immensely important this was for the rituals of immortality.

No fewer than 17 of these collars were tucked amongst the bandages

that covered Tutankhamun's neck and chest.

It was the absolute divine protection against mortality.

The solar and lunar pectoral we have already studied...

and the triple scarab pectoral necklace in the same case,

which reiterates the theme, dark with magic,

this insistence on the promise of millions of years.

This necklace of the rising sun

repeats the concept of the scarab grabbing hold of the sun

with its forelegs and eternity with its hind legs.

And on either side of it, a sacred baboon,

whose function it was to greet the rising sun.

Another rising sun theme in a necklace.

There was to be no sunset, ever, for Tutankhamun.

A decorated scarab.

It may seem strange that the ancient Egyptians

should adopt a scavenger beetle as a symbol of the deathly Sun God,

but they were entranced by the sight of the beetle rolling a ball of dung along the ground,

for this action reminded them of the invisible power which rolled the sun daily across the sky.

And when the beetle eggs hatched, out of the dung came life.

Now, this ivory piece... here is something different.

To the Egyptians, the head, and not the heart, was the seat of life.

After death, it was essential that the head continued to function

with the help of magic. This was a magic headrest.

Tutankhamun's royal sceptre.

The Egyptian texts call a sceptre like this either the Controller, the Powerful,

or the Commander. The inscription on the other side reads,

"The good God, the beloved dazzling face like the atun when it shines,

"the sun of our moon, living forever."

The controller,

the powerful, the commander,

row upon row of bulls, trussed and slaughtered.

There is an irony here when you remember that intensely young face.

Another one of those indispensable protective collars,

this time in the form of the vulture goddess,

with outspread wings that enfold the shoulders of the wearer.

A necklace with a vulture goddess pendant of solid gold.

Grasping eternity in its talons.

Or a winged scarab pectoral of solid gold.

That beetle again, with eternity clenched in its back legs.

The royal crook and the royal flail,

the insignia of Tutankhamun's kinship.

The really interesting thing about the flail is that it bears on it

the name of the King in its earlier form of Tut Ankh Atun.

Now, you remember that when the boy king ascended the throne of Egypt,

it was in the aftermath of the revolutionary, or heretic pharaoh's reign.

Akhenaten, who tried to overthrow the worship of the Amun, in favour of Atunism.

But when the old priesthood of the Amun make their comeback,

Akhenaten was discredited and the boy king's name was changed to Tut Ankh Amun,

which means "The living image of Amun".

It was a deliberate attempt to write Atunism out of history, but it failed.

And it failed because of a glorious accident of archaeology.

The climax of the exhibition, of this journey back through eternity,

is perhaps the most celebrated work of art of the ancient world,

The golden face mask of Tutankhamun.

It was placed over the head and shoulders of his mummified body,

as the ultimate earnest of immortal life.

Now, more than 30 centuries later,

it has achieved at least some of its purpose.

It is that familiar, intensely vulnerable face.

On the brow, those twin insignia of divine royalty,

the vulture and the cobra.

The eyes and the eyeballs dramatically made-up,

the ears pierced for those heavy pendant earrings of childhood.

He was too young when he died to have accumulated a beard

of such formidable length,

and indeed it is a detachable, false beard,

the symbol of death, the beard of Osiris.

It is all solid gold, beaten and burnished.

The vulture's head and the cobra head are also of solid gold,

intricately inlaid with glass and semi-precious stones.

The stripes of the headdress are a blue glass

in imitation of lapis lazuli...

and the collar is encrusted with segments of lapis lazuli,

quartz and green feldspar with a lotus bud border.

"Thy soul liveth...", says the inscription.

'..and thy veins are healthy.'

But that was more a pious hope than a statement of fact.

Because, today, Tutankhamun still lives in our imagination,

because his veins have been drained of blood,

and because his soul had been commended to all the tutelary deities

and because his mortal remains had been placed under the loyal vigilance of Maya,

superintendent of the public works at the necropolis.

It turned out to be a very satisfying joint operation.

It was Maya who fended off the tomb robbers of antiquity.

It was Howard Carter who, after years of failure, found a hidden tomb.

It was the Egyptian Museum in Cairo who loaned these beautiful things

for exhibition here in London.

And it is the British Museum that has been host to this splendid display.

We have them all to thank.

But there's one thought we perhaps ought to end up with,

as a result of this exhibition, the British Museum hopes to hand over

a profit of anything up to £1 million to UNESCO,

to help finance the rescue the treasures of Philae in Egypt.

£1 million.

And for that, we have to thank this man.

Tut Ankh Amun.

The boy king who, despite everything, achieved immortality.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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