Many Egyptian antiquities were heavily looted. The robbing of Egypt’s pharaohs tombs was rampant, as a lot of Egyptian artifacts have been showcased in museums around the world, depicting the beauty and charm of the ancient Egyptian civilization.
The Egyptian archaeologist Dr. Zahi Hawass narrates the ancients Egyptian figures whose tombs were robbed:
Many, if not most people think that the Tomb of King Tut, was intact when Howard Carter discovered it in the early 1900s. Indeed, even though King Tutankhamun might not have been a major pharaoh, his tomb was packed with marvelous treasures. However, his tomb was not intact, and had in fact been robbed more than once.
A number of archaeologists, specialized in X-ray scans, were also robbers who stole the pharaohs treasures. Those archaeologists were accompanied by some workers from the Egyptian Museum.
As for the first robber, Hawass says that the English archaeologist Donald Harrison obtained a permit in 1967 to scan the King Tutankhamun’s mummy by X-Ray.
He has started work in 1968 along with a group of the British team of archaeologists, a late chemist and an archaeologist, who is still alive.
I was in London for delivering a lecture, but I was surprised to read an article claims that king Tut was burned after his death, in addition to the presence of some parts of the king’s mummy with burn marks on them. The pharaohs never burnt their bodies after death due to their belief of the afterlife
I, therefore, held a press conference in London, demanding the trial of the English robber Donald Harrison, who stole some parts from Tutankhamun's mummy without obtaining a permit from the Antiquities Authority in addition to that there was a law prohibiting taking any parts from mummies.
As for the rumors circulated that the the golden pharaoh's mummy has been burnt, Hawass clarified that king Tut has surprisingly died, so his body was immediately embalmed through adding the material of resin on his mummy, thus making it in bad look, in addition that the golden mask was stuck to the mummy’s face.
The centerpiece of the tomb was the pharaoh's mummified body, covered in amulets and jewels and wearing a solid gold burial mask.
In an effort to extricate the treasures, Carter and his team cut the body into pieces, chopping off the limbs and head, and using hot knives and wires to remove the gold mask which was fused to Tutankhamun's face by the embalming process.
The body was reconstructed and returned to its original sarcophagus in 1926, only being removed for X-ray testing three times in subsequent years.
Contributed by Al-Abu Dashish
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