Last Relics

Through the light-splotched, angular passages of TutankhAmen's 3,300-year-old tomb at Luxor, Egypt, went Howard Carter and his troupe of delvers to make their ultimate uncovering in the burial chamber of the king, so gorgeously gilded after his youthful death. A great box of translucent alabaster had not been opened.

It sat on a great sledge. The sledge was covered with a pall of silver; it had silver handles. The silver gleamed dully. Above, on the alabaster casket shone much gold-- a dado, four seals and hasps. Explorer Carter's men inched up the lid, moved it most carefully to the floor. The box was open for the first time since TutankhAmen's priests made their incantations over it, since they set his soul on the path towards Amenti, the Region of the West where Osiris waited with his 42 judges to approve its virtue and permit its passage to the Egyptian Elysium, or condemn it to torment.

Within the casket were what Howard Carter expected to find--four Canopic jars, rotund and high-shouldered. Each stood for one of the tutelary demons of the dead --dog-headed Hapt (Hepy*) who represented the north, man-headed Amset for the south, ape-headed Duamutef for the east, falcon-headed Kebhsenuf for the west. They had no power to wither the modern hands which gripped the covers of the jars and twisted gently. Removal was not difficult for each cover had a knob on it. Craftsmen had carved the knobs into careful and duplicate images of TutankhAmen's head.

The covers came loose and revealed standing upright, inside each jar a small sarcophagus, the elaborate golden miniature of the great gold case that held the king's mummy. The little coffins, within the Canopic jars, within the alabaster box on its sledge, within the long-sealed tomb suggested a great Chinese nest of boxes, one cunningly held within the other.

The delvers opened the small gold sarcophagi and found, as they knew they would find, that one had contained TutankhAmen's liver & gall bladder, another, his lungs & heart, another, his stomach & large intestine, the fourth his small intestine. They were the young king's last relics, removed at his mummification.

*The spelling of Egyptian hieroglyphics varies among different schools of Egyptologists.