"Tutankhamun: Anatomy of an Excavation"

My childhood fantasy of being an Egyptologist has been revived by this site. I was particularly interested in Howard Carter's journals and, of course, the photographs. What is notable about Carter's journals are his conflicts with visitors who seemed to continually interupt his work, as well as the drastic measures he had to take to extricate Tutankhamun from his various caskets. Also suprising to me was the sheer number of shrines and coffins that surrounded the mummy. Also notable were the items found within those coffins, such as flower garlands or palls. Each of these stages of burial--coffin after coffin, shrine after shrine--seem to indicate an elaborate ritual: in other words, you don't just dress something up with all that gold and then put flower garlands on each coffin and a death pall unless there is some ritual to go along with it. I can imagine the placement of the mummy (complete with the famous mask) in the first coffin was the most elaborate of all, and, as I recall, we have the most knowledge of mumification process and the rituals proceeding from it (due in part to our old friend Herodotus, mentioned previously). I am not so certain, however, that there. is as much knowledge of what actually took place when the pharoah was being nested in the complexity of coffins, sacophagus, and shrines.

Tut was only a minor boy king. Imagine what a tomb like Ramses II must have been like.