On line resources can be seductive, easy to use. Here are some sites that can be useful or informative.

 

"Tutankhamun: Anatomy of an Excavation", Oxford's Ashmolean Museum has a number of documents from the excavation, including Howard's notes and diaries and a huge number of Harry Burton's photographs.

See them at http://www.ashmolean.org/gri/4tut.html

What's nice is the web site has no ads, (almost) no animation, and no huge graphics. Although when looking at the index of Harry's photographs the upper image changes from one to another, which is unnecessary and distracting.

 

"False Images of Tutankhamun", Ahmed Osman, http://ahmedosman.com/tut_images.html

Again kind of a counter-point article about believing what you see on television should not be taken as what was written on Mt. Sinai. This is a criticism of the recent physical reconstruction's of Tut's face which show a young, robust, and strapping young lad. Ahmed points out could just as easily have been a sickly, ugly, and almost deformed child who had trouble even getting around.

 

"TourEgypt.Net" http://www.touregypt.net/

An excellent site intended for those interested in taking tours of Egypt, it has a lot about the ancient history of the country. There much information about Tut, ranging from the basics of his life, his tomb and it's excavations, and even how they figured out what kind of perfume he used.

 

"The Pronunciation of Ancient Egyptian",  http://www.friesian.com/egypt.htm

This gives a good introduction of the phonology of Egyptian, although it doesn't go into details on how some vowels are known (see Albright's book for that). It mentions an interesting tidbit that there are words in English that are Ancient Egyptian! For instance, "adobe" - the word for the mud brick used in Spanish and Spanish American building - is of Ancient Egyptian origin. You can trace the phonology from Spanish through Arabic (Spanish has lots of Arabic loan words) to Coptic to Egyptian. Coincidence? Possibly, but since word maintained the same meaning "mud brick" throughout the centuries, the argument is convincing.

Naturally, basic online introductions to hieroglyphics can also be found on the web. For anyone interested in seeing what happened to the Egyptian language in relatively modern times see "An Introduction to Coptic" at http://www.metalog.org/files/plumley/html/home.htm. Coptic is the last stage of the Egyptian language with heavy borrowings from Greek and was written in a modified Greek alphabet. It remains the liturgical language of the Christian Coptic Churches in Egypt although it is usually stated to have died out between 1600 and 1700 A. D. However it was reportedly spoken in the 1930's by two elderly sisters when they visited each other.

That's the reason why we can to this day read Ancient Egyptian. It never really died out, and it was Jean Francois Champillon's knowledge of Coptic that allowed him to make such a quantum leap in the decipherment of hieroglyphics.

 

"Basic Lessons in Hieratic", http://home.prcn.org/sfryer/Hieratic/index.html

Want to try your hand at reading the way the Egyptians actually wrote? This site has basic lessons in hieratic script with interactive tutorials.

 

 

Egyptology Online, http://www.egyptologyonline.com

A nice web site with learnéd articles. Two of particular note are:

"Who was buried in KV55?" Tony High, EgyptOnline http://www.egyptologyonline.com/kv55_the_discovery.htm

A very good review of the evidence for who was (or wasn't) buried in KV55.

 

"Tutankhamun's CS Scan", http://www.egyptologyonline.com/ct_scan_report.htm

Although still a summary there's a lot of detail - and more importantly, an honest report which tells where the experts disagree. Contrast that to the National Geographic special cited in another footnote.

To be fair, National Geographic's artice on their web site also tells the straight story.

 

Ancient Egypt Site: The Valley of The Kings" http://www.ancient-egypt.org/index.html

Great interactive map showing the tombs, relative sizes, and whose was whose.

 

Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

It is impossible, in this day and age, to do any online research of anything, without at some point looking in Wikipedia and virtually all of the important characters in Tut's story are found there. Its convenience due to its simple and extremely well designed web format does, to a large part, make up for the uncertainly that any given sentence might be complete and total hogwash. Certainly 99 % of the contents may be (and almost certainly is) correct and a Wikipedia article on a topic will always pop up as one of the leading references. Used with caution - extreme caution - Wikipedia can be a useful resource.

Yes, the ones about Ancient Egypt do have some errors. For instance the one on the "Hymn to Aten" says Akhenaten's religious ideas are earliest known example of monotheistic thought. Not true as the concept of monotheism crops up in earlier Egyptian religious texts. So every sentence should always be confirmed from some more definitive source before accepting the information At this writing are still a troubling percentage of articles that cite only internet references. The ability for anyone to insert totally unsupported hearsay and rumor as fact is the biggest drawback to using Wikipedia despite the mountains of good information provided by responsible and informed writers.

Remember - unless the it has properly refereed material - no web site should be used as a source for correct information - and that includes the one you're reading now.

 

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