King Tutankhamun his tomb and the afterlife

Every culture has their legends, spirituality, and mythology and these are used to reflect the geography of the culture, values, beliefs, and the history of the culture. Sociological research shows that religion and afterlife formed an integral part of the some societies’ cultures and that they provided a special link between the people and their spiritual deities (Marchant, 2013). For instance, Egypt’s mythology carries a lot of significance attached to the earlier life of the pharaohs, what the Egyptians viewed them, and their beliefs on the afterlife. In ancient Egypt, the Egyptians believed in eternal life in which a person would be buried with material things during his burial as a preparation for the new life that the person would start.

With this view, even a poor person would be buried with some things such as food and jewels among other things. Tutankhamun’s biological mother is unknown, but archaeologists argue that she must not have been the first wife to the pharaoh. As an infant, Tutankhamun was nursed by, Meritaten, his half-sister because the paint portraits at the tomb show his half-sister nursing him. Tutankhamun took power at the age of nine and this tender age; it is likely that most of his actions were depended on the advisors. As he grew up, his name was at times changed to as Tutankhamun to reflect his father’s revolutionary principles. Archaeologists argue that the artifacts of Tut’s body show that he might have died at the age of eighteen years old, but the cause of the death is not apparent (Taylor, 2001).

In other words, since the king was to become Osiris uniquely from the commoners, the Ancient Egyptians believed that it was necessary to equip the king with the passage of the sun which would be either through the heavens or the underworld (Hawass, 2013). King Tutankhamun’s tomb was hurriedly prepared as a four-chambered house because of the king’s tender age, eighteen years old. Edwards (2016) terms this tomb as a hole in the ground compared to how proper royal tombs would be prepared. According to Ancient Egypt’s spirituality, the fours had a religious meaning. King Tutankhamun’s tomb contained four chambers and among them was the burial chamber within which the chamber of departure was located towards the funeral destines.

From the construction of Tutankhamun, the researchers acknowledge that the four chambers corresponded to the principal halts of the four cardinal points of the delta within which the cities were located. To begin with, the Sais which was situated to the West represented the necropolis within which the body was buried. The Buto, to the North was also an essential stage of the transformations in the aquatic life represented the world of an unborn world. Aside from that, the Mendes to the East evoked the concept of the air. Finally, the Southern city of the sun which symbolized the fourth element of fire corresponded with the heavenly body with which the body arose in glory on the horizon (Kemp, Stevens, Dabbs, Zabecki & Rose, 2013).

The evidence that the items recovered from Tutankhamun’s tomb elucidate that the boy pharaoh might have been killed at war. The six chariot statutes at the antechamber are believed to have been used both for ceremonial and wartime purposes. For instance, one of the chariots had a light frame and simple construction to differentiate itself from the others. The analysis of the items recovered from Tutankhamun’s tomb shows that there was a change of the wheel at some incident which depicts the pharaoh as a great person of war. Similarly, the other items like ornamental shields demonstrated that the pharaoh played a critical role during wartime. As Marchant (2013) says, the shabits were, however, not regarded as slaves; instead, they were considered to function as chattels, and they would be left in hundreds.

In Tutankhamun’s tomb, there were as many as 413 shabits that were arranged in coffers and placed in the annex of the treasury. Furthermore, Marchant (2013) posits that the shabits were of salient significance with its features being present throughout Tutankhamun’s tomb. The denotation of these features on the tomb demonstrated the tremendous cultural importance that the Egyptians placed on the pharaohs who governed the ancient Egyptian society. Correspondingly, Edwards (2016) says that other artifacts such at the shabits were symbolic that the Egyptians believed that a person exists after the natural death and the minuscule served as the pharaoh’s servants in the afterlife. Studies suggest that the understanding of mummification existed in Ancient Egypt because people thought that the soul would return to the normal life after death to give experience and breadth to the body.

With these beliefs, placed several types of equipment and food items in the tomb to help the deceased to continue giving life even in the after death world. Hawass et al. (2010) add that the mouth opening ceremonies of the mummy and mummy cases were presided over by priests as a way of preparing them for a feast in their life after death. These rituals were believed to be holly and involved purification, burning of incense, chants, and even touching the mummies with holy objects to recover their senses. References Edwards, I. E. S.  Tutankhamun, his tomb and its treasures (Vol. 34, No. , Hasan, N. & Wasef, S. Ancestry and pathology in King Tutankhamun's family.  Jama, 303(7), 638-647. Ikram, S. I. M. A. Some thoughts on the mummification of King Tutankhamun.