Mark Hagens, age 14, of Muscatine, Iowa, for his question:
WHAT DID KING TUT HAVE ON HIS CHIN?
King Tut was only a child of eight or nine when he became a king of ancient Egypt. He reigned for only nine years, dying while he was still a teen alter. We know a great deal about the way he lived because his tomb, discovered in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings in 1922, had not been opened since ancient times and still contained most of the funeral treasures.
King Tut, or more properly Tutankhamun, ruled ancient Egypt for a short time from about 1347 B.C. The treasures from his tomb tell us many things about the boy ruler.
One of the most beautiful items found in Tutankhamun's tomb was the mask of solid gold, beaten and burnished, which was placed over the head and shoulders of the mummy, outside the linen bandages in which the whole body was wrapped. Pictures of the handsome mask have been reproduced widely.
On Tutankhamun's chin is a long, plaited or braided false beard. This type of beard was thought to be the type worn by Osiris, one of ancient Egypt's gods. Osiris was the god of the earth and vegetation, symbolized in his death by the yearly drought and in his miraculous rebirth by the periodic foods of the Nile and the growth of grain each year.
Many believed that King Tutankhamun was indeed the god Osiris himself.
In Tutankhamun's beautiful mask, which has been seen by many during a recent American exhibition of treasures from the tomb, the plaited false beard is inlaid with blue glass in imitation of lapis lazuli, the same material used in the stripes of the headdress.
Although the mask is slightly idealized, the experts believe that it essentially faithfully portrays the boy ruler as he really looked.
In the mask, the eyebrows, eyelids and kohl marks extending sideways from the eyes are made of lapis lazuli and the eyes of quartz and obsidiam.
Ancient Egyptian mummification of Tutankhamun had a double purpose: the preservation of the body to later receive the soul, and the creation of a likeness of the god Osiris. The inclusion of a plaited beard, that almost looks like a handle, was part of creating the likeness.
Conducting Tutankhamun's funeral was his aged vizer, Eye, who was very possibly one of his grandfathers. For a time Eye succeeded Tutankhamun as king. Tutankhamun's young widow asked for one of the sons of the Hittite king Shuppiluliuma to share the throne as her husband. The son, Prince Zannanza, was slain by Egyptians on his way to the wedding and as a result, a new dynasty succeeded to the throne.