King Tut's Golden Coffin: A 3,000-Year Encounter
- Carter opens the doors of the inner shrine and discovers King Tut's stone sarcophagus, protected by winged goddesses. The yellow quartzite sarcophagus has a cracked lid disguised with plaster and paint.
- Carter lifts the lid to the sarcophagus and sees the likeness of Tutankhamen. Tut's forehead bears the symbols of Upper and Lower Egypt, and a tiny flower wreath is placed around his crown. The coffin nested inside the sarcophagus is damaged by water.
- Carter decides to remove the whole coffin due to its fragility. The innermost coffin is revealed to be made of solid gold, weighing 250 pounds. After three years, Carter finally comes face to face with King Tut and is overwhelmed by the realization that no one has looked into the golden coffin for over 3,000 years.
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お願いします (13) Carter pulled back the bolts on the innermost shrine's doors. Barely breathing, he swung open the doors. Inside, filling the entire shrine, was King Tut's stone sarcophagus. Winged goddesses carved into the yellow quartzite at each corner protectively embraced the sarcophagus and what lay within. The lid, however, was made from pink granite. Someone had painted it yellow to match the base. Had the original lid broken? This lid had cracked, too. The crack had been disguised with plaster and paint. (14) When Carter hoisted the lid to the sarcophagus, the likeness of Tutankhamen looked up at him from the seven-foot humanshaped coffin. The symbols of Upper and Lower Egypt―the cobra and the vulture―seemed to sprout from Tut's forehead. And around the crown someone had lovingly placed a tiny flower wreath. The wreath was made of olive leaves, blue water-lily petals, and cornflowers. (15) When the workmen raised the coffin's cover, Carter began to worry. The coffin nested inside had been damaged by water. What if King Tut were badly damaged? Fearing the lid was too fragile to lift, Carter decided to remove the whole coffin. But when the workmen hoisted it, it was much heavier than it should have been. It wasn' until Carter opened the second coffin that he found out why. The third and innermost coffin was made of solid gold. It weighed 250 pounds. (16) When the last lid to the last coffin was finally raised, three years after the discovery of that first step sliced into the valley floor, Carter and King Tut were at last face to face. Later, when Carter tried to put down on paper how he felt at that moment, he found he couldn't. There were no words to ddscribe his intense emotions. He was overhelmed by the realization that it had been more than 3,000 years since another human being had looked into the golden coffin.
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(13) カーターは、一番奥の聖堂の扉のかんぬきを引きました。 息を詰める様にして、彼はそれらの扉をさっと開きました。 内部で、聖堂全体を占めていたのは、ツタンカーメンの石棺でした。 各々の角の黄色の珪岩に彫刻された翼のある女神が、石棺とその中に横たわるものを保護するように抱きしめていました。しかし、そのふたは、ピンクの花崗岩で作られていました。 誰かが、その土台にあう様にそれを黄色に塗っていました。 最初のふたは壊れてしまったのでしょうか？ このふたもまた、ひびが入っていました。そのひび割れは、石膏と絵の具で誤魔化されていました。 (14) カーターが石棺のふたを持ち上げると、ツタンカーメンの肖像が、7フィートの人型の棺から彼を見上げていました。上下（南北）エジプトの象徴である ― コブラとハゲワシ ― が、ツタンカーメンの額から突き出しているように見えました。 そして、王冠のまわりには、誰かが、小さい花の花輪をやさしく置いていました。 その花輪は、オリーブの葉、青いスイレンの花びら、ヤグルマギクでできていました。 (15) 作業員たちが、棺のおおいを持ち上げるとき、カーターは心配になり始めました。内部で入れ子になった棺は、水で損傷を受けていました。 ツタンカーメンが、ひどく損傷を受けていたらどうしよう？ ふたが、持ち上げるにはあまりにもろいのではないかと恐れて、カーターは、棺全体を取り出すことに決めました。 しかし、作業員たちが、それを持ち上げたとき、それは、予想よりもずっと重量がありました。 カーターが、2番目の棺を開けてようやく、彼はその理由がわかりました。 3番目の一番内側にある棺は、純金製でした。 それは、250ポンドの重さがありました。 (16) 最後の棺の最後のふたが、ようやく持ちあげられたのは、少しずつ下って谷底の様な床へと続く階段の一段目を発見してから3年後のことでしたが、カーターとツタンカーメンは、ついに顔を合わせました。 後に、その瞬間、彼がどう感じたかを紙に書きとめようとした時、カーターは、そうすることができないとわかりました。 彼の激しい感情を言い表わす言葉がありませんでした。 もう一人の人間が、金色の棺を覗きこんだ時以来、3,000年以上が経過していると言う実感に彼は圧倒されたのです。
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お願いします (17) The priests who performed Tut's funeral had poured sacred oils over the mummy and the coffin. The oils glued the two together. Carter tried to loosen the resin by warming it in the hot desert sun, but it was no use. Tut was stuck. They called in a professor of anatomy to perform the examination on Tut's remains. The professor sliced away the linen wrappings only to find that it wasn't just the wrappings stuck to the coffin. The body was stuck, too. First the professor tried to chisel away the body, and when that didn't work, he tried heated knives. Finally, he hacked the torso in half and removed the body by sections. How much would we have been able to learn using today's scientific methods had the body not been so brutally handled? (18) The arm and leg bones pulled from their joints allowed the professor to calculate King Tut's age. He was about 18 years old when he died. He was thin, and five feet six inches all. Cause of death was never bonsidered.
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お願いします (1) Today when the body of a dead boy turns up, a team of specialists is sent to the scene. By examining the body, scientists can learn a great deal about that person's life, and often the cause of death. But in 1922, when archaeologist Howard Carter found Tutankhamen, no one thought a dead body had much to tell. In fact, people had so little regard for mummies that locals used them for firewood. Archaeologists sipped their afternoon tea by the fire with human bones―even skulls―at their feet. For scientists then, it was all about the tomb. (2) When Carter uncovered the first step to an ancient sunken stairway, he knew he had discovered the entrance to a tomb. But whose? On Sunday, November 5, 1922, Carter wrote in his diary, "The seal-impressions suggested that it belonged to somebody of high standing but at that time I had not found any indications as to whom." (3) When the workmen finished clearing the stairway on Friday, November 24, Carter wrote, "reached as far as the first doorway. There proved to be sixteen steps." After examining the first doorway, Carter found "various seal impressions bearing the cartouche of Tut-ankh-Amen." He had discovered King Tut's tomb. (4) Not much is known about Tutankhamen. He had taken the throne when he was only ten years old, and guided by his advisers, had set out to restore Egypt. But his father was probably the despised Akhenaten, the king who had robbed Egypt of its gods, and so Tutankhamen was guilty by association. The kings who followed him tried to erase the whole family from history.
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お願いします It was sometime before one could see, the hot air escaping caused the candle to flicker, but as soon as one's eyes became accustomed to the glimmer of light the interior of the chamber gradually loomed before one, with its strange and wonderful medley of extraordinary and beautiful objects heaped upon one another. (8) The room Carter peered into was packed to the ceiling. A jumble of chests piled on top of chairs, piled on top of chariots. Statues, beds, game boards, and pottery littered the floor. Everything the king would need in the next life had been crammed into the small space. The tomb robbers must have been scared away before they could do much damage. Carter writes, "we had found the monarch's burial place intact save certain metal-robbing." (9) But what was it they had found? If this was a tomb, where was the tomb resident? There were no mummies in sight. Carter writes, "A sealed doorway between the two sentinel statues proved there was more beyond, and with the numerous cartouches bearing the name of Tut.ankh.Amen on most of the objects before us, there was little doubt that there behind was the grave of the Pharaoh." The doorway to the burial chamber had been broken into as well. Carter writes that the hole was "large enough to allow a small man to pass through, but it had been carefully reclosed, plastered, and sealed. Evidently the tomb beyond had been entered―by thieves!" Would they find King Tut?
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お願いします (19) In a small side room, along with the jars that held King Tut's internal organs, Carter found two tiny coffins holding two tiny mummified fetuses. They were the mummies of the children Tut would never have―his wife's miscarriages. The professor cracked open the skull of ome. The embalmers had removed the brain and stuffed the hollow with linen. The professor found a wire that had been used to push the linen up into the skull, the only embalming tool ever found inside a body―and the professor threw it away. (20) If a mummy is discovered today, a team of scientists is sent to he scene. Botanists could have told Carter in what month King Tut died by studying the funeral wreath―cornflowers bloom in March in Egypt. Radiologists could have told Carter that King Tut did not die from tuberculosis as many had guessed, but may have been murdered by a blow to the back of he head. Or he may have fallen and hit the back of his head on the ground. King Tut's eye sockets were fractured in way that is caused by the brain snapping forward when the head hits the ground in a backwards fall (or is clubbed from behind). Neurologists could have told Carter that the vertebrae in King Tut's neck were fused. When Tut turned his head, he had to turn his whole torso, too. Fibreoptic tubes with miniature cameras could have been inserted under the linen to take pictures and samples without ever having to unwrap Tut. Today scientists use DNA to reconstruct family trees. Computers re-create faces. And if we can learn that much more in the time since Carter discovered King Tut, imagine how much we will be able to learn in the future. The dead do tell tales. It's up to us to listen.
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お願いします (10) Before they could open the burial chamber, the antechamber had to be cleared. This was no small task. First, every object was photographed from all angles, recording their details and placement in the antechamber. The photographer's past experiences had taught him well. He told The New York Times, "I remember, when we were clearing a series of 18th Dynasty tombs, which had been infested with white ants, the preliminary photographs were literally the only record of most of the wooden objects found. The coffins appeared to be in perfect condition, but when touched they collapsed into dust." (11) Wood wasn't the only fragile material in King Tut's tomb. Linen crumbled in the excavators' hands. One garment embroidered with more than 50,000 beads needed special attention. If they touched the garment it would turn to dust and the beads would scatter. The pattern was recorded so that the beads could be put back in the same way on new linen. It took three weeks to empty a single chest of clothing. The antechamber took more than a year to empty. (12) Finally, Carter was able to break through to the burial chamber―and there he found a golden room. Four gilded shrines, each nested inside the next, boxed in King Tut's sarcophagus. When Carter took the shrines apart he noticed the hieroglyphs "front" and "rear" painted on the panels―assembly instructions. Whoever put the shrines together must have ignored the instructions because the shrines were assembled backwards. The doors should have faced west so that King Tut could exit directly into the afterlife. They faced east instead. Poor Tut was turned around.
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お願いします。 (11) Osiris and Isis were two of the original nine gods. They were the children of the goddess of the sky and the god of the earth. Osiris became king of Egypt. He married the great love of his life, his sister Isis. His brother, Seth, was jealous. Seth wanted everything that Osiris had. He wanted to be king. He wanted his power. He wanted Isis. Seth pushed sibling rivalry into the evil zone. He plotted to destroy Osiris. Plutarch writes, "Seth secretly measured the body of Osiris and had made to the corresponding size a beautiful chest which was exquisitely decorated. He brought the chest to a banquet, and when the guests showed pleasure and admiration at the sight of it, Seth promised playfully that whoever would lie down in it and show that he fitted it, should have the chest as a gift." Then, in true Cinderella-and-the-glass-slipper fashion, everyone tried the coffinlike chest on for size. Some were so fat they couldn't squeeze into the box. Others were so small they slid right out. But, finally, when Osiris tried the coffin, the fit was just right. Plutarch writes that Seth "ran and slammed the lid on, and after securing it with bolts from the outside and with molten lead poured on, they took it to the river and let it go to the sea... "Osiris drowned. Death came to Egypt for the first time. (12) Seth enjoyed everything that once belonged to Osiris. But whereas Osiris was kind, Seth was cruel. There was no ma'at in Egypt with Seth in charge. There was war and hunger and lawlessness. Only Isis was unafraid of Seth. She found Osiris's body and turned herself into a bird and sang to him. In a fury, Seth cut Osiris into pieces and scattered him all over Egypt. Isis and her sister searched "in a papyrus boat, sailing through the marshes" for all his parts. They collectedthe pieces of Osiris, and with the help of Anubis, god of the dead, they sewed him back together.
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お願いします (6) On March 15, the day known in Rome as the Ides of March, Caesar went to a meeting of the Senate. As usual, he had no bodyguards. On the way, a soothsayer─a “truth teller” who can tall the future─stopped him with a warning: “Caesar, beware the Ides of March.” (The Romans called the middle day of the month the “Ides”; it usually fell on the 15th.) The dictator ignored him and walked on. But when he arrived at the meeting place, a group of senators─mostly old friends and men he had pardoned and promoted─surrounded him. They quickly closed in and, drawing their knives, began to stab him. Bleeding from 23 brutal wounds, Caesar fell and died at the base of a statue he had commissioned: a statue of Pompey─his rival and friend. (7) Who was this man who stirred such a powerful mix of love, admiration,fear, and hatred? (8) Julius Caesar was born into a noble family, but he always supported the rights of the common people. He was the plebeian's favorite politician. They believed that he understood and cared about their needs. He did, but he was no saint. He was practical, strong willed, and hungry for power. Street-smart, he made very few mistakes, and he knew how to take advantage of the mistakes of his enemies. (9) In 60 BCE, Julius Caesar wanted to become a consul, but he was broke. He had already spent everything he had (or could borrow) to pay for his political career up to that point. He needed money and he needed help. So he made a bargain with two other men who also needed something: Cicero's friend Pompey and Crassus, the richest man in Rome. The three formed the First Triumvirate.
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お願いします (21) During his own lifetime, Cicero was known as a great statesman, orator, and man of action. But he died a bitterly disappointed man. He had failed to do what he most wanted to accomplish: to save the Roman Republic. Not even Cicero's enemies, though, could doubt his love for Rome. Plutarch, writing many years after Cicero's death, tells a story about Octavian─after he had risen to great power as the emperor Augustus Caesar. The emperor found his grandson reading a book written by Cicero. Knowing that his grandfather had agreed to let Mark Antony's soldiers murder Cicero, “The boy was afraid and tried to hide it under his gown. Augustus...took the book from him, and began to read it.... When he gave it back to his grandson, he said,‘My child, this was a learned man, and a lover of his country.’”
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お願いします (13) By 50 BCE, the Triumvirate had ended. Crassus had been killed in battle, and Pompey had become very jealous of Caesar's military success and his great popularity. Pompey had married Caesar's daughter, Julia, but when she died in childbirth, the bond between the two men was broken. Before Caesar returned from Gaul, Pompey sided wit the Senate to declare his former father-in-law an enemy of the State. The Senate demanded that Caesar give up his army and return to Rome. Knowing that he would be arrested if he obeyed, he refused. But now his life and career were at stake. Did he dare go back to Italy at all? (14) In January of 49 BCE, Caesar's forces were camped just north of the Rubicon, the river that marked the boundary between Gaul and Ital. As soon as Caesar heard the Senate's ruling, he slipped away from the camp with a few trusted men. It was night, and everyone else was feasting. No one noticed that he was missing. When he reached the banks of the Rubicon, he paused, thinking about his next step. After a moment, he declared, “The die is cast” and crossed the river. This was his way of saying that his mind was made up and wouldn't be changed. Now he was ready to meet his former ally, the great general Pompey, in battle. (15) Caesar was never one to stand around, waiting for someone else to do something. Decisive as always, he began his march right away. He set out in the dead of winter with a single legion of soldiers. He knew that by marching on Rome he would start a civil war. What he didn't know─and couldn't have known─was that this war would last for nearly two decades and destroy the Republic.
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お願いします (17) Patriotic writers like Livy took great pride in telling about brave Horatius and how he stopped the foreign attackers. Livy knew that the story was exaggerated and that his first-century readers wouldn't completely believe it. But he wasn't telling it to get the facts straight. He told it because it painted a picture of Roman courage at its best. Horatius represented the “true Roman.” (18) Even though Rome had abolished kingship, the Senate had the power to appoint a dictator in times of great danger. This happened in 458 BCE when the Aequi, an Italic tribe living west of Rome, attacked. The Senate sent for Cincinnatus, a farmer who had served as a consul two years earlier. The Senate's messengers found him working in his field and greeted him. They asked him to put on his toga so they might give him an important message from the Senate. Cincinnatus “asked them, in surprise, if all was well, and bade his wife, Racilia, to bring him his toga.... Wiping off the dust and perspiration, he put it on and came forward.” than the messengers congratulated Cincinnatus and told him that he had been appointed dictator of Rome.
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