A chariot that may have witnessed King Tutankhamun’s final moments is traveling outside Egypt for the first time in three millennia to join the "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" exhibit at the Discovery Times Square Exposition, Egypt's officials announced on Monday.
“This is the first time that the chariot will travel outside Egypt. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity for the people of New York to see something of such great significance from the boy king’s life,” Zahi Hawass, general secretary of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said in a statement.
The chariot is one of five discovered by British archaeologist Howard Carter when he entered King Tut's treasure-packed tomb in 1922.
Dismantled at the time of the funeral, the vehicles consisted of two larger, ceremonial chariots, a smaller highly decorated one, and three others that were lighter and made for daily use.
Four chariots, including the one which will arrive in New York on Wednesday, were found piled up along the south-east corner of the antechamber, and two in the treasury room.
Completely lacking in decoration, the traveling chariot was described by Carter as a “more open, lighter construction probably for hunting or exercising purposes.”
According to Hawass, the chariot stands out among the other five found in the boy king’s tomb.
“The tires are extremely worn, suggesting that this chariot was used frequently in hunting expeditions by the young king,” Hawass said.
During recent CT scans and major genetic investigations into King Tut's family, Hawass and his medical team discovered that King Tutankhamun had an accident a few hours before he died, which caused a fracture in the king’s left leg.
The medical study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and recently disputed by a team from Hamburg’s Bernhard Noct Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNI), concluded that King Tut died of complications from malaria and Kohler’s disease, an ailment that affects blood supply to the bones.
The fractured leg has however raised speculations. According to Hawass, it was probably caused by a fall from the fast moving chariot when the boy king was hunting in the desert.
“As we discover more about Tutankhamun’s death, we may find that this very chariot is an important piece of the puzzle that we’ve been working for decades to solve,” Hawass said.
Photo: courtesy of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities
Tags: Ancient Civilizations, Ancient Egypt, Archaeology, Near East and Middle East Archaeology
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