After twenty years, I once again had the chance to visit Egypt and it was a pleasure for me to explore the country , its nature with the beautiful green Nile and its desert beyond and all its ancient sites and historical treasures in the different museums .

We were planning to go to Cairo , Sakkhara , Alexandria ,Memphis , Luxor , Edfu , Assuan and Abu Simbel .

I was so excited about before I went on my trip because I was so impressed when I went to Egypt for the first time long years ago.

It was anextraordinary very mystic place for me .

Beyond the new Egypt, I was fascinated by the culture, historical places, mathematical intelligence, mythologies, mystical atmosphere and nature of ancient Egypt.

I have always been intrigued by the fact that Egypt was in close interaction with the entire Mediterranean Basin and especially the Mesopotamian Region for thousands of years, and even under the auspices of the Ottoman Empire between 1517 and 1914.

On this second trip, we would go to some places we had not seen before and reminisce about the old days. During my flight to Cairo, I can see the Nile Delta and the Western Sahara Desert from my airplane window.

After landing at the airport, we arrive at the historical Tahrir Square through the chaos of Cairo.

At the back of Tahrir Square, next to the luxury hotels, the old Cairo Museum appears in front of us with all its beauty in the color of dried rose.

The Old Cairo Museum is one of my favorite museums around the world.

The inventory here consists of the extraordinary historical treasures of that region, not collectibles as in museums in Europe or America. The museum displays thousands of highly prized artifacts of the ancient Egyptian world, among its high ceilings, stone floors, and vintage cabinets made of wood and glass.

The atmosphere here takes you on a wonderful time travel and takes you back thousands of years. I can never forget the smell of the Cairo Museum twenty years ago.

It was as if there was the smell of Egyptian history and the Egyptian deserts in those magnificent corridors, and it was really impressive with all its historical treasures.

The pearl of the Cairo Museum and one of the most precious archaeological treasures in the world are exhibited here, and I think you would come to Cairo just to see this treasure – the TUTANKAMON Treasure.

In today’s article, I would like to tell you a little bit about this young pharaoh.

The era of the pharaohs in Ancient Egypt begins with the unification of lower and upper Egypt in 3000 BC and ends with the domination of the Roman Empire in 30 BC. During this time, 170 pharaohs from 30 dynasties ruled in ancient Egypt, and Tutankhamon was one of the youngest pharaohs among them, ascending the throne at the age of nine and passing away at the age of 19.

He belonged to the 18th dynasty and lived between 1332 and 1323 BC. The era of the pharaohs was very different from today’s Egypt. Egypt had an incredible splendor and wealth, monuments such as pyramids, the architecture of which has not been deciphered until today, temples, a very rich mythology, and a very advanced knowledge of astronomy, mathematics and physics.

In ancient Egypt, the pharaohs would find their final resting place in the pyramids at first and in the Valley of the Kings on the west side of the Nile in Luxor in the later years. These royal tombs were always the target of thieves because it was known that the treasures of the burial chambers were admirable, and therefore for centuries. No matter how secret it was tried to be kept , it would be discovered and plundered by thieves .

But an extraordinary discovery was made in the 20th century. In 1917, British archaeologist Howard Carter was recruited in Egypt by the English antiques dealer and wealthy Earl Carnavon and posted to the Valley of the Kings in Luxor. Carter was confident that he would find an undiscovered tomb here, and for five years he continued excavating in the Valley of the Kings with the financial support of Carnavon, unable to find the slightest clue.

Now that Carter’s hopes were fading, Earl Carnavon was unwilling to fund the project any longer. Carter, on the other hand, had persuaded Carnavon to continue the excavations for another term, asking him for one last chance. On the morning of November 04, 1922, the excavation team gave the good news that an element resembling a stair step had been found.

Excavations continued with great excitement and on November 24, 1922, the door of a burial chamber appeared from an excavation cavity. The ancient lock on the grave door looked intact. Earl Carnavon arrived from England in urgency, and with great excitement Carter and his crew unlocked the burial chamber in a special ceremony. The scene before Carter was unbelievable.

They had reached the untouched tomb of the young pharaoh Tutankhamun, and the treasure they found was priceless. In this tomb, Carter found 5398 pieces of ancient Egyptian artifacts, including 4 separate sarcophagi that were placed inside each other protecting Tukankamon’s mummy.

Two of these sarcophagi were of ornate wood. There was a golden mask with a snake on top . These sarcophagi were placed in a large sarcophagus made of red granite stone decorated with hieroglyphs .

In addition to these, the golden chariot belonging to the pharaoh in the burial chamber, two Tutankhamun’s original size statues, very precious thrones and golden foot benches, a golden leopard head, organ storage containers made of foam stone containing its own internal organs, around two hundred very valuable jewelery , custom made dagger , clothes , sandals , 413 usabti funeral statues , gold and silver vessels , chariot , hundreds of valuable walking sticks , perfume containers and there were many artifacts such as the statue of the god Anubis in the form of a dog guarding his tomb.

Tutankhamun’s dagger is of particular interest to the scientific world today, as the dagger was found on the chest of Tutankhamon’s mummy and thanks to new technologies, it was determined that the metal part of the dagger belonged to a meteorite.

It had taken Carter ten years to extract this treasure from the burial chamber in the Valley of the Kings and record it. In ancient Egypt, after the death of the pharaoh, all the organs in his body, except his heart, were taken with a special operation and put into storage containers and his body was mummified. The weight of his heart, according to mythology, becomes a measure of his sins when he was confronted with the gods after his death .

Once his heart is as light as the feather of Goddess Maat he will be allowed to come back to life. Thanks to the mask of his mummy in his grave, he recognizes himself and his spirit comes to life again in his mummified body. Thus, the Pharaoh regains all his treasure and personal belongings in his tomb, and the funeral statues are revived and become his servants again.

I am in a great happiness again while walking through the corridors of the Cairo Museum and going up to the top floor to see Tutankhamun’s treasure. It is impossible not to admire this treasure. It is the treasure of an extraordinarily rich, aesthetic, unique, 5000-year-old young pharaoh. I enjoy visiting the works of the treasure one by one.

A few days later, when we go to Luxor, I visit Tutankhamun’s burial chamber in the Valley of the Kings. This is called KV 62, the 62nd burial chamber in the valley. This time, it is open to visitors and the mummy of the young pharaoh is now displayed here, in the original location of his tomb.

The yellow walls of the burial chamber are adorned with terrific colorful mythological stories and images and hieroglyphs describing the life of Tutankhamen.

There is a depiction of twelve monkeys in the part where the mummy is. It is said that these 12 monkeys are guardians of the mummy on one side .Due to a second interpretation these 12 monkeys represent the 12 hours of the night that the sun and the dead need to overcome the darkness of the night -the one will reach out to the daylight and the other will come back to life .

I imagine the first time Carter and his team saw this place and the excitement they felt . Is it possible not to be affected? If Carter had not persisted in his time and had not provided the necessary financing for the continuation of the excavations for another period , this very precious treasure would still have been sleeping under the ground with the pharaoh as it had been for thousands of years .

In 2023, the entire Tutankhamun treasure will now be moved to Egypt’s newly opened National Museum of Egyptian Civilization and will be exhibited thereafter. Some works of this precious treasure were exhibited in private museums on all continents after the 1960s and had nearly forty million visitors. In 2019, a special exhibition of Tutankhamen, who went on a world tour from Los Angeles, will be exhibited in Istanbul in January 2023. As I learned, the pieces that come to Istanbul are replicas.

Of course, seeing the original pieces and the whole treasure in museums in Egypt, and seeing the Valley of the Kings and KV 62, the original location of the treasure, is a completely different feeling and pleasure, but I still recommend you to visit the exhibition in Istanbul because it is said to be the best replicas in the world. I hope you enjoyed the article.

I will share many more notes of Mysterious Egypt with you.