'Tutankhamen, along with the Sphinx and the pyramids, is an icon in Egypt. 'A little publicity is a good thing,' says Hawass. You know how it goes: 'Death shall come on swift wings to him who disturbs the peace of the king' and other such No Trespassing signs on pharaonic tombs.įor Zahi Hawass, who heads Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities, the ill wind and machinery meltdown were a godsend - yet more nourishment for the King Tut legend and good publicity for Egypt. By luck, his tomb lay undisturbed for millenniums and stored a collection of marvels: gold masks, jewelry, alabaster vases for his preserved organs, sarcophagi within sarcophagi, graceful statuary of gods and animals alike, and furniture, even a bed.Īnd he's at least as notorious for his association with the Mummy's Curse, the stuff of Gothic novels and mummy movies for almost 200 years. He is the boy king who died young in a tumultuous period of ancient Egyptian history. There he goes again - yet another event in a long string of weird happenings that have made Tutankhamen the most storied of mummies. The high-tech machinery put in place to probe Tut's 3,000-year-old remains broke down.
Suddenly, gusts of wind swept dust up through the canyon. Somber workers in turbans pulled the mummy of King Tutankhamen out of its tomb in the Valley of the Kings last month and carried it outdoors for the first time in 70 years.
