Talk:Tutankhamun's mummy

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WikiProject Ancient Egypt to-do list:

Needed articles.

We should have an article on every pyramid and every nome in Ancient Egypt. I'm sure the rest of us can think of other articles we should have.

Cleanup.

To start with, most of the general history articles badly need attention. And I'm told that at least some of the dynasty articles need work. Any other candidates?

Standardize the Chronology.

A boring task, but the benefit of doing it is that you can set the dates !(e.g., why say Khufu lived 2589-2566? As long as you keep the length of his reign correct, or cite a respected source, you can date it 2590-2567 or 2585-2563)

Stub sorting

Anyone? I consider this probably the most unimportant of tasks on Wikipedia, but if you believe it needs to be done . . .

Data sorting.

This is a project I'd like to take on some day, & could be applied to more of Wikipedia than just Ancient Egypt. Take one of the standard authorities of history or culture -- Herotodus, the Elder Pliny, the writings of Breasted or Kenneth Kitchen, & see if you can't smoothly merge quotations or information into relevant articles. Probably a good exercise for someone who owns one of those impressive texts, yet can't get access to a research library.

Archaeology Mid‑importance

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Death Mid‑importance

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Alleged 1920s X-rays

This revision added that king's wrapped mummy was X-rayed before 1924 by radiologist Sir Archibald Douglas-Reid, and that the X-rays were lost in WWII. However, the two sources cited don't support this. The first is entirely about Douglas-Reid's WWI career; Tutankhamun and Carter aren't mentioned at all. "Mummy" is mentioned on p.3 (editorial) which says: "Being cursed by a mummy would not come particularly high up on the list of dangers for most of us, but this was the reputed fate of Sir Archibald Douglas-Reid as the following article shows [link to Aunt Minnie Europe article 'The radiologist and the curse of the mummy']".

The second source cited to support the claim is the Aunt Minnie Europe article. This does not say that Douglas-Reid X-rayed Tutankhamun. The closest it gets is that "Carter had hoped to examine the body with x-rays and had therefore invited Reid to Egypt" and that Reid died "in early 1924... before he could even go to Egypt". According to the first source, he died on 15 January 1924. He was dead before Tutankhamun's sarcophagus was even opened (12 February 1924), and well before the royal mummy was exposed (28 October 1925). Therefore, Tutankhamun was not X-rayed in the 1920s, and certainly not by Sir Archibald Douglas-Reid. The most we can say is that Carter may have invited him to X-ray the mummy, but that he died before doing so. However, I'd like an Egyptological source to support this, so I am going to remove it for now. Merytat3n (talk) 22:10, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Marchant's The Shadow King: The Bizarre Afterlife of King Tut's Mummy (2013) supports Reid being engaged to do the X-raying but not living long enough:

Carter originally hoped to x-ray Tutankhamun’s mummy too.* He arranged the procedure with a British pioneer of medical radiography, Archibald Douglas Reid, before the mummy was even found, but Reid died suddenly in February 1925, while recuperating from illness in Switzerland (and not, as several curse advocates later claimed, on his way home from x-raying the mummy).

Google Books preview has no page numbers for this one, and I don't have the book to hand, so if anyone does have it handy, please feel free to add Marchant as the citation : D Merytat3n (talk) 10:35, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Google Books has no page numbers for it because it's the eBook version they're previewing. The number of "pages" depends on the screen size and font settings of your eBook reader.

In the eBook, that asterisk links to this footnote:

*This seems to have been [Douglas] Derry’s idea. As early as 1923, he suggested x-raying Tutankhamun so that he wouldn’t need to be unwrapped. But Carter and Carnarvon argued that the mummy couldn’t be left intact as any jewelry in the wrappings would make it a sure target for looters. “Therefore it was decided to unwrap the mummy and no one who knows anything of archaeology will question the wisdom of this decision which saved the King’s body from ruthless desecration,” Derry later wrote in his notebook, rather defensively. In the end, the fact that the mummy was stuck inside the golden coffin and mask—both extremely opaque to radiation—made x-raying it impossible anyway.

If you want to add a citation, I suggest adding this to the bibliography:

{{cite book|title=The Shadow King: The Bizarre Afterlife of King Tut's Mummy|last=Marchant|first=Jo|year=2013|publisher=Hachette UK|type=eBook|chapter=Chapter 7: Letters from Liverpool|isbn=978-0-306-82134-9}}

And this after the sentence...

Firebrace (talk) 22:26, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! That'll be perfect for now. I have the ebook but I will try to get the physical book out from my local library this week to get the page numbers : ) Merytat3n (talk) 00:35, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]