h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Pretty good article, but there are a couple of issues I'd like to raise.

Firstly, the body of Tutankhamun (which, incidentally, shows signs of a possible blunt-force trauma to the back of the head, supporting the theory that old Ay may have got fed up of waiting around in the shadows) was wrapped and covered with its funeral mask, then set in three coffins.

The first was gold, and probably represented Tutankhamun.

The second was gilded wood, and probably didn't. Ironically, this is the really famous one.

The third was gilded cedar wood, and matched the gold inner coffin.

The outer coffin rests inside a yellow-gold quartzite sarcophagus, with an ill-fitting, red sandstone lid. Outside this were four wooden shrines.

The organs were placed not in the usual canopic jars, but in small 'coffinettes', which pretty much matched the second coffin. These were made - not for a female Pharaoh - but for Ankhkheprure, the mysterious co-regnant of Akhenaten (and perhaps of Tutankhamun as well), also known as Smenkhare.

While Smenkhare was a man however, and his image is in fact rather more butch than Tutankhamun's own, the body in tomb KV55 (that of a young man, physiologically similar to Tutankhamun and believed to be either Akhenaten or Smenkhare) was buried with only one arm folded across the breast, in the manner of a queen, not a Pharaoh.

Cursewise, Carnarvon died after being stung on the cheek by an insect. If you believe this kind of thing, the mummy mask of Tutankhamun has a slight imperfection: The almost uniform thickness of the gold is fractionally less in one cheek.

Me, I think there's a lot of things in Egypt that'll kill an unwary traveller, and tht's pretty much all the curse you'll ever need.

The Prophet.