Still, growing up in ancient Egypt was full of pleasures. Especially if somebody belonged to the royal famly. Tut was born a prince. He spent his childhood in a brand-new palace in Amarna.
Egyptian palaces were huge. All over the palace grounds were beautiful gardens and giant pools the size of lakes. Palace buildings were made of brick and covered in white plaster. The walls were covered with colorful paintings. There were separate buildings for the pharaoh’s wives.
A typkal royal Palace
The same palace from outside
Servants would have seen to all of Tut’s needs. Each day they brought his food. Peasants ate bread and drank beer. But for a royal prince, there were meat and vegetables. Figs and dates. Wine was made from grapes grown in the north of Egypt, or from dates or figs or pomegranates.
It appears that young Tut was a member of “the clean plate club.” A small statue of him reveals a chubby child with a plump belly and arms.
His servants also bathed and dressed him. They shaved his head, leaving only a braid of hair at the side. This was the hairstyle for a prince. While he slept, they fanned him with ostrich-plume fans. That way, the heat would not disturb him.
Crocodiles lived in the Nile River. So guards kept watch every time Tut went swimming. Once he got older, he could ride his own chariot drawn by two fine horses with plumed headdresses. Or he could sit back and enjoy a boat trip on the Nile.
Tut took his bow and arrow and went hunting with his hounds. In the desert, he might shoot an ostrich. Near the river there were ducks to hunt. Evidently Tut liked playing a popular board game called Senet. (He made sure four sets were put in his tomb.)
Did he like to play music? Perhaps so. Trumpets were found in his tomb. If he didn’t want to play himself, musicians would play for him. They would play the harp and lute and pipe.
Because of the heat, even princes and princesses wore light, simple clothing.
Paintings of Tutankhamun show him in a pleated kilt of white linen.
His clothes were simple, but his jewelry was not. He wore heavy gold bracelets and rings. Some necklaces of beads and gold were so large that they covered his chest. His wife wore lots of heavy, beautiful jewelry. So did other royal children. Young boys wore heavy earrings. (Two pairs of Tut’s were placed in his tomb.)
Ancient Egypt was the first place to develop a written language. Boys learned to read and write starting at four years old. Did Tut know how? Probably. Writing materials were put inside his tomb. A beautiful brush case belonging to Tut was made from wood covered in gold foil with gemstones. If Tut didn’t feel like doing his own writing, he could have had a scribe do it for him. A scribe’s job was to write down all the pharaoh’s orders and letters for him.
The Egyptians didn’t have pens or pencils. Instead, they took a reed and chewed on the end of it. When the tip split apart, it could be used as a brush. Black ink was made from soot or charcoal. It came in a small, round block. A student had to dip the brush in a water pot before rubbing it on the ink.
Egyptians made a kind of heavy paper, from papyrus plants along the banks of the Nile. (Our word “paper” comes from “papyrus.”) The stem of the plant was cut into long strips. The strips then were placed in two layers, crossways, and pounded with a hammer. When all the juice was pounded out, the two layers formed a single sheet. That was put under a heavy stone until it dried out even more and became flatter. The last step was to rub the papyrus sheet back and forth with a stone until it was smooth.
Instead of binding sheets of papyrus into books, the sheets were rolled up into scrolls. Papyrus paper was very strong. Some scrolls have been found that are thousands of years old. They are still in good shape. Papyrus was also easy to erase. A dab of water was all that was needed to get rid of a mistake.
As a child, Tut probably made lots of mistakes learning to write. Our alphabet has only twenty-six letters. His had about one thousand different symbols called “hieroglyphs.” Many hieroglyphs look more like pictures than letters.
After the ancient empire of Egypt came to an end, the meaning of hieroglyphs was lost for many centuries. No one could translate the writing. It was like a secret code that could not be broken.
Then, in 1822, a Frenchman named Jean-Fran?ois Champollion finally figured out how to decipher (translate) hieroglyphs. Many of the objects in King Tut’s tomb are inscribed with the pharaoh’s name in hieroglyphs.
It looked like this:
THE ROSETTA STONE
IF IT WEREN’T FOR A LUCKY ACCIDENT, THE MEANING OF HIEROGLYPHS MIGHT STILL BE A MYSTERY. IN 1799 FRENCH SOLDIERS FOUND A LARGE PIECE OF BLACK STONE, CALLED “BASALT.” THE STONE HAD CARVINGS IN THREE DIFFERENT SCRIPTS: HIEROGLYPHS, GREEK, AND A THIRD KIND CALLED “DEMOTIC.” THE WORDS ON THE STONE WERE WRITTEN IN 196 B.C. TO PRAISE A PHARAOH NAMED PTOLEMY V. ALL THREE LANGUAGES WERE COMMONLY USED AT THE TIME SO THAT WHOEVER SAW THE STONE COULD READ IT.
BY THE 1800S, NO ONE KNEW HOW TO READ HIEROGLYPHS. BUT IF SOMEONE COULD MATCH UP THE GREEK AND THE DEMOTIC TO THE HIEROGLYPHS, THEY COULD CREATE A KEY TO HIEROGLYPHS.
JEAN-FRAN?OIS CHAMPOLLION FINALLY FIGURED OUT THE BASIC RULES OF HIEROGLYPHS—AFTER STUDYING THE STONE FOR FOURTEEN YEARS! FINALLY, AFTER ALMOST FIFTEEN HUNDRED YEARS OF SILENCE, THE LANGUAGE OF ANCIENT EGYPT COULD AT LAST BE “HEARD.”
THE STONE IS CALLED THE ROSETTA STONE AFTER THE TOWN WHERE IT WAS FOUND. TODAY IT IS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM IN LONDON. |