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JS Saving Isis

Page history last edited by Jordan Smith 14 years, 4 months ago

In 1922, Howard Carter discovered King Tutankamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.  King Tut's tomb is remarkable because it was never found by grave robbers like so many tombs in the Vally of the Kings did.  Thus, Tut's tomb is a treasure trove of artifacts that document Tut's life, empire, and death.   Additionally these artifacts were exceptionally preserved because before Carter no human had seen the tomb in over three thousand years.  There were thousands of artifacts within the tomb and it took Carter and his team until 1930 to remove all of the artifacts and mummy itself.  However, when removing the inter sarcophagus and mummy from the tomb Carter damaged a mural of Isis, one of the most revered goddesses in Ancient Egypt.  Our job was to get all of the artifacts out of the tomb without damaging the Isis mural.  To complete our task we decided to dig a tunnel under the mural.  To come up with our final plan we went through many possible plans, but each of which had a flaw that did not exist in our final proposal.

 

Our plan to to remove all of the artifacts from King Tutankamun's tomb is to dig a tunnel connecting the burial chamber to the antechamber.  The biggest artifact that has to be removed is the sarcophagus that is five feet wide, eight feet long, and five feet tall and weight three thousand pounds.  Because of the sarcophagus' sheer size, this is the artifact that will be the hardest to remove and our plan has to include enough space to get this out of the tomb.  We plan to dig a tunnel that is nine feet wide, twenty feet deep, and at least twenty-six feet long at each opening.  This tunnel will be reinforced with iron beams to prevent a collapse.  Since the sarcophagus weighs so much we will create a hydraulic cart that will be positioned within the tunnel at the opening, then raised to be parallel with the floor.  To get the sarcophagus onto the hydraulic system we will use a torque to quickly lift the sarcophagus to put "friction-reducing-disks" underneath so we can actually push the sarcophagus onto the cart.  Then we will lower the hydraulic system and push the sarcophagus to the other side, raise it up again,, and remove it from the tomb.  After the sarcophagus is removed, we will carry out all of the other artifacts through the tunnel either using our cart or carrying them out in our hands.  Our plan prevents the mural from being damaged in any way and does not damage any other mural in the tomb.

 

To create our plan we spend many hours planning and proposing new ideas.  At first we proposed plans that would radically change the tomb.  An example of this type of thinking was taking all of the soil above the tomb off and use a crane or helicopter to remove all of the artifacts and sarcophagus from the tomb.  Then we realised that we should try to focus on something that would not really change the makeup of the tomb.  So we thought that we should use lasers to cut away at the wall and slip all of the artifacts through a hole at the bottom of the wall.  After we had discussed this option we realised that not only did the mural extend to the bottom of the floor but if we cut away at the wall the mural would be very fragile and might break.  Thus, we threw the plan out because we wanted to keep the mural as safe as possible, as well as not damaging any other mural in the tomb.  Finally we focused on a plan that the three of us could complete on our own with as little damage to the tomb and all murals as possible.

 

In creating our final plan we all proposed different ideas.  Some of these ideas were thrown out but many of them were adapted into our final plan.  This included my idea about digging a tunnel underneath the tomb to prevent damage to any part of the tomb. All three of us answered questions that came up in our discussion about our plan using information that we already had.  An example of this is when we to discuss moving the sarcophagus to the cart.  I wanted to use some type of a power tool, but we discussed it and my plan would not work and we formed the idea of using "friction-reducing-disks".   We all split the work evenly, and because of this we had the ability to look at all facets of our problem as well as confirm that all of our facts were correct.  All three of us discussed every facet of our plan to remove the artifacts from the to so we created a plan that had little problems and preserved the tomb and murals.

 

After completing lots of research and a discussion of plans that we either threw out or incorporated into our final plan, my group found a way to remove all artifacts from King Tutankamun's tomb without damaging a mural of the goddesses Isis.   Our plan was to dig a tunnel underneath and remove all of the artifacts, including a three thousand pound sarcophagus, from the tomb without any damage to any part of the tomb.  This plan prevented the mural from being partially destroyed like Howard Carter did in 1922 when he first discovered King Tut's tomb.  After completing our plan, everyone could see King Tutankamun's tomb in its original state.

 

 

Source List:

Andrews, Mark. "King Tut's Golden Shrines." Egypt Travel, Tours, Vacations, Ancient Egypt from Tour Egypt. Web. 4 Nov. 2009. http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/tutshrines.htm.

"Entering King Tut's Tomb, 1923." EyeWitness to History - history through the eyes of those who lived it. 2000. Web. 4 Nov. 2009. http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/tut.htm.

"King Tutankhamen's Tomb - Crystalinks." Crystalinks Metaphysical and Science Website. Web. 4 Nov. 2009. http://www.crystalinks.com/tutstomb.html.

 

 

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Comments (2)

Joe Essid said

at 2:03 pm on Nov 14, 2009

Jordan,

It would be great to add an image of your tunnel-system to the wiki! Can you get a hand-drawn one scanned in? It can be one that accompanies a group member's project as well.

Some sentence-level notes:

--"Because of the sarcophagus sheer size" needs an apostrophe to show possession. See the Writer's Web page at: http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb/possessive.html and fix it. Also hunt down other possessives you have not properly marked in the essay.

--"use a torque to quickly lift the sarcophagus" I don't know what a "torque" is. I think of the term as a measure of force, not a device. If you are talking about a specific tool, can you find an image of it online and include it here? Upload it directly to the wiki if you wish, since it is not a virtual-world image you can put in Koinup.

antoine.waul@richmond.edu said

at 5:16 pm on Nov 17, 2009

In the first sentence, Tutankamun't should be Tutankamun's.

I think this is well-written. There are just a couple of sentence level issues, but overall everything seems pretty good.

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