Author Description

The small golden shrine found by Howard Carter in the Antechamber of Tutankhamun's tomb is one of the most spectacular and thematically interesting objects buried with the king. It is made of wood overlaid with gesso and covered with gold sheeting. All exposed exterior surfaces and the insides of the doors are covered with inscriptions and figures in raised relief that depict Tutankhamun and his queen Ankhesenamun in poses reminiscent of 'daily life' scenes in private tombs of Egypt's empire age, the New Kingdom.The shrine and the objects it contained are introduced in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 contains detailed descriptions of the relief and translations of the texts, whilst Chapter 3 is a critical consideration of interpretations of the decoration proposed in earlier studies by Bosse-Griffiths, Hari and Westendorf, and presents the author's hypothesis that the shrine was intended to 'document Ankhesenamun's ideological role as Tutankhamun's queen'. The style and dating of the shrine are the subject of Chapter 4.The illustrations include Harry Burton's original photographs (now in the Archive of the Griffith Institute, Oxford), supplemented by recent detailed photographs of the individual scenes, as well as diagrams and autographed copies of the texts.