The original mud sealings that blocked the entrances to the tomb of 18th dynasty Pharaoh Tutankhamun have gone on public display for the first time since their discovery more than a century ago. They may seem ordinary in comparison to the glamour of his iconic gold funerary mask and other treasures, but surviving mud sealings that retain their original official impressions are rarer than gold in Egyptology because royal tombs were plundered and the entrance blocking destroyed in the process. The ancient looters of Tutankhamun’s tomb only made small holes in the sealing walls, and they were patched up, presumably by the priests who oversaw the pharaonic tombs.
Now displayed publicly for the first time at the Luxor Museum, the sealings offer visitors and researchers an unprecedented opportunity to encounter one of the few surviving original architectural elements directly connected to the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb.
The sealings were made from a local plaster material known in ancient Thebes as “Habiya”, a mixture of calcite, clay, sand, plant fibers, and gypsum. It is considered unique, with no comparable examples discovered in any other royal tomb in Egypt. Following the transfer of most of Tutankhamun’s treasures to the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), they also stand as the only original structural remnants still associated with the legendary tomb itself.
When Howard Carter discovered the tomb in 1922, he broke the sealings to three chambers to access the “wonderful things” within. He broke them into chunks, and at least took the care to box up all the broken pieces for storage, but unfortunately did not document their original configurations or locations. They were kept, but not conserved or studied, overshadowed by the extraordinary assemblage of more than 5,000 individual objects recovered from the tomb.
The complete wealth of funerary objects found in the tomb of Tutankhamun are now on display at the new Grand Egyptian Museum which had its official opening just last November. The boxes of fragments were not in display condition, and in 2025, the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) launched a new initiative to give them their archaeological due. Each piece is being photographed and catalogued, their materials and manufacturing methods documented, then scanned so the walls can be digitally reconstructed.
Conservators have also been working to manually reconstruct them and one large section of blocking that was puzzled back together is part of the new exhibition at the Luxor museum. It was used to seal the entrance to the burial chamber from the antechamber and was stamped with the seals of Tutankhamun and the necropolis guards who were entrusted with protecting the tomb from looters.
* This article was originally published here
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