Golden Tongues and Solar Barques: The Strange Grave Goods of Egypt's Mummies

Picture the tomb of a mummy and you might expect a sarcophagus, some canopic jars and perhaps a few figurines... but far stranger things have been found in the graves of the Egyptian dead. Let's take a look at...

• The Mummies With Golden Tongues
• Tutankhamun's Extraterrestrial Dagger
• The Heart Scarab of Hatnefer
• The Tomb Curse of Ankhmahor
• The Solar Barque of Khufu

The Mummies With Golden Tongues

Have you heard someone being described as having a silver tongue? Well, thousands of years ago the Egyptians had a similar idea.

Archeologists working in Alexandria discovered a collection of burials where the dead had been interred with golden tongues - or more accurately, gold-foiled amulets in the shape of tongues. Similar discoveries were made at Qewaisna Necropolis 40 miles north of Cairo.

Gold was often considered the metal of the gods in Ancient Egypt, thanks to the fact that it doesn't corrode. It's thought that the tongue amulets may have been intended to help the dead speak to the gods, pleading their case to Osiris and hopefully securing a good place in the afterlife!

Tutankhamun's Extraterrestrial Dagger

There's a rather far-fetched conspiracy theory that the Egyptian pyramids were built by (or with the assistance of) aliens. There's not really anything to back up that claim, but archeologists found a link to the extraterrestrial in the tomb of Tutankhamun - a ceremonial dagger forged of meteoric iron.

The metal of the dagger contains a higher percentage of nickel than you'd expect from iron mined on Earth, which (along with traces of cobalt) implies that it was made from a meteor. Curiously, the construction seems rather ahead of its time - not only was it a bit early for iron working, adhesive found on the hilt was of higher quality than the normal organic glue used by the Egyptians of the time.

The current theory is that the dagger may have been a gift-turned heirloom from the nearby Mitani - and the ancient "Amarna Letters" dating back to 14th century BCE mention the gift of a dagger suspiciously like the one found with Tutankhamun!

The Heart Scarab of Hatnefer

In the mythology of Ancient Egypt, the heart of the dead would be weighed against "Maat" or the principle of order and justice. Passing on to the afterlife required that the heart was equal to or lighter than the feather of Maat... and failure would result in the heart being eaten by the vengeful demon-goddess Ammit instead.

Naturally this was a test that the Egyptians wanted to pass. To give themselves better odds, they would sometimes be interred with a heart scarab - an sculpted amulet inscribed with a "spell" from the Book of the Dead, exhorting the heart to not bear witness against the deceased.

One particularly interesting example is the heart scarab of Hatnefer. Hatnefer was a woman who moved from a commoner background to nobility, thanks to her son Senenmut reaching a high position in court of Hatshepsut. She was entombed with a selection of grave goods, but Hatnefer's heart scarab was a hand-me-down - though a fine piece of work, the original name has been scratched off and replaced with her own!

The Tomb Curse of Ankhmahor

I'm not really sure that you can you call a curse grave goods, but it felt wrong to not include these vengeful spells... even if they were a lot rarer than media made them out to be.

Perhaps the most famous curse is that of Tutankhamun... which is a shame, since no such curse was found in his tomb. The "curse" was a fabrication, intended to sell newspapers by capitalizing on the deaths of those involved in the excavation.

Archeologists have found a few examples of tomb curses though. Perhaps the most graphic can be found at the tomb of Ankhmahor in the Sakkara (or Saqqara) Necropolis. The ominous warning reads "...I am an excellent priest, knowledgeable in secret spells and all forms of magic, and as for anyone who enters my tomb impure or who do not purify themselves, I shall seize him like a goose and fill him with fear at seeing ghosts upon the earth..."

The Solar Barque of Khufu

In 1954, archaeologists working on the Great Pyramid of Pharaoh Khufu in Giza discovered several pits. Their contents included a boat more than 40m long - that's in the same league as the super-yachts of today!

Though found in pieces, the components of the boat (described as a solar barque or barge) were in good condition having been tightly sealed beneath limestone blocks. It was reassembled over the course of 10 years, then in 2021 moved intact to the Grand Egyptian Museum. It joined the pieces of a second boat also found in the pits.

It's not entirely clear what the purpose of the boats was, but theories include them having served in the funeral procession of Khufu, being intended to serve as transport in the afterlife... or perhaps both!

Thanks for reading - you might also like...

• Cliffside Coffins and a Pink False Door: Explore 5 Bizarre Ancient Burials
• Discover 6 Mystery-Touched Relics From Ancient History
• Disturb These 5 Real-Life Vampire Graves at Your Peril...

Sources and Further Reading:

• Ancient mummies with golden tongues unearthed in Egypt
• The Mummy with the Golden Tongue
• The meteoritic origin of Tutankhamun's iron dagger blade
• A new origin story for King Tut’s meteorite dagger
• Heart Scarab of Hatnefer
• The 'Death in Sakkara' Gallery
• Khufu's Boats Museum