Tutankhamun's trumpets

Tutankhamun's trumpets are a pair of trumpets found in the

burial chamber of the 18th dynasty Pharaoh Tutankhamun.
The trumpets, one of sterling silver and one of bronze or
copper, are considered to be the oldest operational trumpets in
the world, and the only known surviving examples from
ancient Egypt.

The trumpets were found in 1922 by Howard Carter during the

excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb. The bronze trumpet was
discovered in the tomb's antechamber in a large chest
containing various military objects and walking sticks.[1] The
silver trumpet was subsequently found in the burial chamber.
Both are finely engraved, with decorative images of the gods
Ra-Horakhty, Ptah and Amun.[1] The silver trumpet's bell is
engraved with a whorl of sepals and calices representing a
lotus flower, and the praenomen and nomen of the king.[2]
The bronze trumpet may in fact be made of copper, the metal The bronze/copper trumpet
has not yet been analysed.[1] Similar looking trumpets feature photographed by Harry Burton shortly
in Egyptian wall-paintings that are usually, though not always, after its discovery
associated with military scenes.[1]
Burton Photo. No. P0227,
Silent for over 3,000 years, the trumpets were sounded before Carter No. 050gg (http://www.griffith.ox.ac.
a live audience of an estimated 150 million listeners through Egyptian Museum, Cairo
JE 62008; Exhib. 125
an international BBC broadcast aired on 16 April 1939. The
trumpets were played by a Bandsman, James Tappern of
Prince Albert's Own 11th Royal Hussars regiment. The recording was recently featured, and can be heard
on the BBC Radio 4 program Ghost Music.[3][1] Rex Keating, who presented the 1939 broadcast, later
claimed that during a rehearsal the silver trumpet shattered and Alfred Lucas, a member of Carter's team
who had restored the finds, was so distressed he needed to go to hospital. Due to their fragility it is
unlikely the trumpets will be played again in any official musical reconstructions.[1]

Dimensions, manufacture and performance

The silver trumpet has a length of 221⁄2 in (57.2 cm), the bronze/copper trumpet is about 3 in (7.6 cm)
shorter. Their tubes are around 1⁄2 in (1.3 cm) in diameter at the mouth end, increasing to about 1 in
(2.5 cm) before flaring out to 4 in (10.2 cm) at the extremity. The mouth-ends are strengthened by rings
and are large by modern standards which would have made the trumpets hard to play; Tappern needed to
add a modern mouthpiece (with packing to make it fit) before his performance.[1]

The bronze trumpet was examined in detail by Jeremy Montagu in the 1970s. It consists of two sections.
The slightly conical body is from a rolled sheet of copper alloy between 0.2 and 0.25 mm thick. It has
been soldered lengthways with a "very skilfully brazed meander joint ... smoothed to a perfect finish", yet
is "slightly rough" internally, indicating that (as might be expected in a ceremonial instrument)
appearance was of a greater value than acoustic performance.
The bell is of a different, thinner material: an electrum-like
alloy of gold, between 0.1 and 0.13 mm thick. It is without a
visible seam, probably "burnished until the gold simply
flowed together". The 3.25 mm thick ring that forms the
mouthpiece was probably also made of electrum. The ring is
apparently not fixed to the body, Montagu suspected that
although it was possible to generate three notes on the
instrument, the highest note would not have been sounded;
besides being an effort to produce, the trumpet's construction
could not have tolerated it. The lowest note does not carry far,
leading Montagu to hypothesize that only the middle note was
used in a rhythmic signalling code.[4]

Claims of magical powers

The bronze trumpet was among items stolen from the Cairo
The silver trumpet with its wooden core
museum during the Egyptian looting and riots of 2011, (right)
mysteriously returned to the museum some weeks later.[3]
According to Al-Ahram, after its return Hala Hassan, curator Burton Photo. No. p0700,
of the Tutankhamun collection at the Egyptian Museum, Carter No. 175 (http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/
claimed that it had "magical powers" and that "whenever
someone blows into it a war occurs. A week before the
revolution, during a documenting and photographing process, one of the museum's staff had blown into it
and a week after revolution broke out. The same thing had happened before the 1967 war and prior to the
1991 gulf war, when a student was doing a comprehensive research on Tutankhamun's collection."[5]

Silver and gold Same objects

plated trumpet and
its wooden mute

References
1. "Ghost Music" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010dp0s). BBC Radio 4. 2011.
2. "Tutankhamun: Anatomy of an Excavation, The Howard Carter Archives. Carter No.: 175" (h
ttp://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/175-c175-1.html). The Griffith Institute.
3. Finn, Christine (17 April 2011). "Recreating the sound of Tutankhamun's trumpets" (https://
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13092827). BBC News.
 4. Montagu, Jeremy (1978). "One of Tut'ankhamūn's Trumpets". Journal of Egyptian
Archaeology. 64: 133–134. doi:10.2307/3856451 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F3856451).
JSTOR 3856451 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/3856451).
5. El-Aref, Nevine (12 Apr 2011). "Missing artifacts from the Egyptian Museum retrieved" (htt
p://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentPrint/9/0/9871/Heritage/0/Missing-artifacts-from-the-
Egyptian-Museum-retriev.aspx). Ahram Online. Retrieved August 8, 2012.

Further reading
Kirby, Percival (1947). "The Trumpets of Tut-ankh-amen and their Successors". Journal of
the Royal Anthropological Institute. 77.
Treasures of Tutankhamun: [catalogue of an exhibition] held at the British Museum, 1972 (ht
tps://books.google.com/books?id=xBYOAQAAMAAJ). British Museum. 1972.
Manniche, Lise (1991). Music and Musicians in Ancient Egypt (https://books.google.com/bo
oks?id=XD3aAAAAMAAJ). British Museum Press. ISBN 978-0-7141-0949-7.
Hickmann, Hans (1946). La Trompette dans l'Égypte Ancienne. Cairo: Government Printing
Press.
Hawass, Zahi A. (2005). Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs (https://archive.
org/details/tutankhamungolde00hawa). National Geographic Books.

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