In ancient times, this holy box was kept in the First Temple, a Jewish place of worship in Jerusalem. The Ark of the Covenant is a gold-encrusted wooden chest that contains the stone tablets of the 10 commandments, according to the Book of Exodus. Vassil, released into public domain through Wikimedia) But the hasty burial of this royal figure also gives rise to another mystery: It's possible that King Tut's tomb was originally built for someone else, and there may be other, undiscovered mummies buried in the same tomb. Experts who have studied the mummy believe that King Tut's linen wrappings, which were soaked in flammable embalming oils, may have reacted with oxygen in the air to start a chain reaction that ignited the king's corpse, "cooking" it at about 390 degrees Fahrenheit (200 degrees Celsius).Ī rushed burial was likely behind the botched embalming job that caused the fire. King Tut appears to have caught fire after his body was mummified and his tomb sealed. His untimely death may help to explain the strange condition that his mummy was in when it was discovered. Archaeologists believe that the boy king died unexpectedly, perhaps from an infection or from injuries sustained in a chariot accident. But the real mysteries of King Tut's tomb are even more interesting than any curse. King Tut's tomb was unearthed in 1922 by British Egyptologist Howard Carter, and tales of a " pharaoh's curse" that kills those who come near the tomb have circulated ever since. (Image credit: Jaroslav Moravcik / Shutterstock)įew archaeological mysteries conjure up as much excitement as this one: the mysterious mummy of the Egyptian boy pharaoh Tutankhamun.
However, critics of this research argue that the scientists may have dated newer portions of the shroud that were stitched together centuries after Jesus' death, which would explain why the shroud seems "newer" than it really is. In other words, the scientists determined that the cloth is most likely a medieval forgery. They determined that the alleged burial cloth of Jesus was actually created between A.D. It wasn't until the 1980s that researchers got their hands on the cloth to try to determine its true age using radiocarbon dating. 1204, the cloth was moved to Athens, Greece, where it was allegedly held until A.D. When crusaders sacked Constantinople in A.D. According to that legend, the shroud was transported from Judea (now southern Palestine) to Edessa, Turkey, and later to Constantinople (now called Istanbul). But the legend of the shroud dates back to A.D. 1353, which is when the cloth showed up in a church in Lirey, France. The Catholic Church officially recorded the existence of the shroud in A.D. This long piece of twill cloth bears traces of blood, as well as the darkened imprint of a man's body. Perhaps no archaeological discovery is more debated than the enigmatic Shroud of Turin, which many believe to be the burial shroud of Jesus Christ. Whether archaeologists will ever have the technology they need to safely excavate the tomb (which also happens to contain extremely high levels of mercury) remains a mystery, as do the many treasures that lay inside. An underground palace, complete with a surrounding "kingdom," the mausoleum is made up of a network of caves and even included a state-of the-art drainage system. The first emperor's final resting place is the most opulent tomb ever constructed in China, according to ancient documents describing its construction. However, no one has actually entered the mausoleum that holds Qin Shi Huang's remains.
Ī pyramid-shaped mausoleum is located about a mile to the northeast of where the terracotta army was discovered. What isn't known, however, is where exactly the emperor is buried or what treasures his burial chamber might contain. The intricately carved figures aren't a mystery: Historians know that the clay army was created to defend China's first emperor in the afterlife. In 1974, farmers in China's Shaanxi province accidentally unearthed one of the biggest archaeological finds of the 20th century - the life-size terracotta armyof Emperor Qin Shi Huang (259 B.C.
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