The Tutankhamun Exhibit
Furniture and Boxes
Child's Chair
Because of its small scale (less than thirty inches high), this wooden chair was considered by Carter to have been used by Tutankhamun as a child. The death of the king at so young an age might have been the impetus for the inclusion among his funerary equipment of a number of items that were used during his early childhood. That would also explain the placement of a bracelet encrusted with a large lapis lazuli scarab among the personal objects stored in a chest in the Treasury.
In form, the chair, which came from the Antechamber, is similar to contemporaneous examples. It is almost identical in size to a small chair of Sitamun, although the decoration on her chair is much more elaborate than on Tutankhamun's chair. The legs are feline in form, and the back is braced by three vertical supports. Most of the wood is ebony, but the slats of the seat appear to be made of rosewood, and this may be, therefore, one of the earliest extant example of the wood. The back, like that of the inlaid chair, has vertical panels of ivory. Two horizontal bands of stylized floral petals, also made of ivory, surmount the panels. Several rows of ivory and ebony inlays arranged in a geometric pattern border the entire back.
The arms have panels of carved and gilded gesso. Decorated with a recumbent oryx on each of the other sides, the panels depict a floral motif within a border on the inner sides. Carved ivory terminals in the shape of lotuses serve as crosspiece between the legs of the chair. In addition, vertical and diagonal pieces brace the legs. Unlike the inlaid chair, the golden throne, and the carved wooden chair, the child's chair has no inscription anywhere.
