King Tutankhamun's Burial Chamber

An early mysterious death of the last king of the royal 18th dynasty has been a very controversial topic for decades. King Tutankhamun has suffered, and yet we haven't exactly revealed the causes of the incident. This prompted us, Zewail City Science Festival's content creators, to revive him again, trying to follow the sequence of events and reveal the mystery of the past.

We made a show. The idea is simple but a creative one, a play that includes all suspects in the incident, the kings Ankhesenamun, Ay II, and Horemheb, coming together and debating about the secrets behind early death with a futuristic-scientific touch of a time traveler; is it destiny? A disease? Or are there family secrets and motives for trying to reach the rule early? - idea and scripted by Bassam Fotouh.

It was one of my hardest science communication missions. I called it "King Tutankhamun's burial chamber" where the royal family is debating in the room of death. But in the same time, it's a talk in the field of Medicine; mainly about death and its causes, moreover, it touches various thorny topics such as dead revival, inbreeding and the resulting genetic problems, the truth about royal blood, and many more.

I was trying to disrupt the peace of both the royal family and the talk's audience, making them always and continuously asking from the very beginning tell the last moment of the play, who the culprit is.

It took us more than two months of preparations and work between writing scripts, editing the scientific content and attending lots of rehearsals, presentation skills & acting pieces of training. I was a content creator and in the same time I was on a mission to communicate science to the public.

The chamber's show has been presented more than 25 times over the 4 festival days with an audience, for its only, exceeding 500 people and a constellation of leading scientists and dignitaries like Sir Magdi Yacoub.

The audience liked the show as science and, also, as a drama; for me, this was the success... the result of the quality of the idea and consistent hard work to show it as the best possible.

It was a real pleasure and honour to work in the Festival team. Thanks, Zewail City, for such an experience!