# The Trumpets of Tutankhamun > Unknown royal metalworkers, workshop of Tutankhamun's reign - c. 1336-1327 BC > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/royal-workshop-tutankhamun/tutankhamun-trumpets-egyptian-museum/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-28 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unknown royal metalworkers, workshop of Tutankhamun's reign - **Date:** c. 1336-1327 BC - **Medium:** Silver trumpet: sheet silver with a wooden internal core. Bronze trumpet: rolled sheet copper alloy body with a bell of an electrum-like gold alloy, riveted at the mouthpiece ring, with a wooden internal core. - **Dimensions:** Silver trumpet: length 57.2 cm (22.5 in). Bronze trumpet: length approximately 49.6 cm (19.5 in), about 7.6 cm shorter than the silver trumpet. Both instruments taper from a bore of about 1.3 cm at the mouth end, widening to about 2.5 cm, before flaring to a bell diameter of about 10.2 cm. - **Object type:** Musical instrument - **Period:** Egyptian, New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty - **Current location:** Grand Egyptian Museum, Giza - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary Two small straight trumpets, one silver and one bronze or copper with a gilded bell, were found in Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922-1923 and are the only trumpets to survive from ancient Egypt. On 16 April 1939 the silver trumpet was played live on BBC radio to an estimated 150 million listeners, five months before the outbreak of the Second World War, a coincidence that has followed the instruments ever since as a reported omen rather than a documented fact.The silver trumpet cracked during rehearsal for that broadcast and was played on air only after emergency repair. A single, disputed claim by a museum curator in 2011 extended the omen story backward to 1967 and 1990, though no independent record of either playing has been found. What is documented is that the bronze trumpet was stolen during the 2011 revolution and recovered weeks later, and that conservators now regard playing either instrument again as too dangerous to the fragile 3,000-year-old metal to attempt.Both trumpets have moved with the rest of Tutankhamun's grave goods from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo to the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza, which opened in November 2025, where they are held in a humidity- and temperature-controlled case together with the original painted wooden cores that once lined their tubes. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1336-1327 BC-1922** Sealed inside the tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62), Valley of the Kings `[documented]` (origin and burial) Both trumpets were placed in the tomb at the time of Tutankhamun's burial and remained sealed and undisturbed, along with the rest of the grave goods, until Howard Carter's excavation team opened the tomb in November 1922. - **1922-1924** Excavated by Howard Carter's team, on behalf of the Egyptian government `[documented]` (excavation) Bronze trumpet (Carter no. 050gg) found in the Antechamber in the first season, 1922-1923. Silver trumpet (Carter no. 175) found in the Burial Chamber in the second season, 1923-1924. Both were photographed in situ and in the excavation laboratory by Harry Burton and recorded on Carter's object cards, now held by the Griffith Institute, Oxford. - **1924-2025** Egyptian Museum, Cairo (Egyptian state collection) `[documented]` (accession and display) Both trumpets entered the Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square as JE 62007 (silver) and JE 62008 (bronze) and remained there, with one significant interruption, until the collection began transferring to the Grand Egyptian Museum. On 28 January 2011, during the Egyptian revolution, the bronze trumpet and its wooden core were among roughly eighteen objects stolen from the Tutankhamun galleries; it was recovered some weeks later, found in a bag left at a Cairo metro station, and returned to the museum. - **2025-present** Grand Egyptian Museum, Giza (Egyptian state collection) `[documented]` (transfer) Both trumpets moved to the Grand Egyptian Museum as part of the transfer of Tutankhamun's tomb assemblage to the new museum, which opened to the public in November 2025. As of the CNN report of 10 August 2026, both are held in a single climate-controlled case, together with their original wooden cores, maintained between 18 and 22 degrees Celsius. ## Open questions - Was it James Tappern himself, or an unnamed bandsman before him, who fitted the modern mouthpiece and fractured the silver trumpet during the 1939 rehearsal? Press accounts of the incident disagree. - Did the trumpets sound again in 1967 and 1990-91, as a single 2011 curator's account to Al-Ahram claims? No independent record of either event has been found. - What was the wooden internal core actually for: a structural liner supporting the fragile metal tube, or a mute a player inserted and withdrew to modulate tone? Sources describe both functions without reconciling them. - Why does the Griffith Institute's own archival caption for the bronze trumpet read 'Trumpet (called mace)'? No source consulted explains the earlier identification or when it changed. - Why was the silver trumpet's bell re-engraved with the royal cartouche-and-deity panel over a partly erased lotus motif? No source explains whether this reflects a change of plan during manufacture or a later re-decoration. - Is the claim that each of the three deities on the bell corresponds to a specific army division a documented ancient practice or a modern scholarly inference? The sources surveyed present it as an argument, not as an inscribed fact. ## Sources - [1] Wikipedia, 'Tutankhamun's trumpets'. Tertiary source consolidating the Carter numbers, dimensions, construction, decoration and the 1939 broadcast narrative; flagged for replacement with Lise Manniche, Musical Instruments From the Tomb of Tut'ankhamun (Griffith Institute, Tutankhamun's Tomb Series VI, 1976) and Jeremy Montagu, 'One of Tut'ankhamun's Trumpets', Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 64 (1978), 133-134. - [2] Griffith Institute, Tutankhamun Spatial Archive, object record 175 (silver trumpet): findspot, Carter number, JE number, exhibition number and excavation season, citing Howard Carter, The Tomb of Tut.ankh.Amen, vol. 2 (1927), pp. 19, 30-31, pl. ii. - [3] Griffith Institute, Tutankhamun Spatial Archive, object record 50.gg (bronze trumpet): findspot, Carter number, JE number, exhibition number, Grand Egyptian Museum number and excavation season. - [4] Sheena McKenzie, CNN Style (CNN Newsource), 'The Egyptian trumpets that lay silent for over 3,000 years', 10 August 2026, quoting Salima Ikram and Grand Egyptian Museum curator Jasmien Abdalraouf. - [5] Egypt Museum, 'Trumpets of Tutankhamun'. - [6] 4barsrest.com, 'The Pharaoh's Curse? The tale of Tutankhamun's trumpets...' (2020), on James Tappern, Rex Keating and the 1939 broadcast. - [7] Museum of World Treasures, 'The Curse of Tut's Trumpets'. - [8] Ancient Origins, 'Instruments of Mass Destruction: Do Tutankhamun's Trumpets Really Summon War?'. - [9] Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram Online, 'Missing artifacts from the Egyptian Museum retrieved', 12 April 2011, quoting curator Hala Hassan on the trumpet's reported 'magical powers' and the 1967, 1990-91 and 2011 claims; consulted via Wikipedia's citation of this report and corroborating secondary coverage, original article not independently located for direct verification. - [10] Douglas Yeo, 'The Tutankhamun trumpets', The Last Trombone (blog), 13 February 2026, with its own bibliography of Hickmann (1946), Manniche (1976), Montagu (1978, 2007), Reeves (1990), Hawass and Vannini (2007) and Wilkinson (2023), none of which were independently consulted for this record. - [11] worldinstruments.org, 'Tutankhamun's Trumpets: The Oldest Operational Trumpets in the World'. - [12] Classic FM, 'Tutankhamun's "cursed" trumpet that stirs "deadly conflict" has arrived in London', 6 November 2019, on the 2019-2020 Saatchi Gallery exhibition. - [13] Wikimedia Commons, File:Silver trumpet from Tutankhamun's tomb.jpg, extmetadata confirming Public Domain licence and Harry Burton attribution. - [14] Wikimedia Commons, File:Tutankhamun's bronze trumpet.jpg, extmetadata confirming Public Domain licence and Harry Burton attribution. - [15] Wikimedia Commons, File:Trompette d'argent et sa sourdine en bois du tombeau de Toutankhamon.jpg and its companion '2.jpg', extmetadata confirming CC BY-SA 4.0 licence, photographer Suaudeau, and description of the wooden core as a mute used to modulate the trumpet's sound. - [16] Academia.edu abstract, 'The painted trumpets in the Kazanlak tomb: parallels with Tutankhamun's trumpets, instrumental and performance hypotheses', consulted for the Kazanlak comparandum in related_works. - [17] Margaret Maitland, 'Ghost Music: further thoughts on the trumpets of Tutankhamun', The Eloquent Peasant (blog), 2 May 2011. Maitland, an Egyptologist who worked on the BBC Radio 4 documentary Ghost Music, is the direct source for the claim that the king's figure joins the three gods on the bronze trumpet's panel only (not the silver), and that the silver trumpet's panel was engraved over a partly-erased earlier lotus-flower design; she also quotes Howard Carter's own 1927 description of the silver trumpet's decoration. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.