Tutankhamun: The Boy King and His Tomb (c. 1332 BC)

Tutankhamun was a pharaoh of Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty who came to the throne as a boy in about 1332 BC and died about nine years later, aged around 18 or 19. His short reign saw Egypt abandon Akhenaten’s religion of the sun disc and return to its traditional gods. He was a minor ruler in his own time, but the discovery of his nearly intact tomb in the Valley of the Kings by Howard Carter in 1922 made him the most famous of all pharaohs.

Family and background

Tutankhamun was born around 1342 BC with the name Tutankhaten, “living image of the Aten”, during the reign of Akhenaten. His parentage was long debated. DNA analysis published in 2010 indicated that his father was the man buried in tomb KV55, very probably Akhenaten, and that his mother was the so-called “Younger Lady” from tomb KV35, a full sister of his father. If this is right, Tutankhamun was the grandson of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye, and not a son of Nefertiti.

He grew up in the capital Akhetaten (Amarna), at the height of a religious revolution in which Akhenaten promoted the exclusive worship of the Aten and closed down the temples of other gods. That movement is described in Akhenaten and the Amarna Revolution.

After Akhenaten’s death in about 1336 BC, one or two short-lived rulers held power, among them a figure called Smenkhkare and a female king named Neferneferuaten. Their identities are still disputed. By about 1332 BC the young Tutankhaten was king, married to his half-sister Ankhesenpaaten, a daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti.

Reign and restoration

Because the king was a child, real power lay with senior officials. The most important were Ay, an elderly courtier of the Amarna court, and Horemheb, commander of the army. Within the first years of the reign the king changed his name to Tutankhamun, “living image of Amun”, and his queen became Ankhesenamun. The court left Amarna and returned to the traditional centres of Memphis and Thebes.

The policy is set out on the Restoration Stela, set up at Karnak. Its text describes temples that had fallen into ruin and gods who had turned away from Egypt, and announces that the king has restored their cult statues, priesthoods and revenues. Work resumed at Karnak and at Luxor Temple, where reliefs of the Opet festival procession were carved in his name.

Foreign affairs are less clear. Reliefs from Horemheb’s private tomb at Saqqara and from Thebes show campaigns in Nubia and Syria-Palestine during the reign, and Egypt faced the rising power of the Hittite kingdom in Syria. Whether the king personally fought is uncertain.

Death and burial

Tutankhamun died in about 1323 BC, probably in his late teens. The cause of death remains unknown. An X-ray study in 1968 showed bone fragments inside the skull, which encouraged theories of murder, but CT scans in 2005 showed that the fragments were most likely caused during mummification or by Carter’s team. The scans did reveal a fracture of the left thigh bone that may have occurred shortly before death.

DNA work published in 2010 detected the malaria parasite and identified bone disease in the left foot. The 130 or so walking sticks found in the tomb may reflect difficulty walking, though sticks were also standard symbols of status. Most specialists today think a combination of infection and injury is the likeliest explanation.

The king was buried in a small tomb now numbered KV62 in the Valley of the Kings, probably not originally intended for a king. His successor Ay appears on the burial chamber wall performing the “opening of the mouth” ritual for the dead pharaoh, a duty normally carried out by the heir. Two mummified foetuses, probably daughters of Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun, were buried with him.

What happened next is unclear. A Hittite text records an Egyptian queen, widely identified as Ankhesenamun, asking for a Hittite prince to marry, an episode explored in the Dakhamunzu affair. The throne passed to Ay and then to Horemheb, who erased Tutankhamun’s name from many of his monuments. Later king lists omitted the Amarna rulers entirely.

Discovery of the tomb

The tomb was entered by robbers soon after the burial, at least twice, but it was resealed by officials. Within about two centuries its entrance was buried under debris and workmen’s huts when the nearby tomb of Ramesses VI was cut, and it was forgotten.

Howard Carter, a British archaeologist, had searched the valley for years with funding from George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon. On 4 November 1922 his workers uncovered a step cut into the rock. Carter covered it again and waited for Carnarvon to arrive from England. On 26 November, peering through a hole in the second sealed doorway by candlelight, Carter saw the crowded antechamber. Asked if he could see anything, he later wrote that he replied, “Yes, wonderful things.”

The sealed burial chamber was officially opened on 17 February 1923. Inside stood four gilded wooden shrines, nested one inside the other, around a stone sarcophagus. The sarcophagus lid was raised in February 1924, but a dispute between Carter and the Egyptian antiquities service halted work for most of that year.

The three nested coffins were opened in 1925. The innermost, of solid gold, weighs about 110 kg. Inside lay the mummy wearing the gold mask, which weighs about 10 kg and is inlaid with lapis lazuli, quartz, obsidian and coloured glass. The anatomist Douglas Derry began examining the mummy on 11 November 1925. Clearing and recording all the objects took until 1932.

The treasures

The tomb held more than 5,000 objects. Among them were chariots, beds, chairs and a gilded throne showing the king with Ankhesenamun, weapons and bows, clothing, jewellery, board games, model boats, shabti figures to serve the king in the afterlife, and food and wine jars labelled with vintages.

Particularly famous items include the canopic shrine guarded by four goddesses, the iron dagger with a gold handle, whose blade research published in 2016 showed was made from meteoritic iron, and the gold mask itself.

Myths and facts

Myth: The tomb carried a curse. Lord Carnarvon died in Cairo on 5 April 1923 from blood poisoning linked to an infected mosquito bite. Newspapers spread stories of a “pharaoh’s curse”, but no such curse was inscribed in the tomb. A later study of those present at the opening found no unusual pattern of early death.

Myth: Tutankhamun was murdered. The skull damage once cited as proof is now attributed to embalming or later handling. There is no reliable evidence of murder.

Myth: Tutankhamun was a great king. His reign was short and he had little personal authority. His tomb is famous because it survived, not because he was among Egypt’s most important rulers.

Legacy

The discovery came at a moment when newspapers, photography and cinema could carry it around the world. Carnarvon sold exclusive reporting rights to The Times of London, and the expedition photographer Harry Burton made a systematic photographic record of every stage of the clearance. Images of the gold mask and the crowded antechamber shaped popular ideas of ancient Egypt for generations.

A wave of “Tutmania” followed in the 1920s, influencing fashion, jewellery, architecture and Art Deco design. Later touring exhibitions drew enormous crowds: the 1972 Treasures of Tutankhamun show at the British Museum in London attracted more than 1.6 million visitors, and a tour of the United States from 1976 to 1979 was seen by millions more.

The excavation also had political weight. It took place in the same year that Britain recognised Egypt’s nominal independence, and the Egyptian government insisted that the treasures stay in Egypt instead of being divided with the excavators, as earlier finds often had been. That decision became an important step in Egypt’s control over its own heritage.

By the numbers

Timeline

• c. 1342 BC: Tutankhaten is born, probably at Amarna.
• c. 1332 BC: He becomes king and soon changes his name to Tutankhamun.
• c. 1323 BC: Tutankhamun dies and is buried in tomb KV62.
• 1922, 4 November: Howard Carter’s workers find the first step of the tomb.
• 1922, 26 November: Carter and Carnarvon look into the antechamber.
• 1923, 17 February: Official opening of the burial chamber.
• 1923, 5 April: Lord Carnarvon dies in Cairo.
• 1925, 11 November: Scientific examination of the mummy begins.
• 1932: Clearance of the tomb is completed.
• 2010: DNA and CT study of the royal family is published.

Why it matters

Tutankhamun’s reign marked the end of Egypt’s experiment with the Aten and the return to its ancient religion. His tomb, the only royal burial in the Valley of the Kings found nearly intact, revealed the splendour of New Kingdom royal burials and sparked a worldwide fascination with ancient Egypt that continues today.