A wooden bust of Tutankhamun, 1345-1327 BCE, found in the pharaoh's tomb. (Cairo Museum, Egypt)
Tutankhamun (also known as Tutankhamen and `King Tut', r. c.1336-c.1327 BCE) is the most famous and instantly recognizable Pharaoh in the modern world. His golden sarcophagus is now a symbol almost synonymous with Egypt. His name means `living image of [the god] Amun'.
He was born in the year 11 of the reign of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (better known as Akhenaten, r. 1353-1336 BCE) c. 1345 BCE and died, some claim mysteriously, in c.1327 BCE at the age of 17 or 18. He became the celebrity pharaoh he is today in 1922 when the archaeologist Howard Carter discovered his almost-intact tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
While it was initially thought that Tutankhamun was a minor ruler, whose reign was of little consequence, opinion has changed as further evidence has come to light. Today Tutankhamun is recognized as an important pharaoh who returned order to a land left in chaos by his father's political-religious reforms and who would no doubt have made further impressive contributions to Egypt's history if not for his early death.
Tutankhamun's father was Amenhotep IV of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt whose wife, Nefertiti, is as equally famous and recognizable as her step-son. Tutankhamun's mother is thought to have been the Lady Kiya, one of Amenhotep's lesser wives, and was not Nefertiti (though this is a common misconception). It has also been suggested that Tutankhamun was the son of Amenhotep III (r.c. 1386-1353 BCE) and his queen Tiye (l. 1398-1338 BCE) but most scholars reject this theory. His mother is not mentioned in any inscriptions and so her identity is unknown. Egyptologist Zahi Hawass has noted that most scholars believe Kiya was Tutankhamun's mother "but the balance of opinion may yet change" (49).
Amenhotep III ruled over a land whose priesthood, centered on the god Amun, had been steadily growing in power for centuries. By the time Amenhotep IV came to power, the priests of Amun were on almost equal standing with the royal house in terms of wealth and influence. In either the 9th or the 5th year of his reign, Amenhotep IV outlawed the old religion, closed the temples, and proclaimed himself the living incarnation of a single, all-powerful, deity known as Aten.
He moved his seat of power from the traditional palace at Thebes to one he built at the city he founded, Akhetaten (`The Horizon of Aten', later known as Amarna) and proceeded to concentrate on his new religion, often to the detriment of the people of Egypt. Akhenaten's religious reforms, and their impact during his reign, would also define the later rule of his son.
Tutankhaten came to the throne upon the death of his father in c. 1336 BCE at the age of eight or nine. Miniature symbols of royalty (such as the crook and flail, royal staff) were found in his tomb and it seems likely he played with these as a young child as he was being groomed for future rule. Hawass writes, "A number of these [items] were inscribed with his birth name, demonstrating that he was crowned as Tutankhaten" (51).
Between the death of Akhenaten and the ascent of Tutankhaten there was an interim pharaoh named Smenkhkare about whom little is known. It has been suggested, however, since Smenkhkare's throne name was identical to that of Akhenaten's coregent, that this pharaoh was Nefertiti who ruled while Akhenaten's health may have been in decline and Tutankhaten was still too young to assume the throne (Hawass, 47).
Nefertiti seems to have assumed the male persona of `Smenkhkare' as ruler in order to avoid the same kinds of problems which arose after the death of the female pharaoh Hatshepsut (r. 1479-1458 BCE) centuries earlier when, in an effort to restore harmony to the land (since females were not supposed to rule) her successor Tuthmosis III (r. 1458-1425 BCE) had her name and memory erased from all public monuments and stele. Smenkhkare died two years into his (her) reign and Tutankhaten was crowned king.
Early in his reign, Tutankhaten either decided for himself (or, more probably was forced) to return Egypt to the old religious practices which his father had outlawed and suppressed.
The ideal of ma'at, universal harmony, was the most important spiritual concept in ancient Egypt. It was believed that the land of Egypt was a mirror image of the celestial land and individuals had a responsibility to behave in a certain way on earth to keep balance with the higher realm. By abandoning the old gods and the ancient practices, Akhenaten would have upset this balance and destroyed the harmony between the people and their gods.
When the people were forced to abandon their gods, it was thought, the gods abandoned the people. Tutankhamun's reforms, then, would have had an immense impact on the people of Egypt with his restoration of universal harmony. The temples were rebuilt and the priests who had hidden the iconography and texts relating to the old religion brought them back to their rightful places.
With balance restored, Tutankhamun turned his attention to rule and to those activities befitting a king such as horseback riding, hunting, training in military skills, and enjoying leisure time with his young wife (Hawass, 54). The historian Barbara Watterson writes, "He was said to be a king who `spent his life making images of the gods', and it was during his reign that work on the colonnade in Luxor Temple with its superb scenes of the Opet Festival, was undertaken" . Tutankhamun also officiated at the Opet Festival with his queen and commissioned his treasurer to carry out a fiscal inspection of all the temples of the land. The palace at Thebes which he shared with Ankhsenamun:
...would have been built of mud brick and beautifully painted. It would have consisted of many large rooms and columned halls surrounded by smaller suites of rooms. The largest of these would have contained a series of larger halls leading to a throne room. These would have been decorated with lively scenes of birds and natural motifs. There would have been gardens and pools, all designed to soothe and delight the royal eyes and ears. (Hawass)
Even though balance had been restored and temples and palaces rebuilt, Egypt was still recovering from the disorder Akhenaten had plunged the country into. Hawass writes, "By the reign of Tutankhamun the situation in the Near East had changed drastically since the golden days of the Egyptian empire" (56). The army, whose training and equipping had been neglected by Akhenaten, was no longer the effectual fighting force it had been under the reign of Tutankhamun's grandfather Amenhotep III. The commander of the army, Horemheb (r. 1320-1292 BCE), who was held in high regard as one of Tutankhamun's chief advisors, was repeatedly unsuccessful in his campaigns against the Hittites. Egypt failed to regain Kadesh and also lost a number of other vassal states.
The Hittites grew more powerful as Tutankhamun struggled to restore Egypt to its former glory and, no longer having to fear intervention from the Egyptian military, the Hittites destroyed the kingdom of the Mitanni, who had formerly been an ally of Egypt. It should be kept in mind that Tutankhamun, at this time, was around the age of 16 and was tasked with the enormous responsibility of revitalizing the country his father had single-handedly devastated.
Even with the help of the elder counselors who surrounded him, the teen-age king must have found his position daunting but, still, he seems to have done his best to redeem the country's present from its recent past. What he might have accomplished in a longer reign will never be known as he died before reaching the age of twenty.
The death of the young king has been called `mysterious' for centuries but there really is no mystery involved. Many people died young in the ancient world just as many do in the present day. The damage to Tutankhamun's skull, which early historians cited as proof that he was murdered, has come to be understood as the work of the embalmers who removed the brain. The injuries to the body of the skeleton are the result of its removal from the sarcophagus during the 1922 excavation when the head was removed from the body and the skeleton was violently pried loose because it was stuck to the bottom of the sarcophagus with resin.
It has also been speculated that Tutankhamun died of an untreated abscessed tooth or infection from a broken leg but these theories have also been disproved. Another theory is that Tutankhamun was the product of an incestuous union and so was simply not genetically disposed to a long life. Historians who support this theory point to the two children of Tutankhamun and Ankhsenamun who were both stillborn (their mummies were buried with their father and discovered in his tomb) as physical evidence of the incestuous practices of Egyptian royalty of the 18th dynasty. Whether Akhenaten and Kiya were related, however, is not known and so this theory also cannot be confirmed. All that is clearly known is that Tutankhamun died in January of 1327 BCE and that his death was unexpected as evidenced by the hasty construction of his tomb.
The tomb was broken into twice during the reign of Ay and resealed and then, because Horemheb had erased Tutankhamun's name from the records and it had become buried, the tomb was overlooked by grave robbers and remained intact until its discovery in the 20th century. Hawass writes, "By effectively wiping the name of Tutankhamun from the annals of the pharaohs, Horemheb actually succeeded in insuring that the name of the golden king would resound through the corridors of time"
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Tutankhamun - Timeline
1353 BCE - c. 1336 BCE
Reign of Akhenaten, Tutankhamun's father, 'Heretic King' of Egypt.c. 1345 BCE - 1327 BCE
Life of Tutankhamun.c. 1336 BCE
Tutankhamun marries Ankhsenamun, his half-sister.c. 1336 BCE - c. 1327 BCE
Reign of Tutankhamun with Ankhsenamun as queen.c. 1334 BCE
Tutankhamun initiates religious reforms returning Egypt to traditional belief structure.c. 1334 BCE
Tutankhamun moves capital from city of Akhetaten back to Thebes, re-instates Cult of Amun at Thebes.1327 BCE
Tutankhamun's Advisor Ay succeeds him.1327 BCE - 1323 BCE
Reign of Ay in Egypt.Jan 1327 BCE
Tutankhamun dies at age 18.c. 1320 BCE
Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Horemheb, succeeds Ay as ruler of Egyptc. 1320 BCE - 1292 BCE
Reign of Horemheb in Egypt, Tutankhamun's name erased from record.
Scene from the north wall of the burial chamber - in which Tutankhamun followed by his ka (an aspect of his soul) embraces the god Osiris.
Tutankhamun's tomb was provided with vast quantities of wealth such as the Mask of Tutankhamun.
