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King Tutankhamun (or Tutankhamen) ruled Egypt as pharaoh for 10 years until his death at age 19, around 1324 B.C. Although his rule was notable for reversing the tumultuous religious reforms of his father, Pharaoh Akhenaten, Tutankhamun’s legacy was largely negated by his successors. He was barely known to the modern world until 1922, when British archaeologist Howard Carter chiseled through a doorway and entered the boy pharaoh’s tomb, which had remained sealed for more than 3,200 years. The tomb’s vast hoard of artifacts and treasure, intended to accompany the king into the afterlife, revealed an incredible amount about royal life in ancient Egypt, and quickly made King Tut the world’s most famous pharaoh.
King Tut: Royal Lineage
Genetic testing has verified that King Tut was the grandson of the great pharaoh Amenhotep II, and almost certainly the son of Akhenaten, a controversial figure in the history of the 18th dynasty of Egypt’s New Kingdom (c.1550-1295 B.C.). Akhenaten upended a centuries-old religious system to favor worship of a single deity, the sun god Aten, and moved Egypt’s religious capital from Thebes to Amarna. After Akhenaten’s death, two intervening pharaohs briefly reigned before the 9-year-old prince, then called Tutankhaten, took the throne.
Did you know? Carter’s patron, Lord Carnarvon, died four months after first entering the tomb, leading journalists to popularize a “Curse of the Pharaohs,” claiming that hieroglyphs on the tomb walls promised swift death to those who disturbed King Tut. More than a dozen deaths have been attributed to the curse, but studies have shown that those who entered the tomb on average lived just as long as their peers who didn’t enter.
Tutankhamun reversed Akhenaten’s reforms early in his reign, reviving worship of the god Amun, restoring Thebes as a religious center and changing the end of his name to reflect royal allegiance to the creator god Amun. He also worked in concert with his powerful advisers Horemheb and Ay—both future pharaohs—to restore Egypt’s stature in the region.
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