King Tut
Original name TUTANKHATEN (fl. 14th century
BC), king of Egypt (reigned 1333-23 BC), known chiefly for his
intact tomb discovered in 1922. During his reign, powerful advisers
restored the traditional religion and art style after the death of
Akhenaton, who had led the "Amarna revolution."
Medical analysis of his mummy shows that
Tutankhaten was probably a brother of Smenkhkare, his immediate
predecessor, and son-in-law of the great King Akhenaton, with whom
Smenkhkare was coregent. As suggested by a docket from Tell el-Amarna
(Akhenaton's capital Akhetaton) and other circumstantial evidence,
young Tutankhaten probably became king after the deaths of Akhenaton
and his coregent. Seals from Tell el-Amarna suggest that Tutankhaten
resided there during his first year or two. He was married to
Akhenaton's third daughter, probably the eldest surviving princess of
the royal family, to solidify his claim to the throne. Because at his
accession he was still young, his vizier and regent, Ay, who had ties
with the royal family, and the general of the armies, Horemheb, became
his chief advisers.
Under their tutelage, Tutankhaten moved his
residence to Memphis, the administrative capital, near modern Cairo,
and restored his father's Theban palace. He also changed his name, at
the latest by the fourth year of his reign, to Tutankhamen and issued a
decree restoring the temples, images, personnel, and privileges of the
old gods and also admitting the errors of Akhenaton's course. In spite
of these capitulations to the Amon priesthood, no proscription or
persecution of Aten, Akhenaton's god, was undertaken. Royal vineyards
(up to the king's death) and elements of the army still remained named
after the Aten.
During his ninth year, perhaps under
Horemheb, the Egyptians marched into Syria to assist Egypt's old
ally, the Mitannian kingdom of northern Syria, which was embroiled in
hostilities with vassals of the Hittites. As reinforcements sent by the
Hittite king hastened to aid his vassals, Tutankhamen unexpectedly
died, aged about 18 years. Because none of his children survived, Ay
succeeded him, perhaps marrying his widow.
Some time after his death, Tutankhamen's
tomb in western Thebes (not his original, which Ay had appropriated for
himself) was entered twice by plunderers who, however, were caught
after doing only minor damage. The burial chamber was not entered and
remained intact until it was discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter, the
English Egyptologist who excavated the tomb. When in the 19th dynasty
the "Amarna kings"--Akhenaton, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamen, and Ay--were
stricken from the royal lists and publicly condemned, the location of
Tutankhamen's tomb was forgotten, and his relatively few monuments were
usurped, chiefly by his former general, Horemheb, who later became
pharaoh. In the 20th dynasty, when the tomb of Ramses VI was cut
immediately above that of Tutankhamen, the stone rubble dumped down the
side of the valley covered the young king's tomb with a deep layer of
chips. The workers of the 20th dynasty came close to Tutankhamen's tomb
and clearly had no knowledge of it. The tomb escaped the great series
of robberies at the end of the 20th dynasty and was preserved until a
systematic search of the Valley of the Kings revealed its
location.
Inside his small tomb, the king's mummy lay
within a nest of three coffins, the innermost of solid gold, the two
outer ones of gold hammered over wooden frames. On the king's head was
a magnificent golden portrait mask, and numerous pieces of jewelry and
amulets lay upon the mummy and in its wrappings. The coffins and stone
sarcophagus were surrounded by four shrines of hammered gold over wood,
covered with texts, which practically filled the burial chamber. The
other rooms were crammed with furniture, statuary, clothes, a chariot,
weapons, staffs, and numerous other objects. But for his tomb,
Tutankhamen had little claim to fame; as it is, he is perhaps better
known than any of his longer lived and better documented predecessors
and successors.
Books on the subject include Howard
Carter's The Tomb of Tutankhamun (1923-33) and Christiane
Desroches-Noblecourt's Tutankhamen (1963). In 1977, in
connection with a traveling exhibition of objects from the tomb,
Tutankhamun: The Tomb and its Treasures, with text by I.E.S.
Edwards and photographs by Lee Boltin and Harry Burton, was published.