Tutankhamun - The Boy Pharaoh Documentary

The man known to history as Tutankhamun was born in the middle of the 14th century BC, during the 18th dynasty of ancient Egypt. Although we cannot be sure of his exact date or even year of birth, it is generally agreed that it occurred sometime in the late 1340s BC. Tutankhamun's parentage is disputed, though his father was most probably Akhenaten, who ruled Egypt as Amenhotep IV before he established a monotheistic religion known as Atenism, focused on the worship of the sun disc Aten, beginning about five years before Tutankhamun was born. Around the same time, he changed his name to Akhenaten. Akhenaten had at least six daughters with his great royal wife, Queen Nefertiti. It is possible that she was also Tutankhamun's mother. Alternatively, his mother may have been a wife of Akhenaten's, known only as the Younger Lady. At the time of his birth, Tutankhamun was given the name Tutankhaten, or the living image of Aten in honor of the sun god. Despite being one of the best-known pharaohs or kings of ancient Egypt, as a result of the discovery of his tomb and famous death mask by Howard Carter in 1922, details of Tutankhamun's short life and reign are still being pieced together by archaeologists and Egyptologists, using artifacts from his tomb and other evidence. He is likely to have been born in Amarna, the modern-day name of Akhetaten, the short-lived capital city founded by his father on the eastern bank of the River Nile, around 200 miles to the of Egypt's modern-day capital of Cairo. The young Egyptian prince was born with a club foot on his left leg, forcing him to use a walking stick throughout his life. He was brought up by his wet nurse, a woman named Maya from his father's harem. Among the artifacts found in Tutankhamun's tomb are toys he owned and played with as a child, including an ivory monkey with moving arms and a small wooden bird. At around the age of four, he learned how to write, starting with the cursive hieratic script, used on a daily basis before moving on to the formal and sacred hieroglyphs found on ancient Egyptian monuments. Tutankhamun learned to write by copying out ancient texts, which also offered political wisdom for kings and princes preparing for kingship. He would also have studied administration, geography, history, diplomacy, and religion, as well as the theory and practice of warfare, which included chariot riding and archery. Tutankhamun grew up during a revolutionary period in Egyptian history, driven by his father's religious changes. The traditional Egyptian polytheistic belief system involved the worship of many different gods, amongst whom the creator god Amun and the sun god Ra were most prominent. However, Akhenaten had introduced the cult of Aten, a sun god, depicted as a golden disc with rays of light radiating downwards in a fan. While Akhenaten allowed his subjects to continue worshipping the traditional gods, only stipulating that Aten was the supreme god, by the ninth year of his reign, a few years before Tutankhaten's birth, Aten was increasingly portrayed as the preeminent deity. Under the new religion, the Aten was regarded as the creator of the world and everything within it, and each morning at sunrise the king would make offerings to the Aten at the temples he built in his capital. Akhenaten identified as the son of Aten and served as the priest of his cult, and it is possible that Tutankhaten received his religious instruction directly from his father. During his travels with his tutors across the country, the prince may have seen the names of the old gods being removed from the monuments, even while many people continued to worship them. The boy may also have noticed the different artistic styles in the old in Akhenaten. Around the fourteenth year of Akhenaten's reign, when Tutankhaten was around six years old, the latter's sister or half-sister, Princess Mekhetaten, died at the age of ten. While her cause of death remains unknown, a plague had been spreading throughout the eastern Mediterranean world. In any case, an infectious disease is a likely explanation, as Mekhetaten's youngest sisters Nefernefer and Setepenre also died around this time. Older female members of the family followed, including Tutankhaten's grandmother, Queen Tia, and Akhenaten's secondary wife, Queen Kia. Following these deaths in the royal family, Akhenaten hoped to secure his succession and the continuation of his religious reforms by naming a man named Smenkhare, possibly a relative of his, as his co-regent. This Smenkhare was responsible for the construction of a great hall in Akhenaten's royal palace and was expected to be Akhenaten's successor, but died after a year or two. Akhenaten died around the same time, in what was possibly the seventeenth year of his reign and around 1336 BC. Following Akhenaten's death, the throne possibly passed to Smenkhare for a brief time before his death and then appears to have passed to a king named Nefer-Neferuaten, who may have ruled as co-regent alongside Tutankhaten. The new king is believed to have been a royal woman and may have been the eldest daughter of Meretaten, or more likely his great wife Nefertiti. King Nefer-Neferuaten continued to develop the cult of Aten but was prepared to reintroduce the cult of Amun and the other gods in order to appease the followers of the traditional faith. She abandoned her plans to build a tomb at Akhenaten and instead ordered craftsmen to build a tomb and mortuary temple in the Valley of Kings near Thebes, modern-day Luxor, the traditional capital and royal burial ground for the kings of Egypt in second millennium BC. The Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass theorized that Nefer-Neferuaten also moved her capital to Thebes, but Shaw suggests that she remained in Akhenaten in the palace she shared with her late husband. However, she would only live another two years, leaving the throne to the ten-year-old Tutankhaten. By the time he ascended to the throne, the ten-year-old King Tutankhaten was still a child receiving his education and could not be expected to exercise royal power by himself. He was therefore advised by courtiers and officials much older than him, who had served his father Akhenaten. His most influential advisor was Ai, a relative who may have been the brother of his grandmother, Queen Tai, while a man named Mea controlled the treasury. As for military matters, the young king relied on the advice of General Horemheb, commander of the Egyptian army. Although these men had dutifully promoted Atenism during the previous reigns, the calamities of recent years, including the plague and the deaths of royal family members in quick succession, were interpreted as a sign of divine punishment for neglecting the worship of the old gods. With Akhenaten and Nefertiti gone, Tutankhaten's courtiers now had the opportunity to educate the new pharaoh in the old religion and persuade him to return to the old ways and restore divine favor to the realm. Although the king's advisors wielded considerable power and influence, Tutankhaten would have been required to perform ceremonial tasks and to announce important decisions in person, even as a child ruler. As with all Egyptian pharaohs, he had important religious duties as chief priest of the state religion. As part of the coronation ceremony that marked his assumption of royal authority, the young king was transformed from a human being into a living god. The rituals were conducted according to the old traditions, with offerings made to Amun, his wife, the mother goddess Mut, and their son Khonsu, god of the moon. Priests and priestesses represented gods and goddesses, who placed various crowns upon the king's head, including the red crown of Lower Egypt, the white crown of Upper Egypt, and the blue crown worn by 18th dynasty pharaohs or kings during war and religious ceremonies. The king was then given his crook and flail, symbols of royal power in Egypt. According to Egyptian royal tradition, the pharaoh would have chosen four extra names to reflect his personal qualities and regal majesty. Of these four royal names, only one is known. His throne name, Nebkeperure, meaning Lord of Manifestations, is Ra. While Tutankhaten still used his birth name when he assumed the throne, not long afterward, the Aten in the king's name was replaced with Amun. Thus Tutankhaten became Tutankhamen, the living image of Amun. King Tutankhamen would have been crowned alongside his wife and half-sister, Ankasanamun, one of the daughters of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. The marriage of siblings in this way was commonplace amongst the royals of ancient Egypt. She was a year older than Tutankhamen and the two had already been married when the latter became king. Ankasanamun appears to have been his only queen. The 18th dynasty was known for its powerful queens, and Ankasanamun would have learned about the deeds of her illustrious ancestor Hatshepsut, the female pharaoh who reigned a century and a half earlier and built a grand mortuary temple in the Theban necropolis near the Valley of the Kings. She had also just seen her mother, Nefertiti, rule Egypt as king Nefer-Neferuaten. Accordingly, Ankasanamun was present alongside Tutankhamen throughout his reign for royal ceremonies and audiences, and corresponded with foreign rulers in her own name. Her most important duties included serving as the manifestation of the Egyptian goddesses during religious ceremonies. Of course, as in almost all other monarchies, the queen's main task was to continue the dynastic lineage by bearing the king's children. Ankasanamun was pregnant twice, but on both occasions her daughters were stillborn. Early in his reign, Tutankhamen's advisors persuaded him to move his capital away from Akhataten, with power being returned to the cities of Memphis in northern Egypt near the Nile Delta and Thebes in the south. Memphis had been the capital of the Old Kingdom of Egypt in the 3rd millennium BC, when the Great Pyramids and Sphinx were built on the Giza plateau near the city. Thereafter, Thebes had become the capital. Following the establishment of the 18th Dynasty in the mid-16th century BC, Memphis regained its importance as a political center. While Akhenaten built a temple of Aten in the city, from Memphis and Thebes, Tutankhamen and his advisors embarked on the complete reversal of Akhenaten's religious reforms. The king issued a royal decree, which stated that during the previous reigns, the old gods had been neglected and withdrawn their divine protection. As a result, Egypt was in chaos and its armies had been defeated on the battlefield. The text adds that after Tutankhamen came to the throne and moved his court to Memphis, the old gods were venerated once again and prosperity was restored to the land. The proclamation was inscribed into stone stele in prominent locations around the country, such as the Temple of Karnak in Thebes. Although the text of these restorations stele claimed that all was well once again, in reality, the process of restoration was just beginning. Tutankhamen had been brought up at his father's court in Amarna, surrounded by depictions of Aten on palace walls, and witnessed his father taking part in the elaborate rituals of worshipping the To issue a proclamation discrediting the belief system he grew up with must have been a difficult experience for the young king. The king's closest advisors, Ai, Maya, and Horemheb, had risen to positions of influence during the reign of Akhenaten, and had tombs made for them in Amarna with Atenist inscriptions, but they formed the vanguard of the Ai is believed to have been the power behind the throne. By the end of Tutankhamen's reign, he may have assumed the office of Grand Vizier. Treasury Chief Maya was also responsible for royal construction projects, and it was he who began the work of restoring the temples to the old gods. While Akhenaten had ordered the destruction of images of the old gods, in particular Amun, Tutankhamen ordered his chief sculptor, Ushahat Hatiye, to repair the images or to make new ones from scratch. Meanwhile, Horemheb personally appointed men to fill the priesthoods that had been left vacant during Akhenaten's reign. Interestingly, though the temples of Aten in Amarna were closed, the temple of Aten in Memphis remained open. Around two or three years into Tutankhamen's reign, with the revival of the old religion very much underway, the former capital of Akhenaten was being abandoned by its inhabitants. Taking the bodies of their relatives with them, King Tutankhamen followed suit and decided to exhume the tombs in the royal cemetery to the east of Amarna and transfer their contents to the Valley of the Kings, which had served as the royal necropolis for the pharaohs and their family members from the reign of Thutmose I at the beginning of the 15th century BC, until Akhenaten's move to Amarna. Tutankhamen ordered a new tomb to be created in the Valley of the Kings, in which he placed the body of his father Akhenaten in a coffin, originally intended for Queen Kiya. The body of Tutankhamen's grandmother, Queen Tiya, was buried in the tomb of her husband, King Amenhotep III. As part of his duties as high priest, Tutankhamen travelled across the country to attend religious festivals. As he lacked familiarity with the complex old rituals, he relied on assistance from his chief advisor, Ai. Every year, Tutankhamen would celebrate the Opet festival in Thebes. The ceremony began at the Temple of Karnak, where the king stood before three model boats carrying statues of Amun, Mut and Khonsu, the three gods known collectively as the Theban Triad. After making offerings, the king led a procession to the Nile, followed by the priests carrying the boats on their shoulders. The king, queen and effigies of the three gods would then travel up the river to another temple, while soldiers and courtiers marched along the riverbanks to the sound of religious hymns, sung by priests and accompanied by royal musicians. Once inside the main temple of Thebes, Tutankhamen and his priests would proceed into the Inner Sanctum to re-enact the coronation ceremony and renew the king's divine power. While construction of the Luxor Temple had begun during the reign of his grandfather, Amenhotep III, Tutankhamen carried on building work in the temple and had the colonnade hall, decorated with images of him and Ankasanamun, taking part in the Opet festival. In addition to restoring the images and monuments of the old gods throughout the country, Tutankhamen initiated building projects of his own. Aside from the colonnade hall in the Temple of Luxor, he ordered the construction of a Sphinx avenue at Karnak. Near the pyramids of Giza, Tutankhamen built a small palace for himself, which served as a hunting lodge. In his day-to-day activities, the king was assisted by his palace administration, headed by the high steward of Memphis, Epi, who had formerly managed Akhenaten's palace at Amarna. After Epi's death, his office was assumed by Inuia, who had previously worked as a scribe for Maya at the treasury. As in modern royal households, a team of servants was responsible for the royal crowns and the king's vast wardrobe, which included outfits for every possible occasion. Tutankhamen's kingdom extended beyond the modern-day borders of Egypt. To the south, Egypt ruled Nubia, in what is now Sudan. To the northeast, the Egyptian pharaohs vassalized the rulers of the Levant, the eastern Mediterranean region, including Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria. Many of these conquests were carried out by Thutmose III, the stepson of Hatshepsut, who ruled a century before Tutankhamen and was one of the greatest military commanders in ancient Egyptian history. Accordingly, Tutankhamen held audiences with his vassals and with foreign rulers, during which he would receive expensive gifts. Many of these gifts would have been given to the temple as offerings to the gods, but the king would keep some for himself, which were later found in his tomb. General Horemheb played a vital role in these meetings, transmitting messages between the king and his foreign visitors via an interpreter. As commander in chief of Tutankhamen's armies, Horemheb was also responsible for putting down a Nubian uprising in the 1320s BC. While Horemheb campaigned both in Nubia and in the Levant, it is unclear if the king himself was present at the battles. Although there are depictions of Tutankhamen firing arrows from his chariot, these were most likely idealized images, as the king's youth and disability would have hampered his ability to play an active part in battles. The Nubian territories were administered by a government official with the title of Viceroy of Kush. Tutankhamen appointed as his viceroy a man named Hui, who happened to be married to the chief of the royal harem. Hui supervised the collection of tribute for the king from the Nubians, including vast quantities of gold, ebony, ivory tusks, and other artistic objects. A few years into Tutankhamen's reign, Hui returned to the king's court with the tribute, accompanied by a procession of Nubian princes and prisoners of war, perhaps captured during Horemheb's campaign. After a decade of hardship, the attendees at the ceremony welcomed this sign of a return to prosperity. The old gods had been Memories of the Atenist heresy were gradually fading away, and the abandoned city of Armana had been systematically dismantled, and the remaining traces of it were being covered by the desert sands. The teenage Tutankhamen seemed secure on his throne, and could be expected to exercise power in his own right within a few years. Perhaps a new golden age was imminent after the heresy of the reign of Akhenaten. During Akhenaten's reign, the Egyptians lost control of the Levantine city of Kadesh, on the border of Syria and Lebanon, a major trade hub at the time. The Hittites of eastern Turkey were expanding their empire into the Levant, and captured Kadesh, replacing the Egyptian vassal Shutatara with his son Atekama, who supported the Hittites while publicly maintaining his allegiance to Egypt. Though Akhenaten had sent a military expedition to Kadesh, it failed to retake the city from the Hittites. Late in Tutankhamen's reign, the king sent Horemheb with an army aiming to retake Kadesh and reverse the humiliation suffered during his father's reign. Horemheb's campaign was commemorated in war scenes commissioned by Tutankhamen, but there is no further detail on how the campaign transpired. The city of Kadesh stood in the middle of a meander of the river Orontes, with trees all around, terrain that was unfamiliar to the Egyptians. Although the depictions of the campaign show Horemheb returning to Egypt with Atekama as a prisoner of war, along with Egyptian soldiers successfully storming a fortress, the Egyptians failed to recapture Kadesh, which remained in Hittite hands until the Egyptian king Seti I briefly reconquered the city in the early 13th century BC. Even without achieving the primary aim of taking Kadesh, the Egyptian depictions of the campaign, which could be pure propaganda, show the Egyptian commander parading Hittite prisoners in front of Tutankhamen. The king duly provided Horemheb with rich rewards, before going to the temple of Karnak to deposit a share of the spoils of war for the gods. Some of the prisoners captured by Horemheb may have been executed as a sacrifice to the gods. While Horemheb was away on campaign, Tutankhamen presided over the celebrations of the New Year festival. On the first day of the New Year, Tutankhamen sat on his royal throne as gifts from the royal workshops and foreign dignitaries were laid down in front of his feet. These gifts would be meticulously recorded by scribes, and the king would distribute a selection of them to his courtiers. In the evening, Tutankhamen and Ankasanamen invited their courtiers to a banquet. The guests ate bread, along with duck, ox meat and goose, while the king was given food that had been purified at the temple fit for a god. The New Year celebration was accompanied by large quantities of beer and wine from the royal vineyards. The king and his courtiers may have ended the day's celebration by playing one of the board games that was found in his tomb early in the 20th century. A popular game was senat, played on a board with 30 squares and at least 10 counters. While the rules of the game have been lost and may have evolved over the centuries, the game is likely a variation of the royal game of Ur, the oldest board game in existence, dating to around 3000 BC, where players threw dice or knucklebones and raced their counters to the end of the board. Two of the game sets found in Tutankhamen's tomb were designed for travel and contained small drawers to hold the counters, and the king and queen may have kept themselves entertained with this during their travels across the country. Around the time of the New Year festivities, the Apis bull in Memphis had died. The bull was worshipped as an incarnation of the god Ptah, a creator god whose worship was centred in Memphis. After the death of each bull, the city priests would search for the next incarnation with the same characteristics, a black bull with a white diamond on the top of its head and an eagle pattern on its back. Before the priests could begin their search, Tutankhamen presided over the burial ceremony for the bull at the Serapeum, the burial site for the sacred bulls in the ancient royal necropolis of Saqqara, which may have been founded by Tutankhamen's grandfather Amenhotep III. The king would have hoped that these rituals would bring his army's glory in the Levant. As he shouldered more of the burdens of government in his late teens, Tutankhamen enjoyed the opportunity to relax by going hunting. While the most common hunting weapon was the bow and arrow, the king also hunted birds from a boat using a curved throwstick, much like a boomerang. For close combat, he had his choice of clubs, maces or swords. The young king enjoyed hunting while riding in a chariot, firing arrows from his bow while a charioteer steered the horses. Among the items found in Tutankhamen's tomb is a wooden chest illustrated with hunting scenes, depicting the king in his chariot with his bow drawn, targeting the mass of fleeing animals about to fall prey to his arrows. Yet this taste for hunting would prove fatal. During the ninth year of his reign, Tutankhamen was out hunting when he fell from his chariot. As the king fell to the ground, he broke his left leg and lay bleeding. His servants carried him back to his palace and onto his bed. With Anca Sanaman at his side, the injured king was attended by the royal doctors and the priests of Sekhmet. As the doctors examined the wound, they realized that little could be done to save the king. Nevertheless, they did all they could in the circumstances and wrapped the king's leg in linen soaked in oil and honey to hold the leg in place and stop the bleeding. Despite their best efforts, the king's leg became infected, and within a matter of days, the 19-year-old king Tutankhamen was dead after just nine years on the throne. There would be no long and prosperous reign, and the Egyptian kingdom was in turmoil once again. With the death of her husband, Anca Sanaman appears to have been the remaining survivor from amongst Akhenaten's children, and ruled as regent in the absence of an obvious successor. While it would have been possible for her to follow in her mother's footsteps and rule in her own right, the court decided she should marry a man who would become pharaoh. The pharaohs of the 18th dynasty were accustomed to marrying their own family members, but there were no close relatives left. As Anca Sanaman insisted on marrying a man of royal status, she took the surprising decision of sending a message to the Hittite king, Sapiluleuma I, explaining the situation in Egypt and asking if he could offer a solution in the form of a son, who would marry her and become pharaoh in place of her late husband. When Sapiluleuma received the letter two weeks later, he could hardly believe what he was being offered. He had been fighting the Egyptians in the Levant for decades, and now he had an opportunity to incorporate Egypt into his empire in an instant. Nevertheless, he remained cautious and decided to send an envoy to Egypt to find out if the offer was genuine, or if Tutankhamen was alive and well, and the scheme had been an elaborate Egyptian ruse to cripple Hittite power. Anca Sanaman was not pleased to learn that the Hittite king had not immediately accepted her offer, as she was in something of a race against time. Traditionally, a pharaoh would be buried 70 days after dying, but the late king could not be buried without a successor in place. Without carrying out the necessary rituals for his burial, Tutankhamen's passage to his eternal afterlife would be blocked. With winter approaching, there was no chance that Anca Sanaman would get an answer from the Hittite king within 70 days. Nevertheless, the royal artisans hurried to prepare the items for Tutankhamen's tomb that would help his journey into the afterlife. Egyptian kings typically had their grave goods made far in advance, but Tutankhamen had reigned for only nine years and died unexpectedly when still very young. While for most of his reign, artists and sculptors had been busy restoring the temples of the old gods rather than producing his funerary goods. No matter how fast they worked, the royal artisans could not be expected to make an entire assemblage of grave goods for Tutankhamen within a mere 70 days, but they could repurpose those prepared for Nefer-Neferuaten, which for some reason or other remained unused. The most spectacular object among these items was a golden death mask, which the late king's goldsmiths changed to bear his likeness while replacing the name Nefer-Neferuaten with Tutankhamen. In addition to the items intended for Nefer-Neferuaten, the artisans selected hundreds if not thousands of items either owned by the late king or kept in the palaestorums. Also intended for burial in Tutankhamen's tomb were the mummified remains of his two stillborn daughters in tiny coffins. Although work had started on a tomb for Tutankhamen, it was by no means ready. As Maya and other officials inspected the Valley of the Kings near Thebes for an alternative tomb, they decided to use the one being prepared for Ai, the late king's chief advisor and distant relative. The undecorated tomb was not yet suitable for Tutankhamen and the craftsmen were ordered to excavate a new chamber that would become the king's burial chamber, together with a small room beyond it known as the treasury. The two existing rooms in the tomb would later be known as the antechamber and the annex. After excavating the burial chamber, the royal craftsmen painted the walls, transferring existing designs from papyrus prepared during the Amarna period. In accordance with the traditions of the time, Tutankhamen had the mortuary temple built for him in the Theban necropolis where priests would make offerings to keep his spirit alive in the afterlife. The late king's body was taken nearby to be embalmed, preserving his body as a vessel into which his soul could return to rest. His brain and internal organs were removed, including his heart, which was typically left inside the body. Traditionally, the internal organs would have been placed in canopic jars, but Tutankhamens were placed in a chest, divided into four compartments, protected by the goddesses Isis, Nephthys, Neith and Serket. The king's body was covered with natron, a salt used in the mummification process to dry out the body and stop it from decaying. After 40 days, the natron was removed and the body was wrapped in linen bandages, interspersed with amulets and other pieces of jewelry, while two daggers were placed on his body. The king's hands were crossed in front of his body, holding his crook and flail. On Tutankhamen's head, the embalmers placed Akhenaten's skullcap and the royal diadem between layers of bandages, all covered by the golden death mask, the final and most spectacular item on the mummy. Early the next year, the Hittite envoy was able to return to of Hattusa, in what is now central Turkey, alongside an Egyptian envoy bearing a letter from Ankhesanamun. The queen was outraged that the Hittite king had not believed her, and repeated her offer once again. Sapiluliuma continued to have his suspicions, but was persuaded by both his own envoy and the Egyptian messenger that the offer from the Egyptian queen was genuine. He duly dispatched his fourth son, Prince Zananza, to travel to Egypt to marry Queen Ankhesanamun and become the new pharaoh. When Zananza died en route to Egypt in unclear circumstances, his father accused the Egyptians of murdering him. Upon the death of her prospective husband, Ankhesanamun decided she had no choice other than to marry the elderly Ai, her grand uncle, who became the new king. In his correspondence with his Hittite counterpart, King Ai acknowledged that Zananza was dead, but denied any wrongdoing. Sapiluliuma responded by launching an invasion of Egyptian territories in the Levant, only for the captured Egyptian prisoners to bring the plague, which had been troubling Egypt for many years, to Hattusa, a disease outbreak which killed the Hittite king. With Ai in place as Tutankhamun's successor, the late king's funeral was scheduled for the end of March, seven months after his death, much later than was typical. On the north wall of the burial chamber, the artists hurriedly painted the figure of Ai performing the opening-of-the-mouth ritual on his predecessor's body, a ceremonial act symbolizing rebirth in the afterlife. This ceremony was typically led by the crown prince, strengthening Ai's tenuous claims to Tutankhamun's throne. There was no time to build a wall separating the burial chamber from the antechamber, so only three walls were decorated for the time being. The scenes from Tutankhamun's burial ritual had already been painted on the walls of his burial chamber before the ceremony had taken place. The king's mummified body was presented with food and drink before being placed on a sled and dragged across the sands up the slopes of the Valley of the Kings into the tomb that had been prepared for him. Before the body entered the tomb, Ai performed the opening-of-the-mouth ceremony by gently touching Tutankhamun's lips with an adze, allowing him to speak in the afterlife. With his mummy carried by priests, the late king entered the darkness of his tomb and was placed into three nested coffins inside a red sarcophagus. The innermost coffin was made of solid gold, while the outer two were made of wood and decorated with glass and jewels. After the lids were placed on each of the three nested coffins, they were sealed with resin, but the heavy granite lid of the sarcophagus cracked and had to be repaired. The workmen then discovered the lid could not close properly, as the feet of the outer coffin were too tall and had to be filed down before the sarcophagus could be sealed tight. The workers then put together the wooden panels forming the four shrines that covered the king's body, but in their haste assembled the shrine the wrong way round, swapping east and west and north and south. In the meantime, Tutankhamun's canopic chest was placed in a shrine on the east wall of the treasury with a box containing the remains of Tutankhamun's stillborn daughters placed nearby. At the entrance to the treasury, a shrine containing items used in the king's mummification was guarded by a jackal, representing the god Anubis, the god of funerary rites. After the funeral, the artisans built the fourth wall of the burial chamber, decorating it with a scene of Tutankhamun in the afterlife, in the traditional artistic style. After their work was done, the entrance to the tomb was blocked, covered with plaster and stamped with official seals. Several months later than anticipated, Tutankhamun could begin his journey to the afterlife, where he would be engaged in a daily cosmic battle alongside the gods against the forces of evil that threatened to disrupt the earthly world. Yet the late king's continued existence in the afterlife could only be guaranteed if the priests at his mortuary temple continued to utter his name, and if his tomb and body were to remain undisturbed. After King Ai assumed the throne, Tutankhamun's prospects for an afterlife seemed bleak. Although he had married Ankasanamun to legitimize his authority as pharaoh, Ai quickly elevated his existing wife, Te, as his great royal wife. Ankasanamun was not featured in any of his royal inscriptions, and disappears from the historical record. As far as Tutankhamun's spirit was concerned, worse was to follow, when his tomb was broken into twice within the space of a year. The thieves may have been artisans who had worked on the tomb and knew the layout, and they carried out various small precious items that could not be traced back to the tomb. While the authorities made some attempt to tidy up the ransacked tomb, not everything returned to its original place, and the tomb was simply resealed. Within a year of Tutankhamun's burial, a heavy rainstorm broke out over the Valley of Kings and deposited a meter of rubble over the entrance of the tomb, ensuring that the tomb of Tutankhamun would remain undisturbed for over 3,000 years. After raining for around four years, the elderly King Ai died. His designated successor, General Naktmin, who may have been his son, died shortly before him. Since Ankasanamun was either already dead or in any case out of the picture, the succession was claimed by Horemheb, the highest-ranking courtier. As Tutankhamun had been buried in Ai's intended tomb, Ai chose to take over the tomb in the Western Valley of the Kings, originally intended for Tutankhamun but not finished before his death. Unlike Ai, Horemheb had no royal blood whatsoever, though his great-royal wife, Mudnejmet, may have been Ai's daughter. While he continued his military campaigns against the Nubians and the Hittites, the new king considered it his primary duty to While Horemheb continued Tutankhamun and Ai's work to restore the old religion, he decided to erase the memory of his immediate predecessors, replacing their names on temples and monuments with his own. By doing so, he not only consigned their names to oblivion in the mortal world, but extinguished their spirits in the afterlife. Not only did Horemheb order the desecration of Ai's tomb and the possible destruction of his mummy, he also usurped his predecessor's mortuary temple. He took credit for Tutankhamun and Ai's construction projects at the temples of Luxor and Karnak. All over the country, Horemheb replaced Tutankhamun's imagery with his own. He would undoubtedly have done the same thing to Tutankhamun's tomb, but it was more difficult to access after being buried under rubble. As Horemheb had no surviving children of his own, he named as his successor a senior official named Paramesu. After a reign of around 14 years, Horemheb died and his successor assumed the throne as Ramesses I, the founder of a new 19th dynasty. The second and third pharaohs of the 19th dynasty, Seti I and Ramesses II, the latter of whom is more widely known as Ramesses the Great, were warrior kings who helped to restore much of the prestige lost in the aftermath of the Amarna period. Horemheb's efforts to erase the memory of this period had been so successful that over time memory of King Tutankhamun faded away. In the mid-12th century BC, around 200 years after Tutankhamun's burial, the men working on the tomb of Ramesses VI built their huts directly above the rubble that covered the entrance to Tutankhamun's tomb. Over the course of the following three millennia, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Saladin and Napoleon Bonaparte all conquered Egypt without ever hearing of the existence of the pharaoh named Tutankhamun. It seemed that memory of his reign had been almost entirely lost to history. When Napoleon Bonaparte led his expedition to Egypt in 1798, he was accompanied not only by his officers and men, but also by a large team of scientists to study the artistic legacy of the ancient Egyptians. Egyptian artifacts, including the Rosetta Stone, were brought back to Europe for further examination. In the 1820s, Jean-François Champollion successfully deciphered the hieroglyphic script of the ancient Egyptians using the Rosetta Stone. This initiated the modern study of Ancient Egypt, or Egyptology as it is known. Over the course of the 19th century, Egypt fell under the influence of British and French officials. The European interest in Egypt was partly economic, motivated by a desire to link the Mediterranean and the Red Sea by the Suez Canal, but interest in Egyptian heritage also played a part. Although officially part of the Ottoman Empire, Egypt was effectively ruled by the British from 1882 onwards. Wealthy aristocrats and businessmen from Europe and the United States flocked to Egypt and applied to the Egyptian Antiquities Service for permits to carry out excavations. These wealthy individuals financed the archaeological digs and hired Egyptologists to carry out the work, laying claim to a share of the finds. By the end of the 19th century, archaeological activity was underway at sites throughout Egypt which would have been familiar to Tutankhamun, his father's capital of Akhataten, the ancient capital Memphis, the monumental religious buildings at Thebes, the mortuary temples and tombs of the Theban necropolis, and, most importantly, the Valley of the Kings. The concession to dig in the Valley of the Kings was considered the most prestigious among the archaeologists working in Egypt, who all aspired to be the first to discover an intact royal tomb, as most of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings had been plundered by grave robbers either in antiquity or in more recent times. Between 1905 and 1914, the concession was held by American businessman Theodore Davis. In February 1905, the intact tomb of Yuya and Thuya, the parents of Queen Tia and, accordingly, the great-grandparents of Tutankhamun, had been discovered intact by James Quibell, a British Egyptologist sponsored by Davis. By this point, Tutankhamun's name was known to the archaeologists working in Egypt, as his name appeared on the inscriptions of tombs of officials, but otherwise his life and reign remained a mystery. Over the course of a decade, Davis had financed the discovery of more than ten further tombs in the Valley of the Kings, including a small chamber containing gold foil depicting a king on a chariot bearing the names of Tutankhamun, Ankasanamun and Ai, which Davis identified as the tomb of Tutankhamun. By 1914, Davis gave up his concession and declared that the entire valley had been exhausted. Between 1905 and 1908, Davis had been assisted by Howard Carter, a British archaeologist who had previously worked as an inspector for the antiquities service before his resignation in the summer of 1905, several months after an incident involving Egyptian guards and French tourists caused him to be reassigned. By 1909, following the recommendation of Gaston Maspero, the director of the antiquities service, Carter began his collaboration with George Herbert, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, who began to visit Egypt every year to help his recovery from a car accident. When Davis gave up his concession for the Valley of the Kings, Carter and Carnarvon believed that there were more discoveries to be made in the area and successfully obtained permission to dig. The outbreak of the First World War disrupted their plans, as Carnarvon was unable to travel to Egypt, while Carter worked in Cairo as an intelligence officer and did not have the time to carry out any new excavations. Yet, in his spare time, Carter continued to examine the map of the Valley of the Kings and focused on the central valley, the region where the tombs of Horemheb and the reburied Amarna royals had been discovered by Davis. He was not convinced that Tutankhamen's tomb had already been found and theorized that the king's tomb still awaited discovery. By 1917, Carter was able to begin work to test his theories, but after five years of excavating, nothing of real significance had been found, certainly not any intact royal tomb. By 1922, Lord Carnarvon had lost hope and informed Carter that he was withdrawing his sponsorship. The archaeologist urged his patron to give him one last chance, pointing to the group of workmen's huts near the tomb of Ramesses VI, which had not been cleared to the bedrock. Carter was even prepared to finance an extra season of digging himself, so long as Carnarvon authorized him to carry out the work under his permit. Impressed by Carter's determination, he agreed to sponsor one final season of work. On the 1st of November 1922, Carter's team began to remove the workmen's huts. On the 4th of November, the team stumbled upon a single step, before uncovering a doorway leading to a sealed tomb. Although the tomb did not look like a royal tomb and he could not make out a name, he excitedly sent word to Carnarvon announcing the discovery of a tomb with its seal intact. Carter reburied the steps until Carnarvon's arrival on the 24th of November. The steps and doorway were uncovered to reveal the name of King Tutankhamun. As the excavation continued, Carter could not yet be certain that it was a tomb and not a cache of funerary goods from different kings, and he was disappointed to see signs that the tomb had been broken into before it was resealed. By the 26th of November, the entrance corridor had been cleared. Accompanied by Carnarvon and his daughter, Lady Evelyn Herbert, Carter poked a hole into the antechamber and asked for a candle. As he peered inside, he saw a glittering collection of golden treasures and could hardly believe his eyes. Carnarvon broke the silence and asked Carter if he could see anything, to which the archaeologist replied, The following day, accompanied by an Egyptian official, Carter and Carnarvon became the first people to step inside Tutankhamun's tomb for well over 3,000 years. Carter and Carnarvon found signs that the burial chamber had been broken into, and in order to reassure themselves that the burial was still intact, they are alleged to have broken through the same opening before resealing it. An official opening of the tomb was then held on the 29th of November. The discovery was reported in the Times of London the following morning. As the man who discovered an intact royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings, Carter knew he had a great responsibility. He installed a steel gate at the tomb's entrance to bolster security, and he decided to document each item from the tomb in its original location and after it had been taken for examination. In this work, he was assisted by the chemist Alfred Lucas and the photographer Harry Burton, while a nearby tomb was commandeered to serve as a laboratory for the conservation and documentation of the artifacts. By the 16th of February 1923, the antechamber had been emptied of its contents and work could begin on the burial chamber. A number of factors hindered the work on Tutankhamun's tomb, including the attention of the world's press and the arrival of thousands of tourists and dignitaries keen to catch a glimpse of the golden treasures Carter had uncovered. Work was further delayed by the death of Lord Carnarvon after a mosquito bite on his face became infected. Lady Carnarvon was allowed to keep her late husband's permit, but work stopped amidst disputes between the Egyptian government and the Carnarvon estate over the distribution of the finds from the tomb. When the press claimed that Carnarvon had succumbed to an ancient curse, an irritated Carter insisted that the tomb was safe and no such curse existed. It wasn't until September 1925 that work began to remove the pharaoh's body from his coffins. After the lids of the first two coffins were removed, the golden innermost coffin was revealed in all its splendor. As the two inner coffins were stuck together by the resin used to seal the coffins, they were brought to the antechamber, where the lid of the golden coffin could be opened, revealing the mummy with its famous gold death mask on its head. Since the mummy itself was stuck to the golden coffin, Carter's workmen carried the two coffins into the laboratory. Unable to separate the mummy from the coffin, Carter decided to unwrap Tutankhamun inside his coffins. An operation carried out by the anatomist Douglas Derry and an Egyptian assistant. As layer after layer of the linen bandages were removed, the amulets and jewelry were collected for further analysis. By the time the king's corpse was revealed, it was found to be in very poor condition. In order to remove all the items found on the king's body, Carter's team had to dismember the body until the decapitated head remained still covered by the golden mask. Derry eventually separated the mask from the head with heated knives, revealing the face of the king whom he had just cut to pieces. It was not until 1932 that conservation work was finally completed on the tomb, but Carter's discovery had elevated the status of a relatively minor pharaoh, one who was forgotten for three millennia, to become the most widely known of all Egyptian rulers. A replica of the tomb's antechamber was made for the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Park in 1924 and 1925, while shops in London were full of merchandise bearing images of artifacts from the tomb, most notably the golden mask, which was first exhibited to the public in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in January 1926. Carter reassembled Tutankhamun's body and returned it to the outermost coffin and the sarcophagus in the burial chamber. Carter died in March 1939, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. It is believed that during the war, the tomb was broken into and the body disturbed, and a team of researchers in 1968 found that the body was no longer in the position Carter had described when he returned it to the tomb. In January 2005, Tutankhamun was taken out of his tomb for CT scanning. In November 2007, Tutankhamun's body was moved into the antechamber for better preservation in a climate-controlled case. Pending the discovery of any new royal tombs, he is the only Egyptian pharaoh to be resting in his own tomb. In recent decades, researchers have used the data collected from Tutankhamun's body to draw conclusions about Tutankhamun's life and death. The theory that he had a club foot is supported by what appear to be numerous walking sticks found in his tomb, but it is possible that his remains were damaged either during the embalming process or by Carter's team, and that these sticks were actually used as symbols of royal authority rather than to help the king walk. Similarly, there are competing theories about the cause of his death. DNA testing suggests that he suffered from malaria, while a dislodged piece in his skull has fueled the belief that he was murdered, challenging the idea that his death was owing to a hunting accident. The absence of Tutankhamun's heart and damage to his ribcage points to a traumatic wound to the chest, though this may have been the result of damage to the mummy, which occurred during the break-in during the Second World War. Although Tutankhamun's body remained in Egypt, the artifacts from his tomb have been exhibited abroad on several occasions, beginning in 1961 with a tour of North America, accompanied by a campaign to raise awareness for the conservation of archaeological sites impacted by the construction of the Aswan High Dam in Egypt. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the treasures traveled to Europe, including London, Paris, and throughout the Soviet Union. Since the 1980s, Tutankhamun's famous gold mask has remained in Egypt, where it is expected to stay forever, but other items from the tomb have been exhibited internationally since 2004, until the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The whole collection of artifacts from Tutankhamun's tomb, over 5,000 objects in total, is being prepared for display at the Grand Egyptian Museum, newly built near the Pyramids of Giza. Over a century after Howard Carter's discovery of his tomb, the story of Tutankhamun's life is still being re-evaluated. New technology and scientific methods may uncover mysteries surrounding the brief life and reign of the pharaoh, whose successors attempted to erase him from history. Likewise, there are many details about Tutankhamun's family members from the Armana period that remain unknown, and the young pharaoh's parentage even remains a matter of debate. Thus, King Tutankhamun, despite being the most famous of all Egyptian pharaohs, whose death mask has become a symbol of ancient Egypt, remains something of a mysterious figure. He grew up in Akhenaten's court at Armana, where he witnessed the establishment of the cult of Aten, the memory of which was later obliterated by his successors. After spending the first decade of his life, accompanied by religious upheaval and political disorder, Tutankhamun came to the throne and began the process of restoring the old gods and disestablishing the cult of Aten, abandoning Armana for the traditional political and religious centers of Memphis and Thebes. After his death at a very young age, his legacy as a man who began to restore the old religion was usurped by his advisors and successors, Horemheb in particular, who sought to erase Tutankhamun from history. For more than 3,000 years thereafter, Tutankhamun remained unknown and undisturbed, until Howard Carter's discovery of his tomb elevated him to a degree of international fame that easily eclipsed the significance of his own brief reign. What do you think of Tutankhamun? Was he the tragic boy-king who spent most of his short reign controlled by his courtiers, or should he be recognized as an important historical figure in his own right, responsible for restoring a degree of political and religious order after the upheavals of Akhenaten's reign? Please let us know in the comment section, and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching. you