Tutankhamun
Tutankhamun or Tutankhamen, was the thirteenth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt, who ruled. Born Tutankhaten, he instituted the restoration of the traditional polytheistic form of ancient Egyptian religion, undoing a previous shift to the religion known as Atenism. Tutankhamun's reign is considered one of the greatest restoration periods in ancient Egyptian history, and his tomb door proclaims his dedication to illustrative constructions of the ancient Egyptian gods.
His endowments and restorations of cults were recorded on the Restoration Stela. The cult of the god Amun at Thebes was restored to prominence, and the royal couple changed their names to "Tutankhamun" and "Ankhesenamun", replacing the -aten suffix. He also moved the royal court from Akhenaten's capital, Amarna, back to Memphis almost immediately on his accession to the kingship. He reestablished diplomatic relations with the Mitanni and carried out military campaigns in Nubia and the Near East. Tutankhamun was one of only a few kings known to be worshipped as a deity during their lifetime. He likely began construction of a royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings and an accompanying mortuary temple, but both were unfinished at the time of his death.
Tutankhamun died unexpectedly aged about 18; his health and the cause of his death have been the subject of much debate. In 2012, it was suggested he died from a combination of malaria and a leg fracture. Since his royal tomb was incomplete, he was instead buried in a small non-royal tomb adapted for the purpose. He was succeeded by his vizier Ay, who was probably an old man when he became king, and had a short reign. Ay was succeeded by Horemheb, who had been the commander-in-chief of Tutankhamun's armed forces. Under Horemheb, the restoration of the traditional ancient Egyptian religion was completed; Ay and Tutankhamun's constructions were usurped, and earlier Amarna Period rulers were erased.
Tutankhamun's tomb was discovered in 1922 by excavators led by Howard Carter and his patron, George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon. Although it had clearly been raided and robbed in ancient times, it retained much of its original contents, including the king's undisturbed mummy. The discovery received worldwide press coverage; with over 5,000 artifacts, it gave rise to renewed public interest in ancient Egypt, for which Tutankhamun's mask, preserved at the Egyptian Museum, remains a popular symbol. Before it was relocated to the Grand Egyptian Museum in 2025, some of his treasures have traveled worldwide, with unprecedented response; the Egyptian government allowed tours of the tomb beginning in 1961. The deaths of some individuals who were involved in the excavation have been popularly attributed to the "curse of the pharaohs" due to the similarity of their circumstances. Since the discovery of his tomb, he has been referred to colloquially as "King Tut".
Family
Tutankhamun was born in the reign of Akhenaten, during the Amarna Period of the late Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. His original name was Tutankhaten or Tutankhuaten, meaning "living image of Aten", reflecting the shift in ancient Egyptian religion known as Atenism which characterized Akhenaten's reign.His parentage is debated as they are not attested in surviving inscriptions. He was certainly a prince, as a fragmentary inscription from Hermopolis refers to "Tutankhuaten" as a "king's son". He is generally thought to have been the son of Akhenaten or his successor Smenkhkare. Inscriptions from Tutankhamun's reign treat him as a son of Akhenaten's father, Amenhotep III, but that is only possible if Akhenaten's 17-year reign included a long co-regency with his father, a possibility that many Egyptologists once supported but is now being abandoned. His mother has been variously suggested to be Akhenaten's chief wife Nefertiti, Amenhotep III's daughter Beketaten, or Akhenaten's daughters Meritaten or Meketaten. Tutankhamun was wet nursed by a woman named Maia, known from her tomb at Saqqara.
DNA testing identified his father as the mummy from tomb KV55, thought to be Akhenaten, but due to the developmental condition of the mummy's skeleton, most scholars estimate the age to be around twenty, thus effectively ruling out the possibility of Akhenaten; other scholars believe he was Smenkhkare. His mother as "The Younger Lady", an anonymous mummy cached in tomb KV35. His parents were full siblings, both being children of Amenhotep III and his chief wife Tiye. The identity of The Younger Lady is unknown, but she cannot be Nefertiti, as she was not known to be a sister of Akhenaten. However, researchers such as Marc Gabolde and Aidan Dodson claim that Nefertiti was indeed Tutankhamun's mother. In this interpretation of the DNA results, the genetic closeness is not due to a brother-sister pairing but the result of three generations of first-cousin marriage, making Nefertiti a first cousin of Akhenaten. The validity and reliability of the genetic data from mummified remains have been questioned due to possible degradation due to decay. The Younger Lady is more likely not any of Akhenaten's known wives, but one of Tiye's younger daughters, perhaps Nebetah or Beketaten.
When Tutankhaten became king, he married Ankhesenpaaten, one of Akhenaten's daughters, who later changed her name to Ankhesenamun. He fathered two daughters who died at or soon after birth and were buried with him in his tomb. Computed tomography studies published in 2011 revealed that one daughter was born prematurely at 5–6 months of pregnancy and the other at full-term, 9 months. DNA testing has suggested the anonymous mummy KV21A is their mother, but the data is not statistically significant enough to allow her to be securely identified as his only known wife, Ankhesenamun. Tutankhamun's death marked the end of the royal bloodline of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
Reign
Tutankhamun became pharaoh between eight and nine years of age following the short reigns of Akhenaten's successors Smenkhkare and Neferneferuaten. It is uncertain whether Smenkhkare's reign outlasted Akhenaten's; the female ruler Neferneferuaten is now thought to have either been co-regent shortly before Akhenaten's death and to have had a sole reign of 2 or 3 years before the accession of Tutankhamun, which means that she was Tutankhamun's predecessor according to Athena van der Perre and Nozumu Kawai. On acceding to the throne, Tutankhamun took the throne name Nebkheperure. He reigned for about nine years.During Tutankhamun's reign, the position of Vizier was split between Upper and Lower Egypt. The principal vizier for Upper Egypt was Usermontu. Another figure named Pentju was also vizier, but it is unclear which lands. It is not entirely known if Ay, Tutankhamun's successor, actually held this position. A gold foil fragment from KV58 seems to indicate, but not certainly, that Ay was referred to as a Priest of Maat along with an epithet of "vizier, doer of maat." The epithet does not fit the usual description used by the regular vizier but might indicate an informal title. It might be that Ay used the title of vizier in an unprecedented manner.
An Egyptian priest named Manetho wrote a comprehensive history of ancient Egypt where he refers to a king named Orus, who ruled for 36 years and had a daughter named Acencheres, who reigned for twelve years, and her brother Rathotis, who ruled for only nine years. The Amarna rulers are central in the list, but which name corresponds with which historic figure is not agreed upon by researchers. Orus and Acencheres have been identified with Horemheb and Akhenaten, and Rathotis with Tutankhamun. The names are also associated with Smenkhkare, Amenhotep III, Ay, and the others in differing order.
For the pharaoh, who held divine office, to be linked to the people and the gods, special epithets were created for them at their accession to the throne. The ancient Egyptian titulary also served to demonstrate one's qualities and link them to the terrestrial realm. The five names were developed over the centuries, beginning with the Horus name. Tutankhamun's original nomen, Tutankhaten, did not have a Nebty name or a Gold Falcon name associated with it as nothing has been found with the full five-name protocol.
Religiopolitical countermand
At the beginning of Tutankhaten's reign, the royal court was still located at Amarna, and evidence from his tomb shows that the Aten was still acknowledged. But several pieces of evidence suggest that his court was trying to reconcile Atenism with the traditional religion, and activity at Amarna decreased during the first four years of his reign. These years saw dramatic reversals of Akhenaten's policies, which, given the king's young age, must have been instigated by his advisors.In his third regnal year, Tutankhamun reversed several changes made during his father's reign. He ended the worship of the god Aten and restored the god Amun to supremacy. The ban on the cult of Amun was lifted and traditional privileges were restored to its priesthood. Tutankhamun enriched and endowed the priestly orders of two important cults, initiated a restoration process for old monuments that were damaged during the Amarna Period, and reburied his father's remains in the Valley of the Kings. It has been argued that it was in fact Tutankhamun himself, and not his successors, who began reversing Akhenaten's religious changes on a large scale.
Around this time, the royal court abandoned Amarna. Memphis became the main seat of royal administration, continuing a trend that dated back to Akhenaten's predecessors, toward administering the country from that central location rather than the more outlying site of Thebes. The capital was moved back to Thebes and the city of Akhetaten was abandoned. With Amun restored as Egypt's preeminent deity, Thebes once again became its greatest center of religious activity.
Tutankhamun's treasurer, Maya, was instrumental in executing Tutankhamun's regal orders of the restoration program. In his autobiography, he described himself as "one who carried out the plans of the king of my time and one who did not neglect what he had commanded to make splendid the temples, in fashioning the images of the gods".
This countermand rendered Tutankhamun's reign one of the greatest restoration periods in ancient Egyptian history. The action established his legacy as such. Concurrently, Tutankhamun's tomb door describes him as he "who spent his life fashioning images of the gods".