Josh Bell, Rachael Robinson, Joel Sauer, Derek Mcgraw

Josh Bell, Rachael Robinson, Joel Sauer, Derek McGraw

King Tutankhamun

Although the finding of King Tutankhamun’s tomb was an amazing discovery, it is necessary to remember that Tutankhamun was not a major pharaoh in the Egypt Pharaonic history. Before Howard Carter found his tomb, almost nothing was known of Tutankhamun. A disappointment that came from Carter’s find was that there was hardly any documentation found within the tomb. So although this find opened up a new outlook on pharaohs, relatively little is still known about Tutankhamun.

Tutankhamun was not his name at birth, but actually Tutankhten meaning “Living Image of the Aten which places him in relation of pharaohs following Akhenaten who is most likely Tutankhamun’s father. He spent his early life in Amarna, and probably in the North Palace. At age nine he was married to Ankhesenpaaten, his half sister, and later Ankhesenamun. It is believed that Ankhesenpaaten was older than Tutankhamun because she was probably of childbearing age, seemingly already having had a child by her father Akhenaten. It is also possible that Ankhesenamun had been married to Tutankhamun’s predecessor. We also believe that Tutankhamun had two daughters and no sons.

Tutankhamun from the back of his gold throne

Towards the end of Akhenaten’s reign, Ay and Horemheb, both senior members of that king’s court, they came to the realization that this kingship could not continue. Upon the death of Akhenaten and Smenkhkare, they had the young king who was nine years old crowned in the old secular capital of Memphis. Since the young pharaoh had no living female relatives old enough, therefore he was most likely under the care of Ay or Horemheb, maybe even both, who would have actually been the factual ruler of Egypt.

Kiya, a lesser wife of Akhenaten who was probably Tutankhamun's mother

It is known that a number of their officials during the reign of Tutankhamun, two of which include Nakhtmin, who was a military officer under Horemheb and a relative of Ay and Maya, who was Tutankhamun's Treasurer and Overseer of the Place of Eternity.

Immediately after becoming king, and probably under the direction of Ay and Horemheb, a move was made to return to Egypt’s traditional ancient religion. By his second year of his reign, he changed his name; again he may have had nothing to do with this decision, though after two years perhaps Ay's and Horemheb's influence had effected the boy-king's impressionable young mind.

Tutankhamun was not listed on the classical king lists is probably because Horemheb, the last ruler of the 18th Dynasty, usurped most of the boy-kings work, including a restoration stele that records the reinstallation of the old religion of Amun and the reopening and rebuilding of the temples. Ownership inscriptions of other reliefs and statues were likewise changed to that of Horemheb, though the image of the young king himself remains obvious. Even Tutankhamun's extensive building carried out at the temples of Karnak and Luxor were claimed by Horemheb. Of course, we must also remember that little of the statues, reliefs and building projects were actually ordered by Tutankhamun himself, but rather his caretakers, Ay and Horemheb.

Ay and Horemheb

Tutankhamen (Tut) was born during the golden age of Egypt, also known as the New Kingdom. This is the time when Egypt was very rich and controlled a large empire. Many scholars believe that Tut was the Grandson of Amenhotep, the ninth king of the New Kingdom. Amenhotep was a powerful king; his queen named Tiye was his main wife. She was a very powerful woman. It is thought they had two sons. One died young and Amenhotep IV. When he became King, he built temples to his favorite god, the Aten. The Aten was the sun disk and the name Aten simply means "sun disk." Instead of being represented as a human or an animal, the Aten was shown as a circle, as the globe of the sun itself.

For thousands of years the ancient Egpytians had worshiped many gods, including Thoth, the god of wisdom, Hathor, the goddess of love and beauty, and Osiris god of the dead. The king of the gods was Re, the sun god. During the New Kingdom the most important god was Amun, which could be written Amen or Amon. Amun was their official god, and many like Amenhotep included him in their names. In the fifth year of his reign, Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten "Blessed Spirit of the Aten. Akhenaten believed he and his family were the only ones who had direct contact with the Aten. At some point in his reign he stopped worshipping Amun. Akhenaten thought that all other gods, except for Aten were just aspects of the Aten. Many think that Akhenaten was the first monotheist. This change upset many and was a significant change. Akhenaten had several wives and Nefertiti was his favorite, but she never bore him a son, only daughters. Another wife Kiya bore Tutankhamun in the eleventh or twelfth tear of Akhenaten's reign. He was originally named Tutankhaten.

When Tut was about five Akhenaten died. Conjecture was that he might of died of Marfan's disease, or been killed by the priests of Amun. Tut became king a few years after his father's death. He was eight or nine years old. The commander of the army, Horemheb, became his regent and ruled for him while he was growing up. Another important official who helped him was a man named Ay. When Tut became king he may have already been married to his queen, Aankhsenpaaten, the third oldest daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Tut's queen was his half sister.

Two years after he became king, Tutankhaten changed his name to Tutankhamun. Ankhsenpaaten changed her name also to Ankhsenamun. We do not know whether the boy king wanted to change back to the old religion or if he was forced to restore the old gods. Tut and his queen had two daughters, one miscarriaged after five months of pregnancy and the other died at birth. If the family had the gene for Marfan's, it may have had something to do with their deaths. Tut died at the age of sixteen or seventeen. The reason for his death has been debated for some time whether Tut was murdered or died of natural causes.

Tutankhamun is known primarily as a result of being undisturbed in his tomb for over three thousand years. Many more grand tombs and legendary kings preceded and followed Tut. The fact that his tomb was intact is the reason for his historicity. Tut was a minor king buried in a small hastily prepared tomb.

Howard Carter was an English archaeologist and Egyptologist whose claim to fame was the discovery of King Tutankhamen’s tomb. At seventeen years old, he was commissioned by the Egyptian Exploration Fund to assist an archaeologist by the name of Percy Newberry in the excavation and recording Egyptian tombs at Beni Hasan. Carter was prolific at improving the methods of copying tomb decoration. Although very young, he was an expert at recording wall reliefs and was an assistant to Edouard Naville eir el-Bahari where they recorded wall reliefs in the temple of Hatshepsut. At the age of 25, he was appointed the first chief inspector of the Egyptian Antiquities Service. He was the supervisor at many excavations including Thebes, now known as Luxor. At that time, Carter was viewed as an innovator in the improvements of the protection of, and accessibility to existing excavation sites, and developing a grid-block system for searching for tombs. Carter was eventually provided funding for his own excavations and Carter subsequently discovered the tombs of Thutmose I and III.

After a brief period of time after he resigned from the Antiquities Service, Carter was employed by Lord Carnarvon, George Herbert (5th Earl of Carnarvon), to supervise his excavations. Carter was hired to ensure modern archaeological methods and recordings were being done. Carter started his work in 1914 in the Valley of the Kings, but was interrupted by World War I. In 1917, when work resumed, Carter worked without finding anything and, in 1922, Carnarvon gave him enough funding for one more year to find something substantial. Luckily, Carter for the steps leading to Tutankhamun’s tomb and it was the best preserved and most intact pharaoh tomb in the Valley of the Kings. After wiring Carnarvon of the discovery, Carnarvon, his wife, and daughter arrived to witness Carter open up a portion of the doorway to find that much of the original treasure was still in place. After entering the tomb, he saw a doorway between two sentinel statues.

Carter spent several months cataloging the contents of the antechamber. In 1923, he opened the sealed doorway and found it lead to a burial chamber and found the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun. After the cataloging of the entire tomb, Carter retired from archaeology in 1932. After becoming an agent for collectors and museums for a time, Carter died of lymphoma at the age of 64, thus giving rise to the idea of “the curse of the pharaohs.”

During Howard Carter’s time as an archaeologist, he was considered a very advanced excavator for his time. He methodically cataloged every object in the tomb and it took nearly a decade to finish. Even though at that time, an archaeological discovery was expected to provide museums and collectors with ancient artifacts and belongings. However, as times have changed, moral ethics have taken more of a precedence in the archaeological field. Especially when it comes to human remains. During Carter’s time nobody gave a second thought as to the discovery and exhumation of bodies. Most of the world figured that what was once lost to time, should be available for all to see. In recent times, archaeologists are now being faced with the moral dilemma of archeological discovery or justified grave-robbing. Questions that now arise are “should the dead of ancient times be available for the world to see”? or “should the remains of those discovered be left alone”? Howard Carter was not faced with this dilemma as his discoveries were met with wonder and amazement. As time progressed, excavations were met with more and more resistance because of personal ethics regarding the deceased.

Figure 1Figure 2

Figure 1 shows: Howard Carter

Figure 2 shows: Howard Carter and King Tut’s sarcophagus

Was King Tut murdered or not? This is a popular question that has been looming around for ages with historians, archaeologists, and many other scientists over the years. Some argue that he was murdered out of greed while others believe that he died from a chariot fall or an illness. With so many different theories along with the time elapsed from the actual event, it is hard to tell definitively the truth to his death.

The theories of Tut's death are varied from being murdered by a blow to back of the head to natural causes. In 2005 a CT scan was performed on the mummy. Over 1700 images were taken and show that Tut was not murdered by a blow to the head. There was no evidence anywhere on his mummy of foul play. This does not mean he was not murdered. Surprisingly Tut had a cleft palette. The images also showed an impacted wisdom tooth. There was evidence that something very bad could have happened right before he died. His left leg, was broken, and his left kneecap was detached. The scientists think this probably happened before he died, but it's possible the embalmers or Carter's team, which handled the mummy very roughly, broke the leg. Tut wouldn't have died from a broken leg; but a wound over the break might have gotten infected, and infections can kill.

This Figure shows the infection in King Tut’s leg.

If King Tut was murdered, there were only a few possibilities as to whom it could have been. Their motives were centered around greed or to getting rid of the change that Akhenaten had created upon his death. It is a fact that Akhenaten brought major changes to Egypt during his reign. He pushed the idea on monotheism, which went against everything the ancient Egyptians believed in. The way he influenced this change is unknown but it could have been in a very hostile manner. When King Tut took the throne, there must have been bad blood still lingering over all of the changes in Akhenaten’s time which could be reason enough for murder to bring Egypt back into its rightful state. Two theories of murder evolve around Ay and Hormheb. Both were able to see the young king becoming more of a man and now being able to rule Egypt on his own without the help of Ay and Hormheb. Both were in good positions to take the throne, ultimately Ay became pharaoh followed by Hormheb, which gives them both many reasons to take matter into their own hands to insure that Egypt would be well taken care of by someone worthy of leading.

Figure 1Figure 2

Figure 1 shows: X-Ray of King Tut’s head injury indicating possibility of murder

Figure 2 shows: a CT scan from 2005 of the skull of King Tutankhamun's mummy, in Luxor. He suffered from a cleft palate and clubfoot.