Who Discovered Tutankhamun’S Tomb?

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How did Howard Carter died

Death. Carter died from Hodgkin’s disease aged 64 at his London flat at 49 Albert Court, next to the Royal Albert Hall, on 2 March 1939. He was buried in Putney Vale Cemetery in London on 6 March, nine people attending his funeral.

How did Howard Carter find Tutankhamun’s tomb?

Howard Carter and the Discovery of Tutankhamun’s Tomb “Can you see anything?” “Yes, wonderful things!” These are the famous words of Howard Carter at the moment when he discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings. On 26th November 1922, the British archaeologist and Egyptologist Howard Carter, holding a candle in one hand, made a tiny hole in the doorway of a tomb. Inside Tutankhamun’s tomb This was an outstanding and legendary discovery that garnered attention from around the world. The discovery of an intact tomb belonging to the 18th Dynasty Pharaoh, the “boy king” Tutankhamun himself, was a breath-taking moment.

In the decade that followed, Carter and his team would methodically excavate the contents, which included the pharaoh’s mummified body as well as wall paintings, religious objects and equipment accompanying the king into the afterlife. Howard Carter, the archaeologist who made this monumental discovery, was born in Kensington, the son of an artist called Samuel Carter.

In his youth he experienced poor health which led to him being sent away from the hustle and bustle of London to Norfolk, to live with extended family and be privately schooled at home. As a young boy he benefited from living near Didlington Hall, a mansion in the area belonging to the Amherst family.

Within the home was an impressive collection of Egyptian artefacts which sparked a life-long interest in the subject in young Carter. With the help of his father, Howard Carter developed the skills required for Egyptology. With the assistance of the Egypt Exploration Fund, in 1891 he was invited to join Percy Newberry in an excavation of the tombs at Beni Hasan.

The Egypt Exploration Fund is a society founded in 1882 to study and excavate predominantly in Egypt as well as Sudan. As part of their work, numerous archaeological discoveries have been made including the model of Nefertiti from Amarna. The young Carter would benefit from these important connections. Howard Carter As he continued to hone his craft and learn from the best, in 1899 he was offered a prominent position as Chief Inspector of the Egyptian Antiquities Service. Now in this new job, Carter took a leading role in supervising a number of excavations including that at Thebes.

1. In 1905, Carter incurred difficulties when a confrontation broke out between Egyptian guards and French tourists.
2. The disruption occurred at Saqqara, a burial site for the Ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis.
3. Carter evaluated the situation and sided with the Egyptian guards, however this altercation soon escalated and led to an inquiry known by many as the Saqqara Affair.

Following this dispute he chose to resign from his position. However all was not lost for the rising star of archaeology; only two years later, he was introduced to Lord Carnarvon. Lord Carnarvon was an English aristocrat and peer by the name of George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, who inherited the imposing and magnificent Highclere Castle (well-known as the setting for Downton Abbey). Lord Carnarvon An enthusiast for Egyptology, he employed Carter’s expertise and provided the necessary financial backing to search for Tutankhamun’s tomb. Based on a recommendation, Carnarvon felt that Carter possessed the necessary modern methods and techniques to apply to the many excavation projects which he financed.

In 1907 the partnership began, with Carter employed as the principal supervisor for all of Lord Carnarvon’s excavations. In 1914, the outbreak of the First World War halted proceedings, with Carter spending the wartime years working in the diplomatic service. During this time, he was both a courier and translator, however at the end of 1917 he was finally able to resume his usual activities.

For several years, archaeological digs were underway but the legendary discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb proved elusive. In the coming years, Lord Carnarvon grew impatient with the lack of progress and informed Carter that he would remove his financial backing after one more season, if nothing could be found.

• Hearing this, Carter returned to the site of the Valley of the Kings and began re-evaluating a line of huts which he had investigated some years previously.
• This time, he asked his employees to remove the huts as well as the debris underneath.
• On 4th November 1922 a startling discovery was made by a boy who was carrying water and found himself falling over a stone.

This was not just any piece of rock: this was in fact the beginning of a flight of steps. The steps led down to a doorway decorated with seals and hieroglyphics. Immediately, Carter realised the potential of this and asked for the staircase to be filled in, so as not to reveal the potentially ground-breaking discovery.

• Eeping details close to his chest, he sent a telegram to Lord Carnarvon informing him and two weeks later, on 23rd November Carnarvon arrived, keen to uncover the mysteries which lay behind the sealed door.
• On 26th November 1922, the first steps towards uncovering Tutankhamun’s tomb were made.
• Very carefully and using a chisel, Carter made a small hole in the top left hand corner of the doorway.

Using a candle for light, he peered through the small gap in the doorway and was amazed to see dazzling gold treasures glistening back at him. This was the moment, the defining moment of his career. The rest as they say was history for Carter, Lord Carnarvon and the rest of the archaeological world. Lord Carnarvon, Lady Evelyn Herbert and Howard Carter After much laborious and intricate work, on 16th February 1923 Carter opened the sealed doorway, revealing for the first time the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun. This startling discovery was made even more special by the fact that it proved to be one of the most intact pharaonic tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Howard Carter examines Tutankhamun’s sarcophagus This discovery was however to be the last for Lord Carnarvon, as he passed away on 5th April 1923 after contracting blood poisoning, sparking rumours of a curse. In no time at all, around the world press attention spiralled out of control.

Speculation was rife about a curse inflicted on anyone responsible for breaking into the pharaoh’s tomb. Over the coming years, the legend of the curse gained more traction, as some members of the excavation team died in mysterious circumstances. Whilst some dismissed this as drivel, others began to believe in the curse, fuelling further rumours.

Carter meanwhile was allowed to continue working on the site and went on to catalogue thousands of objects held within the tomb. After completing this laborious process, he subsequently retired and chose to become a collector of artefacts. He would go on to spend the latter part of his life in museums and giving lectures, inspiring and igniting interest in Egypt and Tutankhamun. Tutankhamun’s funerary mask. In the meantime, as the heightened level of interest in Ancient Egypt did not look as if it was abating, the speculation over the curse of the tomb continued to circulate, with the likes of Arthur Conan Doyle telling the press of an “evil elemental spirit” which was used to protect the mummy. Nevertheless, the evidence of such a curse was never found in the tomb.

Whilst many involved in the excavation went on to live long lives, the story of the mummy’s curse lives on to this day. Sadly, in 1939, after succumbing to Hodgkinson’s disease, Howard Carter also passed away. After dedicating much of his life to the discovery of Tutankhamun, his epitaph, a quote from the Wishing Cup of Tutankhamun, appears as an apt dedication for a man who uncovered the last resting place of a legendary king:”May your spirit live, may you spend millions of years, you who love Thebes, sitting with your face to the north wind, your eyes beholding happiness”.

Jessica Brain is a freelance writer specialising in history. Based in Kent and a lover of all things historical. Published: 15th February 2023 : Howard Carter and the Discovery of Tutankhamun’s Tomb

Who discovered Tut’s tomb?

Howard Carter (squatting), Arthur Callender and an Egyptian workman, looking into the opened shrines enclosing Tutankhamun ‘s sarcophagus in 1924 The tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered in the Valley of the Kings in 1922 by excavators led by the Egyptologist Howard Carter, more than 3,300 years after his death and burial.

Whereas the tombs of most pharaohs were plundered by graverobbers in ancient times, Tutankhamun’s tomb was hidden by debris for most of its existence and therefore not extensively robbed. It thus became the first known largely intact royal burial from ancient Egypt, To date, the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb is widely considered one of the most famous archaeological discoveries of all time.

The tomb was opened beginning on 4 November 1922 during an excavation by Carter and his aristocratic patron, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, The unexpectedly rich burial consisted of more than five thousand objects, many of which were in a highly fragile state, so conserving the burial goods for removal from the tomb required an unprecedented effort.

• The opulence of the burial goods inspired a media frenzy and popularised ancient Egyptian-inspired designs with the Western public.
• To the Egyptians, who had recently become partially independent of British rule, the tomb became a symbol of national pride, strengthening Pharaonism, a nationalist ideology that emphasised modern Egypt’s ties to the ancient civilisation, and creating friction between Egyptians and the British-led excavation team.

The publicity surrounding the excavation intensified when Carnarvon died of an infection, giving rise to speculation that his death and other misfortunes connected with the tomb were the result of an ancient curse, After Lord Carnarvon’s death, tensions arose between Carter and the Egyptian government over who should control access to the tomb.

In early 1924, Carter stopped work in protest, beginning a dispute that lasted until the end of the year. Under the agreement that resolved the dispute, the artefacts from the tomb would not be divided between the government and the dig’s sponsors, as was standard practice in previous Egyptological digs, and most of the tomb’s contents went to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo,

In later seasons media attention waned, apart from coverage of the removal of Tutankhamun’s mummy from its coffin in 1925. The last two chambers of the tomb were cleared from 1926 to 1930, and the last of the burial goods were conserved and shipped to Cairo in 1932.

The tomb’s discovery did not reveal as much about the history of Tutankhamun’s time as Egyptologists had initially hoped, but it did establish the length of his reign and gave clues about the end of the Amarna Period, the era of radical innovation that preceded his reign. It was more informative about the material culture of Tutankhamun’s time, demonstrating what a complete royal burial was like and providing evidence about the lifestyles of wealthy Egyptians and the behaviour of ancient tomb robbers.

The interest generated by the find stimulated efforts to train Egyptians in Egyptology. Since the discovery, the Egyptian government has capitalised on its enduring fame by using exhibitions of the burial goods for purposes of fundraising and diplomacy, and Tutankhamun has become a symbol of ancient Egypt itself.

Is King Tut still in his tomb

Where is King Tut mummy? – King Tutankhamun’s tomb, which was discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter, remains in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt. Most of the tomb’s goods are now on display at the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza. However, Tutankhamun’s mummy and sarcophagus are still on display in the tomb in Luxor.

• Tutankhamun is one of the pharaohs of the 18th dynasty, as is known in the history of ancient Egypt.
• He was the pharaoh of Egypt and its ruler from 1334 to 1325 BC during the New Kingdom.
• Tutankhamun is one of the most famous pharaohs.
• At first glance, some might think that his fame is due to his achievements or the wars he won (as is the case with many pharaohs).

Other reasons are historically important which have made him so famous. The most prominent reason is the discovery of his tomb with all its contents and treasures without any damage.5,398 items to be exact have been found in the tomb. There is a mystery surrounding circumstances of his death, as many considered that his death was at a very young age.

• It is also become mysterious when they found fractures in bones of his thigh and skull.
• Many mysterious events in addition to myth of the curse of Pharaohs associated with the tomb of Tutankhamun have made this young pharaoh the most famous among all ancient Egypt’s rulers.
• His story and many of mysteries around his death have been used in movies, books and even in video games.

With many unanswered questions archeologists have considered his death one of the oldest assassinations in the history of humanity. The young Tutankhamun was buried in his tomb – Cemetery 62 – in the Valley of the Kings, Tutankhamun was nine years old when he became Pharaoh of Egypt.

1. His name in ancient Egyptian means “the living image of the god Amun” (Amun: the great ancient Egyptian god).
2. Tutankhamun lived in a transitional period in the history of ancient Egypt, as he came after Akhenaten, who called for worship of a single god named Aten.
3. Tutankhamun’s tomb was discovered in 1922 in the Valley of the Kings by the British archaeologist Howard Carter.

Explanation: When Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamon, he remarked that it was, “the day of days, the most wonderful that I have ever lived through, and certainly one whose like I can never hope to see again”. However, the collection is yet to be completely documented, and it took some ten years for Howard Carter to finish excavating the tomb. After the tomb’s discovery in the Valley of the Kings on November 4th 1922 by Howard Carter, much of the contents were transferred to this great museum. The inner coffin, of three sarcophagi, is made of 450 pounds of solid gold. It is one of the finest examples of the goldsmiths’ work of all time.

These are some of the only treasures from a Pharaonic tomb as all the others were taken by tomb robbers shortly after their completion. As Tutankhamun is thought to have been murdered at the age of 18, this treasure may have paled to insignificance compared to that of greater Pharaohs. The collection has traveled the world, setting attendance records most anywhere that it may be found.

While its current permanent housing is in the basement of the Egyptian museum in Cairo, it will soon be moved to a new down town location. Collection: The collection contains about 1700 piece consists of : Furniture and Boxes – Basic Funeral Equipment – Jewelry and Ornamentation – Statues, Sculptures and Containers – Other Items.

Did King Tut have kids?

The Pharaoh’s Daughters – Archaeology Magazine September/October 2022 For three years after his 1922 discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb, archaeologist Howard Carter did not think much about an undecorated wooden box that turned out to contain two small resin-covered coffins, each of which held a smaller gold-foil-covered coffin.

Inside these coffins were two tiny mummies. Preoccupied, Carter numbered the box 317 and did little to study it or its contents, only unwrapping the smaller of the two mummies, which he called 317a. The larger mummy he called 317b. The mummies were not carefully examined until 1932, when they were autopsied and photographed, at which time they were identified as stillborn female fetuses.

But the most recent work on these two tiny girls, undertaken by radiologist Sahar Saleem of Cairo University, tells more of their story. A decade ago, as head radiologist of the Egyptian Mummy Project, Saleem CT scanned the two fetuses, the first time any mummified fetus was studied using this technology.

Though there is no evidence of the babies’ personal names—they are identified only by gold bands on the coffins calling them Osiris, the Egyptian god of the dead—they were, in fact, the daughters of Tutankhamun and his wife, Ankhesenamun, and were buried alongside their father after his death. Although both mummies were badly damaged, Saleem found that the girls died at 24 and 36 weeks’ gestation.

It was previously known that the older girl, 317b, had had her organs removed as was typical to prepare the deceased for mummification. Saleem found an incision used to remove the organs on the side of 317a, as well as packing material of the sort placed under the skin of royal mummies to make them appear more lifelike.

This contradicted the long-held belief that, unlike her sister, the younger girl had not been deliberately mummified. Similarly, by scanning the mummies, Saleem was able to definitively disprove previous claims that the girls had suffered from congenital abnormalities such as spina bifida. “They got it wrong,” she says.

“The damage to their skeletons is a result of postmortem fractures and poor storage. For example, 317b’s elongated head is not a result of cranial abnormalities as has previously been said, but because she has a broken skull.” For Saleem, though, what she has learned about Tutankhamun’s daughters goes beyond these scientific questions.

Did King Tut have a dog

King Tut Childhood Facts –

Tutankhamun wasn’t born to Nefertiti who had daughters only, causing tension in the royal court. Tutankhamun’s father, Akhenaten, was a religious radical who changed the entire religion of ancient Egypt to the worship of god Aten. He also built a new capital, dedicated to Aten and named it Amarna. Tutankhamun loved to hunt ostriches, feeling proud when he returned with his prey. Tutankhamun’s favorite possession was an iron dagger, named “iron from the sky.” Tutankhamun had a dog as a pet and dog staff were found in his tomb. Tutankhamun was trained in the military. Tutankhamun was great at archery.

How much is King Tut’s mask worth

Common Questions About the Mask of Tutankhamun – Q: What made King Tutankhamun such an exemplary leader? King Tutankhamun redesigned Egypt. Tutankhamun is thought to have reversed the unpopular religious changes, reforming god Amun to glory and moving all capital business back to Thebes.

Why is King Tut so famous?

Tutankhamen wasn’t an especially important king, but his tomb was the only royal burial found intact in modern times. The tomb was important because it let archaeologists record what an Egyptian king’s tomb looked like and learn more about ancient Egypt.

Why was Howard Carter’s discovery so important?

Into the tomb of Tutankhamun,1922 – Carter’s discovery was very important as it allowed archaeologists to record what an Egyptian’s tomb looked like and in turn this provided new information about Ancient Egypt and Ancient Egyptian Art. Lord Carnarvon died on the 5th April, 1923 from an infected mosquito bite. This led newspapers at the time to produce headlines – the ‘curse of the pharaohs’, causing the death of those who disturb the mummy of an Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh. Howard Carter died on 2nd March 1939, aged 64. Carter was suffering from lymphoma. On Carter’s gravestone, these words are placed – May your spirit live, May you spend millions of years, You who love Thebes, Sitting with your face to the north wind, Your eyes beholding happiness’, ‘O night, spread thy wings over me as the imperishable stars’. Howard Carter. Exploration and a further insight into Egypt and the discovery of Tutankhamuns tomb can be seen in the video below: Howard Carter’s legacy lives on today as we remember his magnificent discovery 100 years later! Though without the previous work of one man, Jean-Francois Champollion, no one would have known the name of the boy king found in the Valley of Kings.

How old was King Tut

King Tut died at age 18 or 19 around 1324 B.C, but there are many theories surrounding how he died. There is a small bone fragment on the inside of his skull that intially led some historians to believe that King Tut was murdered by a blow to the back of his head.

Where did Howard Carter find Tutankhamun’s tomb?

Excavation King Tutankhamun’s Tomb Begins On November 4, 1922, the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt, is revealed. Anthropology, Archaeology On November 4, 1922, a team headed by British Egyptologist Howard Carter began excavating the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt. Tutankhamun, nicknamed King Tut, was an Egyptian pharaoh who ruled from 1333 BCE (when he was just nine years old) until his death in 1323 BCE.

• After he died, Tutankhamun was mummified, according to tradition, and buried in a tomb filled with artwork, jewelry, and treasures.
• Shifting desert sands quickly hid the tomb, and it lay mostly hidden for more than 3,000 years.
• On November 4, Carter’s team found the first step of a staircase.
• The next day, his team exposed the whole staircase, and by the end of November, an antechamber, a treasury, and the door to the tomb itself were uncovered.

After making a tiny breach in the door, Carter saw a room filled with gold treasures on November 26. But it wasn’t until much later that the sarcophagus containing Tutankhamen’s mummy was revealed. The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit.

Who survived King Tut’s tomb?

Opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb – The statue of Anubis figure which guarded the entrance to Tutankhamun’s treasury room. The belief in a curse was brought to many people’s attention due to the deaths of a few members of Howard Carter ‘s team and other prominent visitors to the tomb shortly thereafter.

1. Carter’s team opened the tomb of Tutankhamun ( KV62 ) in 1922, launching the modern era of Egyptology,
2. The famous Egyptologist James Henry Breasted worked with Carter soon after the first opening of the tomb.
3. He reported how Carter sent a messenger on an errand to his house.
4. On approaching his home the messenger thought he heard a “faint, almost human cry”.

Upon reaching the entrance he saw the birdcage occupied by a cobra, the symbol of the Egyptian monarchy. Carter’s canary had died in its mouth and this fueled local rumors of a curse. Arthur Weigall, a previous Inspector-General of Antiquities to the Egyptian Government, reported that this was interpreted as Carter’s house being broken into by the Royal Cobra, the same as that worn on the King’s head to strike enemies (see Uraeus ), on the very day the King’s tomb was being broken into.

1. An account of the incident was reported by The New York Times on 22 December 1922.
2. The first of the deaths was that of Lord Carnarvon, who financed the excavation.
3. He had been bitten by a mosquito, and later slashed the bite accidentally while shaving.
4. It became infected and that resulted in blood poisoning,

Two weeks before Carnarvon died, Marie Corelli wrote an imaginative letter that was published in the New York World magazine, in which she quoted an obscure book that confidently asserted that “dire punishment” would follow any intrusion into a sealed tomb. The death of Lord Carnarvon six weeks after the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb resulted in many curse stories in the press. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes and spiritualist, suggested that Lord Carnarvon’s death had been caused by ” elementals ” created by Tutankhamun’s priests to guard the royal tomb, and this further fueled the media interest.

Arthur Weigall reported that six weeks before Carnarvon’s death, he had watched the Earl laughing and joking as he entered the King’s tomb and said to a nearby reporter ( H.V. Morton ), “I give him six weeks to live.” The first autopsy carried out on the body of Tutankhamun by Dr. Derry found a healed lesion on the left cheek, but as Carnarvon had been buried six months previously it was not possible to determine if the location of the wound on the King corresponded with the fatal mosquito bite on Carnarvon.

A study of documents and scholarly sources led The Lancet to conclude it unlikely that Carnarvon’s death had anything to do with Tutankhamun’s tomb, refuting another theory that exposure to toxic fungi (mycotoxins) had contributed to his demise. The report points out that the Earl was only one of many to enter the tomb, on several occasions and that none of the others were affected.

The cause of Carnarvon’s death was reported as “‘pneumonia supervening on erysipelas,’ (a streptococcal infection of the skin and underlying soft tissue). Pneumonia was thought to be only one of various complications, arising from the progressively invasive infection, that eventually resulted in multiorgan failure.” The Earl had been “prone to frequent and severe lung infections” according to The Lancet and there had been a “general belief,

that one acute attack of bronchitis could have killed him. In such a debilitated state, the Earl’s immune system was easily overwhelmed by erysipelas.” In 1925, the anthropologist Henry Field, accompanied by Breasted, visited the tomb and recalled the kindness and friendliness of Carter.

He also reported how a paperweight given to Carter’s friend Sir Bruce Ingram was composed of a mummified hand with its wrist adorned with a scarab bracelet marked with, “Cursed be he who moves my body. To him shall come fire, water, and pestilence.” Soon after receiving the gift, Ingram’s house burned down, followed by a flood when it was rebuilt.

Howard Carter was entirely skeptical of such curses, dismissing them as ‘tommy-rot’ and commenting that “the sentiment of the Egyptologist, is not one of fear, but of respect and awe, entirely opposed to foolish superstitions”. In May 1926 he reported in his diary a sighting of a jackal of the same type as Anubis, the guardian of the dead, for the first time in over thirty-five years of working in the desert, although he did not attribute this to supernatural causes.

Skeptics have pointed out that many others who visited the tomb or helped to discover it lived long and healthy lives. A study showed that of the 58 people who were present when the tomb and sarcophagus were opened, only eight died within a dozen years. All the others were still alive, including Howard Carter, who died of lymphoma in 1939 at the age of 64.

The last survivors included Lady Evelyn Herbert, Lord Carnarvon ‘s daughter, who was among the first people to enter the tomb after its discovery in November 1922, who lived for a further 57 years and died in 1980, and American archaeologist J.O. Kinnaman, who died in 1961, 39 years after the event.

Where is King Tut’s death mask now

Discovery – Tutankhamun’s burial chamber was found at the Theban Necropolis in the Valley of the Kings in 1922 and opened in 1923. It would be another two years before the excavation team, led by the English archaeologist Howard Carter, was able to open the heavy sarcophagus containing Tutankhamun’s mummy,

• On 28 October 1925, they opened the innermost of three coffins to reveal the gold mask, seen for the first time in approximately 3,250 years.
• Carter wrote in his diary: The pins removed, the lid was raised.
• The penultimate scene was disclosed – a very neatly wrapped mummy of the young king, with golden mask of sad but tranquil expression, symbolizing Osiris the mask bears that god’s attributes, but the likeness is that of Tut.Ankh.Amen – placid and beautiful, with the same features as we find upon his statues and coffins.

The mask has fallen slightly back, thus its gaze is straight up to the heavens. In December 1925, the mask was removed from the tomb, placed in a crate and transported 635 kilometres (395 mi) to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, where it remains on public display.

Why was King Tut’s tomb so small

One of the most exciting theories in the field of ancient Egyptian archaeology just got a lot less exciting. Egypt’s antiquities ministry has announced that new scans of King Tut’s tomb show that there are no sealed-off rooms hidden in the historic burial chamber, as some experts had postulated.

Our work shows in a conclusive manner that there are no hidden chambers, no corridors adjacent to Tutankhamun’s tomb,” Francesco Porcelli of the Polytechnic University of Turin told the audience at the fourth International Tutankhamun Conference in Cairo, as reported by the Associated Press, “There was a theory that argued the possible existence of these chambers, but unfortunately our work is not supporting this theory.” This contradicts the results of previous tests, which had left archaeologists 90 percent certain that there were not one but two secret chambers inside the historic tomb.

The antiquities ministry had called the rooms, now said to be nonexistent, potentially “the discovery of the century.” A diagram of King Tut’s tomb showing the suspected locations of Nefertiti’s tomb. Image courtesy of Nicolas Reeves. Nicholas Reeves of the University of Arizona had rocked the field of Egyptology with the August 2015 publication of the paper, ” The Burial of Nefertiti?,” in which he posited that the tomb was originally built for the burial of Queen Nefertiti and that there was evidence of sealed-off doorways into chambers that might still house her remains. Archaeologist Nicholas Reeves believes this painting in King Tut’s tomb marked the closing of Nefertiti’s now-hidden burial chamber. Courtesy the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Reeves also claimed that mix of queenly and kingly iconography in the tomb’s artifacts indicated that some of them might have been originally made for Nefertiti before she became pharaoh under the name Neferneferuaten.

He posited that because Tut died young, no burial site was prepared; Nefertiti’s unused artifacts were pressed into service and her tomb expanded to make room for her successor. Archaeologists set out to test Reeve’s theory a mere month after the publication of his paper, using non-invasive radar technology.

Although the initial results were promising, the tests have ultimately ended in disappointment. (On the other hand, there are, in fact, mysterious empty rooms of some sort in the Great Pyramid of Giza.) King Tut’s tomb was discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter and has captivated the world’s imagination ever since.

How was King Tut found dead

News

While many have theorized that King Tut met his demise by murder, new evidence has lead scientists to believe otherwise. King Tut probably died from a broken leg, scientists say, possibly closing one of history’s most famous cold cases. A CT scan of King Tutankhamun’s mummy has disproved a popular theory that the Egyptian pharaoh was murdered by a blow to the head more than 3,300 years ago.

• Instead the most likely explanation for the boy king’s death at 19 is a thigh fracture that became infected and ultimately fatal, according to an international team of scientists.
• The team presented its results this week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago, Illinois.

“I think it is the end of the investigation. We can now close this file,” said team leader Ashraf Selim, a radiologist at Kasr Eleini Teaching Hospital at Cairo University in Egypt. But the research effort may add to rumors surrounding the infamous “curse of Tut.” During their investigation, the scientists experienced several mysterious occurrences, from a freak sandstorm to a strange power outage.

Did Tutankhamun have a disease?

King Tut Felled By Injury And Malaria, Not Murder NEAL CONAN, host: Since the day that Howard Carter broke into the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922, the boy pharaoh has enjoyed an outside place in Egyptian history and in all of our imaginations. Now, the latest round of forensic study suggests that King Tut’s short life may have been a painful one, and that he died not as the result of an ancient murder plot but from complications of a broken leg.

• An article in the journal of the American Medical Association is based on DNA analysis and CT scans.
• And while it tells us a lot about both King Tut and his immediate family, it also raises some questions about the ethics of medical inquiries into history.
• If you have questions about that or about the findings of this new study on King Tut, give us a call: 800-989-8255.

Email us: [email protected]. You can also join the conversation on our Web site, that’s at npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. Howard Markel is professor and the director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan. He wrote an editorial for JAMA that accompanied this article on the study about questions raised about ethics.

1. He calls it a potential Pandora’s box.
2. And he joins us now from the studios of WUOM in Ann Arbor.
3. Nice to have you with us on TALK OF THE NATION today. Dr.
4. HOWARD MARKEL (Center for the History of Medicine, University of Michigan): Nice to be here, Neal.
5. CONAN: And as you mentioned in your editorial, before this we were all able to speculate that well, yes, there was that murder plot or that maybe he died in a fall from a chariot, all kinds of things about Tutankhamun.

Dr. MARKEL: Oh, it’s a great job being an armchair pathologist because no one can actually prove you’re right or you’re wrong. (Soundbite of laughter) CONAN: And I guess the latest speculation about murder was published in a book last year. Dr. MARKEL: That’s right.

• A very prominent mystery writer and a historian published a book about who killed King Tut, and came up with a plot that I would say was Shakespearean, but it’s actually pre-Shakespearean.
• In that King Tut’s wife who was also his sister, was unhappy with him and worked with an evil general and an evil adviser to kill King Tut and take over the kingdom.

CONAN: I think I saw that picture. Or maybe I haven’t seen it yet. Anyway. Dr. MARKEL: No. CONAN:,thee studies of DNA analysis and indeed the CT scans not just of King Tut’s mummy, but some of those of his relatives, suggests that instead it was more prosaic, that he was born with a cleft palate and a clubfoot and had a painful time during his life.

Dr. MARKEL: Yes. He probably had an orthopedic or bone disorder called Kohler’s disease that leads to a poor circulation to the bones in the foot. He probably broke his foot and walked with a limp. And in fact, in King Tut’s tomb there are several walking sticks, his own walking sticks. And they have wonderful evidence of wear and tear.

CONAN: Mm-hmm. Dr. MARKEL: He may have fallen at sometime and broken his thigh bone or the femur bone, which is the largest bone in the body, and is still a very serious injury even today with modern medicine. If you’re not treated with a femur fracture, you could literally bleed to death in a matter of hours.

So he had all of these problems and on top of that, he had a raging case of malaria. CONAN: Hmm. And indeed the studies of the other people suggested they did too, that it was apparently pretty widespread in pharaonic Egypt. Dr. MARKEL: Yeah. It’s a contagious disease and it doesn’t care if you’re the pharaoh or you’re merely a slave.

If a mosquito bites you and you’re infected, there you have it. CONAN: So the other things that it tells us about his relations and not only at least according to that novel – was King Tut’s sister his wife, but his father’s sister was his father’s wife.

Dr. MARKEL: Yes. That to me was the most exciting and intriguing part of the study of the conduct of the royal family. They married within the family, so that King Tut’s parents were siblings, and King Tut indeed as you mentioned, married his sister. You know, the pharaohs not only considered themselves royal, but they considered themselves to be deities.

And so no matter who you brought home to mother was not likely to be accepted. (Soundbite of laughter) Dr. MARKEL:,unless she too was royal, of a deity of herself. CONAN: And nevertheless. Dr. MARKEL: But that. CONAN:,if you got some genetic problems in your family, this is only going to increase them.

1. Dr. MARKEL: Exactly.
2. That’s what I was about to say.
3. It really sets yourself up if you’re carrying genetic disorders, particularly recessive disorders, it really sets it up to be transmitted generation to generation.
4. CONAN: And the more prosaic description of the end of King Tut’s life suggests that, well, a boy who only ruled for 10 years, and may not have been in total political control for the first part of that at least, may not be deserving of all the attention we’ve been giving him all this time since Howard Carter in 1922.

Dr. MARKEL: May not but, you know, the discovery of that tomb was so remarkable in 1922, and, of course, the relics and the riches that were found therein. And it had just captured our imagination. And, of course, he has that great nickname, King Tut. And there’s even been songs about him as I recall, the Steve Martin hit in 1978.

CONAN: Well, you may have anticipated us. In any case, the other part of this that I found interesting is there has been, as you note in your editorial, an explosion of the use of modern technology in historical research, going back to find the relationship of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings’ children.

That, of course, forced us to reconsider the Hemingses of Monticello and, indeed, our third president. We’ve also had to go back and change other ideas about, for example, there were samples left of people who died from the 1918 pandemic flu. So when we were looking again at the question of flu, we had examples of history to go back and look at those.

1. Dr. MARKEL: Yes.
2. It’s a remarkable tool, isn’t it, that we can use modern science to better understand the past? And I think that really adds to two really critical questions of these types of studies.
3. Does it really change our view of history, as the King Tut study most definitely does? Or does it help issues of understanding of health and disease today, as the influenza study does? And I think we need to be very careful about answering one or the other or both questions affirmatively before we embark on such studies.

But those are very important. For example, the Jefferson study really opens up a whole window of issues of love and intimacy during the era of slavery. CONAN: And, indeed, we did find out a lot about influenza. Of course, it was tremendously important – nevertheless, still important to remember the dignity of the dead even the very distantly dead.

• Dr. MARKEL: Absolutely.
• And, you know, this is something that goes across cultures and nationalities and eras, but we tend not to exhume the dead.
• We tend not to disturb the dead for all sorts of ethical issues.
• But particularly when you’re talking about the pharaohs, I mean, the reason why King Tut was buried in a tomb that was impossible to get to until several thousand years later was not only did they not want to be disturbed – and there was supposedly a curse laid on those who would disturb King Tut – but these people also felt that it would affect their chances in the afterlife if they were disturbed.

So these are things that we have to be very careful about to temper our curiosity. CONAN: Well, there are all kinds of questions asked for – about all kinds of historical personages. You think of William Clark, of the Lewis and Clark expeditions – excuse me, Meriwether Lewis, about whether he committed suicide or not, questions like that.

Is that kind of curiosity worth going back to satisfy? Dr. MARKEL: Well, again, if you look at those two major questions, does it really change our understanding of the Lewis and Clark expedition or does it really help our issues of health and disease? I’m not so sure on that. Similarly, you know, would it really matter if we exhumed Abraham Lincoln to find out if he had an upset stomach the day before he was murdered? I don’t think so.

But there are other examples where we may have thought about foul play or problems that may have existed that would be very interesting to find out. Now, the real. CONAN: For example. Dr. MARKEL: Well, for example, Woodrow Wilson’s final stroke. How incapacitated was he? But I doubt that you would be able to find that information out on a body that was buried in the 1920s and exhumed in the 2010 era.

• That’s what’s so remarkable about the mummies is that they were embalmed in a very specific way that allows us to examine these bodies to this very day.
• CONAN: We’re talking with Howard Markel about a study that appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association today that goes into the results of DNA and CT scans of King Tutankhamun, the fabled boy pharaoh of Egypt, whose body was discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter.

Of course, the fabulous treasures of his tomb uncovered as well. Let’s see if we can get Sarah(ph) on the line. Sarah is calling us from Kerrville in Texas. SARAH (Caller): Yes. I was curious if – I heard your – I heard it mentioned that Tut’s mother or father were brother and sister.

1. I’m curious, has it been definitively determined that Akhenaten was Tut’s father and, therefore, Nefertiti, his mother? Dr.
2. MARKEL: It was definitively discerned that Akhenaten was his father.
3. SARAH: Oh. Okay. Dr.
4. MARKEL: The scholars who did the study have identified the mother as a mummy called KV35YL, which was probably not.

CONAN: What a romantic name. (Soundbite of laughter) Dr. MARKEL: Yeah – but probably not Nefertiti as thought. But this group of scholars is actually doing more studies as we speak to determine that more closely. SARAH: Wonderful. Thank you very much. CONAN: Thanks very much for the question, Sarah.

And that suggests that, indeed, there are so many people curious about this one personage and his place in history. Of course, his father was the one who brought monotheism to Egyptian – to prominence in Egypt. Dr. MARKEL: Yes. He was a far more prominent pharaoh. He brought about many changes and reforms in ancient Egypt.

Yet it’s his son who we talk about today. CONAN: And, indeed, the studies of the Necropolises, the burial grounds around the pyramids, suggest studies of all those findings have proven, or at least the current theory is that they were not built by slaves but rather erected as civic enterprises.

• Dr. MARKEL: Yes, that’s absolutely true.
• CONAN: And this email question from Patricia Fletcher(ph).
• If King Tut was not murdered, then how did that begin to be told? If he died of complications from a broken leg, what sort of complications were they? Well, we answered that part.
• It was the malarial infection that contributed.

But how did the story of the murder start to be brooded about, do you think? Dr. MARKEL: Well, it started in the late 1960s. And in 1968, a team of physicians and historians and anthropologists looked at King Tut’s mummy and did an old fashion X-ray of his skull and of his skeleton, what used to be called a flap plate X-ray.

1. And they found a fracture to the back of the skull, and they found this fractured leg.
2. And then as doctors are want to do, we all love to make diagnoses whether we’re looking at a patient or not.
3. People began to read that paper, and people wrote articles and medical journals and such.
4. And one good story led to another.

And he – it was suggested that he either fell off his horse or he fell off his chariot. Another story suggested that he was kicked to the head by a horse or a beast of burden. And then finally, the best story of all is that there was this nefarious plot to kill him and take over the kingdom.

CONAN: And those were later disproven when further studies indicated that hole in his head was used to extract his brain as part of the mummification process? Dr. MARKEL: Yes. Yes, it was. The fracture of the leg though was probably incurred in real life. CONAN: And whether that incurred from a dramatic fall from a chariot or a trip down the stairs, who knows? Dr.

MARKEL: Yeah. Well, you know – and I – this was, you know, making fun of armchair pathologists but I’ll take a stab at it too. Think about it, when you hurt your own foot you walk sort of funny, and you always injure something else once you injure one part of your body.

• So he could’ve been walking in a very difficult way, using canes, and then he could’ve fallen from, you know, a great height or some steps and broken that thigh bone.
• CONAN: Finally, Howard Markel, as you suggest that we answer these questions, these ethical questions about the historical value and degree of disturbance before we go in to answer some of these forensic questions about history, who would decide that? Dr.

MARKEL: That’s a good question because this is such a new field when you think about it, you know? Historians have long enjoyed reading other people’s mail but we have not looked at people’s bodies all that frequently. But I think there are ways of mirroring institutional review boards that are at every hospital and medical center today as well as museums or museums of antiquities.

1. CONAN: Okay. Dr.
2. MARKEL:,to develop a team of historians, ethicists and so on, experts to decide this issue.
3. CONAN: Howard Markel, thanks very much for your time. Dr.
4. MARKEL: Thank you.
5. CONAN: Howard Markel, professor and director of the Center for the Study of Medicine at the University of Michigan.
6. And as we mentioned, he wrote an editorial on the study that questions the ethical implications of the search of dead bodies for evidence of historical interest.

He joined us from WUOM in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And this is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. Copyright © 2010 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website and pages at for further information. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor.

Was King Tut a good ruler

Who discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb? – Tutankhamun, also spelled Tutankhamen and Tutankhamon, original name Tutankhaten, byname King Tut, (flourished 14th century bce ), king of ancient Egypt (reigned 1333–23 bce ), known chiefly for his intact tomb, KV 62 (tomb 62), discovered in the Valley of the Kings in 1922.

During his reign, powerful advisers restored the traditional Egyptian religion and art, both of which had been set aside by his predecessor Akhenaten, who had led the “Amarna revolution.” ( See Amarna style,) The parentage of Tutankhaten—as he was originally known—remains uncertain, although a single black fragment originating at Akhetaton ( Tell el-Amarna ), Akhenaten’s capital city, names him as a king’s son in a context similar to that of the princesses of Akhenaten.

Medical analysis of Tutankhaten’s mummy shows that he shares very close physical characteristics with the mummy discovered in KV 55 (tomb 55) of the Valley of the Kings, Some scholars identify these remains as those of Smenkhkare, who seems to have been coregent with Akhenaten in the final years of his reign; others have suggested the mummy may be Akhenaten himself. Britannica Quiz Pop Quiz: 18 Things to Know About Ancient Egypt With the death of Smenkhkare, the young Tutankhaten became king, and was married to Akhenaten’s third daughter, Ankhesenpaaton (later known as Ankhesenamen ), probably the eldest surviving princess of the royal family.

• Because at his accession he was still very young, the elderly official Ay, who had long maintained ties with the royal family, and the general of the armies, Horemheb, served as Tutankhaten’s chief advisers.
• By his third regnal year Tutankhaten had abandoned Akhetaton and moved his residence to Memphis, the administrative capital, near modern Cairo,

He changed his name to Tutankhamun and issued a decree restoring the temples, images, personnel, and privileges of the old gods. He also began the protracted process of restoring the sacred shrines of Amon, which had been severely damaged during his father’s rule.

• No proscription or persecution of the Aton, Akhenaten’s god, was undertaken, and royal vineyards and regiments of the army were still named after the Aton.
• In addition to a palace built at Karnak and a memorial temple in western Thebes, both now largely vanished, the chief extant monument of Tutankhamun is the Colonnade of the Temple of Luxor, which he decorated with reliefs depicting the Opet festival, an annual rite of renewal involving the king, the three chief deities of Karnak (Amon, Mut, and Khons ), and the local form of Amon at Luxor.

Tutankhamun unexpectedly died in his 19th year. In 2010 scientists found traces of malaria parasites in his mummified remains and posited that malaria in combination with degenerative bone disease may have been the cause of death. Whatever the case, he died without designating an heir and was succeeded by Ay.

He was buried in a small tomb hastily converted for his use in the Valley of the Kings (his intended sepulchre was probably taken over by Ay). Like other rulers associated with the Amarna period—Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, and Ay—he was to suffer the posthumous fate of having his name stricken from later king lists and his monuments usurped, primarily by his former general, Horemheb, who subsequently became king.

Although Tutankhamun’s tomb shows evidence of having been entered and briefly plundered, the location of his burial was clearly forgotten by the time of the 20th dynasty (1190–1075 bce ), when craftsmen assigned to work on the nearby tomb of Ramses VI built temporary stone shelters directly over its entrance. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now 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 text-covered shrines of hammered gold over wood, which practically filled the burial chamber. The other rooms were crammed with furniture, statuary, clothes, chariots, weapons, staffs, and numerous other objects.

But for his tomb, Tutankhamun has little claim to fame; as it is, he is perhaps better known than any of his longer-lived and better-documented predecessors and successors. His renown was secured after the highly popular “Treasures of Tutankhamun” exhibit traveled the world in the 1960s and ’70s.

What did Tut look like

This photo shows the mummy of Tutankhamun being moved during conservation work. King Tut’s mummy has been “significantly altered” from how he looked during his lifetime, so it’s difficult to make an accurate reconstruction of him. (Image credit: Ben Curtis/AFP via Getty Images) One hundred years ago, on Nov.4, 1922, an archaeological team discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun, revealing many “wonderful things” from ancient Egypt, including the boy king’s mummy.

These discoveries provided a wealth of information on Tutankhamun, who ascended the throne at about age 9 and died when he was about 19. However, exactly what the pharaoh looked like remains uncertain. Studies have examined his health, and there have been a number of attempts to virtually reconstruct his likeness.

A 2010 study of Tutankhamun and other mummies published in JAMA found that Tutankhamun was about 5 feet, 6 inches (1.67 meters) tall when he died and suffered from a number of medical maladies, such as malaria and Köhler disease, which can cause the feet to swell and impair walking.

• He also experienced necrosis (the death of bodily tissue) from a broken bone in his left foot — something that may have contributed to his death.
• Related: King Tut’s father revealed in stunning facial reconstruction “Tutankhamun looked like a person who was suffering physically,” Zahi Hawass, a former minister of Egyptian antiquities and co-author of the JAMA paper, told Live Science in an email.

“He limped and used a stick to walk. He had malaria.” Despite these health problems, Tutankhamun was still active, Hawass said. “He liked to hunt wild animals and built a palace near the Sphinx for hunting,” Hawass said. “Despite any physical issues, he was active enough to have an accident and injure his leg two days before he died.” Hutan Ashrafian, clinical lecturer in surgery at Imperial College London, said Tutankhamun would have walked with a limp, had a slightly longer-than-normal skull, had somewhat enlarged breasts (from a condition called gynecomastia, caused by hormonal imbalances), had buckteeth and been relatively skinny.

He was “relatively frail in physique,” Ashrafian, who has studied Tutankhamun and his mummy, told Live Science in an interview. In 2012, Ashrafian published a paper in the journal Epilepsy & Behavior suggesting that Tutankhamun and his ancestors suffered from familial epilepsy, which may have caused him to have seizures.

Ashrafian said some of Tutankhamun’s health problems may be related to genetic problems from inbreeding, since Egyptian pharaohs in the 18th dynasty often married relatives.

Did King Tut eat meat

Tutankhamun’s mask (World Heritage 2003) A Dorchester curator is giving the chance for us to eat like pharaohs, with her recipes in “Tutankhamun’s Cook Book”. Jackie Ridley has combined her biggest passions – Ancient Egypt and cooking – to recreate the kind of dishes enjoyed over three thousand years ago. Jackie Ridley (World Heritage 2003) “The Egyptians loved to eat,” Jackie explains. “It was all about taste – you ate for pleasure.” Although no recipes from Tutankhamun’s time survive, we know what the Eqyptians ate from pictures on walls and from what ingredients were available at the time.

Their staple diet was bread, vegetables, fowl and even beer. If you were richer, you could afford port, mutton or wine. Tutankhamun himself would have eaten animals he’d hunted himself, such as ox. “These dishes are yummy but there’s something different about them,” says Jackie. “For instance, pomegranates were popular to cook with – they’ve got a fabulous taste and bind all the other ingredients together.” Jackie encourages history buffs to host an Ancient Egyptian dinner party, “You could also do a bit of belly dancing, and not wear too many clothes!” The Tutankhamun Exhibition in Dorchester has been open since 1987.

Jackie is Conservation Director there, and has worked to recreate the treasures of Tutankhamun’s time. An exhibition of Tutankhamun’s mask and 130 artefacts are coming from Egypt to London’s Millennium Dome this month. They will be on display until August next year.

Why did King Tut have hips?

Tutankhamun’s clothes reveal he had huge hips

• Since Howard Carter stepped into the splendours of Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor in 1922, the cause of the boy-pharaoh’s death has been a mystery.
• Since Howard Carter stepped into the splendours of Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor in 1922, the cause of the boy-pharaoh’s death has been a mystery.
• But scientific research into the royal clothes, led by Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, director of the Tutankhamun Wardrobe Project at Leiden University in Holland, has started a fresh controversy.
• She says more than 450 items in the burial chamber are more than just a “treasure trove of ancient fashion”- they also show he was ill.
• The clothes, including embroidered tunics, loin-cloths and leopard skins, indicate he suffered from an unidentified disease that left large deposits of fat on his hips.

“Based on the measurements of his clothes, he had a chest size of 80cm (31in), a waist of 75cm (39in) and hipsof 110 (43in),” Ms Vogelsang-Eastwood said. “We know there was something wrong. “The disease, or whatever he had, certainly affected his weight, putting those fatty deposits on his hips. Mummification would have removed the deposits. There was no evidence of disease in his bones.

1. “We do not think he had a common shape but not enough medical research has been done in this area,” she said.
2. Being pear-shaped, Ms Vogelsang-Eastwood added, was a family trait because his royal father, Akhenaten, who was married to the better-known Nefertiti, had a similar figure, meaning Tutankhamun could have suffered from an inherited disease or one common to the area.
3. The study, backed by the Dutch government, is intended to find out more information about Egypt in the Amarna Age from 1353 to 1336BC.

This is the first time since 1922, when Carter and the Earl of Carnarvon shared the discovery, that an investigation has been made into the young pharoah’s clothing. Experts believe Tutankhamun died before he was 20. But in Egypt the suggestion that one of their most famous pharaohs may have had a weight problem has not been well-received.

1. A senior Egyptian antiquities official, Zahi Hawass, has disputed the claims of abnormality, saying tomb paintings show a healthy-looking, normally shaped Tutankhamun.
2. Other experts say depictions of the pharaohs were often idealised.
3. Most speculation about Tutankhamun’s death has involved political conspiracy.

Analysis of early X-rays of the mummy led some experts to conclude he was murdered by a blow to the back of his head. Poisoning has also been raised as a possibility. Nasry Iskander, an Egyptian scientist who has done extensive work on mummies, saidTutankhamun’s remains were in too poor a condition for X-rays to help much further.

Was King Tut a God?

Tutankhamun
Tutankhaten, Tutankhamen
Tutankhamun’s golden funerary mask
Pharaoh
Reign	c.  1332 – 1323 BC, New Kingdom
Predecessor	Neferneferuaten
Successor	Ay (granduncle/grandfather-in-law)
Royal titulary
Consort	Ankhesenamun (half-sister)
Children	2
Father	KV55 mummy, identified as most likely Akhenaten
Mother	The Younger Lady
Born	c.  1341 BC
Died	c.  1323 BC (aged c.  18–19 )
Burial	KV62
Dynasty	18th Dynasty

Tutankhamun ( TOO -tən-kah- MOON ), Tutankhamon or Tutankhamen ( TOO -tən- KAH -mən, -⁠men ; c. 1341 BC – c. 1323 BC ), also known as Tutankhaten, was the antepenultimate pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt, His death marked the end of the dynasty’s royal line.

Tutankhamun ascended to the throne around the age of nine and reigned until his death around the age of nineteen. The preeminent action of his reign is the countermanding of the religiopolitical changes enacted by his predecessor, Akhenaten, during the Amarna Period : he restored the traditional polytheistic form of ancient Egyptian religion, undoing the religious shift known as Atenism, and moved the royal court away from Akhenaten’s capital, Amarna,

Also, Tutankhamun was one of few kings worshipped as a deity during his lifetime; this was usually done posthumously for most pharaohs. In popular culture today, Tutankhamun is known for his vastly opulent wealth found during the 1922 discovery of his tomb, KV62, the only such tomb to date to have been found in near-intact condition.

• The discovery of his tomb is widely considered one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time.
• Since then he has been referred to colloquially as ” King Tut “.
• Tutankhamun acquired kingship during a tumultuous time period.
• Akhenaten’s Atenism had engendered nationwide destabilization, and his successor, likely Tutankhamun’s paternal older half-brother, Smenkhare, had an abruptly short reign.

This was followed by another abruptly short reign of Neferneferuaten, likely Smenkhare’s widow, Meritaten, It was under these tenuous circumstances that after Neferneferuaten’s death, Tutankhamun inherited the throne and expounded the reversal of Atenism, which involved extensive reconstruction and the reconsecration of the traditional cults and clergymen, as evidenced most eminently by the artifact known as the Restoration Stela.

1. During this time, the traditional cult of the god Amun was reestablished, and the king subsequently retitled himself from Tutankhaten to Tutankhamun.
2. In accordance with this, his wife also retitled herself from Ankhesenpaaten to Ankhesenamun,
3. Following Tutankhamun’s untimely death after a decade reign, his vizier, and perhaps granduncle, Ay, assumed the throne, likely marrying Ankhesenamun, despite Tutankhamun’s commander-in-chief, Horemheb, being designated by Tutankhamun as heir.

Ay’s reign was abruptly short, and Horemheb became pharaoh next, also possibly briefly marrying Ankhesenamun until her untimely death a couple years into Horemheb’s lengthy reign. Horemheb was able to secure the throne due to the death of Ay’s designated heir, generalissimo Nakhtmin, toward the end of Ay’s reign.

What was Howard Carter accused of?

Howard Carter stole Tutankhamun’s treasure, new evidence suggests Howard Carter, the archaeologist who discovered tomb in 1922, was long suspected by Egyptians of having helped himself to treasures before the vault was officially opened. But while rumours have swirled for generations, proof has been hard to come by.

• Gardiner showed the amulet to Rex Engelbach, the then British director of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and was dismayed to be told that it had indeed come from the tomb as it matched other examples – all made from the same mould.
• Firing off a letter to Carter, he enclosed Engelbach’s damning verdict, which reads: “The whm amulet you showed me has been undoubtedly stolen from the tomb of,”
• Gardiner told Carter: “I deeply regret having been placed in so awkward a position.”
• But he added: “I naturally did not tell Engelbach that I obtained the amulet from you.”
• The letters, now in a private collection, will be published in a from Oxford University Press, Tutankhamun and the Tomb that Changed the World
• Its author, Bob Brier, a leading Egyptologist at Long Island University, told the Observer that suspicions about Carter helping himself to treasures have long been rumoured: “But now there’s no doubt about it.”

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the discovery by Carter and his financial backer, Lord Carnarvon, of the tomb of the boy king, filled with thrones, chariots and thousands of objects needed in the next world. Over the next decade, Carter supervised their removal and transportation down the Nile to Cairo to be displayed in the Egyptian Museum. Howard Carter at the entrance to an Egyptian archaeological site in 1923. ( Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images Some Egyptologists have challenged Carter’s claim that the tomb’s treasures had been looted in antique times. In 1947, in an obscure scientific journal in Cairo, Alfred Lucas, one of Carter’s employees, reported that Carter secretly broke open the door to the burial chamber himself, before appearing to reseal it and cover the opening.

• Brier said: “They were suspected of having broken into the tomb before its official opening, taking out artefacts, including jewellery, sold after their respective deaths.
• It’s been known that Carter somehow had items, and people have suspected that he might have helped himself, but these letters are dead proof.

“He certainly never admitted it. We don’t have any official denial. But he was locked out of the tomb for a while by the Egyptian government. There was a lot of bad feeling, and they thought he was stealing things.” In his book, he writes that the Egyptians were unable to prove their suspicions and were convinced, for example, that Carter had been planning to steal a wooden head of Tutankhamun found in his possession: “The Egyptian authorities had entered and inspected Tomb No.4, which Carter and the team had used for storage of antiquities, and discovered a beautiful lifesize wooden head of Tutankhamun as a youth.

1. Brier said: “Later, we do find objects on the Egyptian antiquities market from his estate that clearly came from the tomb.”
2. Some entered museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which that it would send back to Egypt 19 objects it acquired between the 1920s and 1940s as they “can be attributed with certainty to Tutankhamun’s tomb”.
3. In his 1992 book on Carter, the late Harry James drew on Carter letters in the Griffith Institute at the University of Oxford, which refer to a row with Gardiner that led to an amulet’s return to Cairo.
4. The significance of the previously unpublished correspondence is that the accusation came from a leading expert who was actually involved in the first excavation.
5. Carter would have struggled to challenge Engelbach, who had “too much authority and really knew his stuff”, Brier said.

: Howard Carter stole Tutankhamun’s treasure, new evidence suggests

What grave did Howard Carter find

The Discovery of King Tut at The San Diego Natural History Museum 2014 At the beginning of the 20th century, some scientists thought that the Valley of the Kings had already been completely excavated. Only Howard Carter believed that there was still a sensational discovery to be made, and the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb was entirely due to his unwavering belief and sheer tenacity.

• Howard Carter’s biography as an archaeologist is remarkable.
• In 1891, at the young age of 17, he went to Egypt as an archaeological draftsman without any professional training, and there he forged an amazing career as an excavator.
• Carter became chief inspector of antiquities for upper Egypt and was highly praised for his achievements, until his career came to an abrupt end when defending Egyptian site guards in a confrontation with French tourists.

The following years were extremely tough, until a fateful encounter with the wealthy nobleman, Lord Carnarvon, changed everything. With much passion and persuasion, Carter succeeded in convincing Carnarvon that the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun must still be located somewhere in the Valley of the Kings.

• For five long years Lord Carnarvon financed Carter’s search for the lost tomb, but seemingly in vain.
• When Carnarvon finally refused to keep funding the venture, Carter persuaded him to grant just one last season of excavation.
• It worked.
• In November 1922, Carter made the sensational find that amazed the world: the final resting place of King Tutankhamun! When Carter took his first look into the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun on November 26, 1922, he was overwhelmed by the treasures he saw.

Four chambers lay in front of him, some of them filled to the roof with burial artifacts of immeasurable value. They were intended to accompany the dead pharaoh on this journey into the afterlife. Jewelry, cult objects, amulets, chests, chairs, weapons, musical instruments, and royal insignias.

1. Produced by handcraft experts and made of the most precious materials such as ebony, alabaster, precious stones – gold, and more gold.
2. Gold necklaces, gold bracelets, gold daggers, and golden shrines.
3. And in the midst of all this boundless splendour, the culmination: covered with wall paintings, the burial chamber itself containing the tomb of the Pharaoh and the death mask on the face of the mummy, images whose beauty and dignity surpassed anything ever seen before.

: The Discovery of King Tut at The San Diego Natural History Museum 2014

How long did it take Howard Carter to empty the tomb

Immortality Through Fame – Exquisite Pectoral from the Tutankhamun Exhibition in London is made of gold, inlaid with silver, glass and semiprecious stones. It depicts the king with the god Ptah and his wife, the goddess Sekhmet. © Ferne Arfin In all, it took Carter and his colleagues 10 years to document and clear out Tutankhamun’s tomb.

After Carter completed his work at the tomb in 1932, he began to write a six-volume definitive work, “A Report Upon the Tomb of Tut ‘ankh Amun.” Carter died before he was able to finish, passing away at his home Kensington, London, on March 2, 1939. The mysteries of the young pharaoh’s tomb live on: As recently as March 2016, radar scans indicated that there may yet be hidden chambers not yet opened within King Tut’s tomb.

Ironically, Tutankhamun, whose obscurity during his own time allowed his tomb to be forgotten, has now become one of the most well-known pharaohs of ancient Egypt. Having traveled around the world as part of an exhibit, King Tut’s body once again rests in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

What did Howard Carter do with Tut’s mummy

Howard Carter was a British archaeologist. He discovered Tut’s tomb in 1922 after many years of futile searching. Carter’s men removed the mummy’s head and cut off almost every major joint to remove the golden adornments. Was this answer helpful?