A century ago, archaeologist Howard Carter stumbled across the tomb of KingTut. Carter’s life was never the same. Neither was the young pharaoh’s afterlife.
Tutankhamun assumed power around 1334 B.C., when he was about 10 years old. His reign lasted nearly a decade until his untimely demise. Although a minor figure among Egyptian pharaohs, Tutankhamun is one of the few whose richly appointed burial place was found largely intact.
Clues from Tutankhamun’s mummy and tomb items boost his physical standing, says Brier, of Long Island University in Brookville, N.Y. The young pharaoh might even have participated in warfare. X-rays of the recovered mummy from the 1960s show no signs of a misshapen ankle that would have caused a limp. Neither did CT images examined in 2005 by the Egyptian Mummy Project, headed by Egyptologist and former Egyptian Minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawass.
Whether or not the boy king limped through life, the discovery and study of his mummy made it clear that he died around age 19, on the cusp of adulthood. Yet Tut’s cause of death still proves elusive.malaria, as well as the tissue-destroying bone disorder Later pharaohs omitted from written records any mentions of Akhenaten and Tutankhamun. Tut’s tomb was treated just as dismissively. Huts of craftsmen working on the tomb of King Ramses VI nearly 200 years after Tut’s death were built over the stairway leading down to Tutankhamun’s nearby, far smaller tomb. Limestone chips from the construction littered the site.
Evidence points to workers repurposing many objects from other people’s tombs for Tutankhamun. Even then, time ran out. Tutankhamun’s sarcophagus may originally have been made for Smenkare, a mysterious individual who some researchers identify as the boy king’s half brother. Little is known about Smenkare, who possibly reigned for about a year after Akhenaten’s death, just before Tutankhamun, Brier says. But Smenkare’s tomb has not been found, leaving the sarcophagus puzzle unsolved.
But four of five remote sensing studies conducted inside Tutankhamun’s tomb have found no evidence of a hidden tomb. Nefertiti, like Smenkare, remains a mystery.Carter’s stunning discovery occurred as Egyptians were protesting British colonial rule and helped fuel that movement. Among the actions that enraged Egyptian officials: Carter and his financial backer, a wealthy British aristocrat named Lord Carnarvon, sold exclusive newspaper coverage of the excavation toof London.
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