A boy on the throne after a revolution
Tutankhamun was born Tutankhaten, “living image of the Aten”, in the years when King Akhenaten had turned Egypt’s religion around the worship of the Aten, the sun disc. He came to the throne at about nine years old. A child could not rule alone, so the real decisions were taken by the officials around him, among them Ay, who would succeed him.
His reign marks the return to the old order. Early in it, the king changed his name to Tutankhamun, “living image of Amun”, honouring Amun, the god of Thebes and of the great temple of Karnak. A stone inscription known as the Restoration Stela, set up in his name, describes the temples of the old gods as abandoned and announces their restoration; when exactly it was carved is debated.
A family tree written in DNA
Who were his parents? For a long time nobody could say. In 2010 a team led by Zahi Hawass published a DNA study of royal mummies in the journal JAMA. It identified Tutankhamun’s father as the man buried in KV55, very probably Akhenaten, and his mother as a mummy known as the Younger Lady. The two were full brother and sister, both children of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye.
The identification of the KV55 mummy as Akhenaten is not certain, so the family tree is very probable rather than proven. What the study does show is a royal family that married close relatives, which may help explain the health problems found in Tutankhamun’s body. How he died at about 19 is still debated, and has a story of its own.
A minor king with a small tomb
By the standards of his dynasty, Tutankhamun left little: a short reign, few monuments, no great conquests. Even his tomb was modest. KV62, in the Valley of the Kings, has four small rooms, and only the burial chamber is decorated. On its north wall his successor Ay performs the Opening of the Mouth, the ritual that gave the dead the use of their senses in the afterlife, dressed as a priest in a leopard skin. Showing the new king in this role was unusual, and it was probably a way for Ay to present himself as the rightful heir.
So why is this king, of all kings, the one everyone knows? The answer has almost nothing to do with his life.
1922: the tomb nobody had emptied
Almost every royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings was robbed in antiquity. Tutankhamun’s was entered too, twice, shortly after his burial; officials tidied it and sealed it again. Then the entrance disappeared under debris and stayed hidden for most of the following three thousand years. When Howard Carter, working for Lord Carnarvon, found the first step down to it on 4 November 1922, he had found the best-preserved royal tomb ever discovered in the valley.
It held a whole royal burial: shrines, coffins, chariots, furniture, jewellery and the gold mask, more than five thousand objects in all, catalogued as 5,398 items. No royal burial this complete had been found in Egypt before. The discovery and the tomb’s modest size have a page of their own: Tutankhamun’s tomb.
Gold, newspapers and a legend
The find came at the right moment for the modern world: photography, newspapers and, soon, cinema spread the images everywhere. When Lord Carnarvon died in 1923, a few months after the tomb was opened, some newspapers spread the story of a curse on those who disturbed the king. It is a legend with no evidence behind it, but it kept the name in the headlines for years.
Later, travelling exhibitions turned the fame into a phenomenon. “Treasures of Tutankhamun” toured seven American cities between 1976 and 1979 and is reported to have drawn about eight million visitors. In other words, Tutankhamun became famous in the twentieth century, through his objects, his gold and the way they were shown.
Where to see it
Since November 2025 the Grand Egyptian Museum, near the Giza pyramids, shows almost the entire collection from the tomb together for the first time since its discovery, more than 4,500 objects including the gold mask. Tutankhamun’s mummy has stayed in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings, at Luxor. How bodies like his were prepared is part of the practice of mummification.
Sources
- Hawass, Z. et al., “Ancestry and pathology in King Tutankhamun’s family”, JAMA 303, 7 (2010).
- Griffith Institute, University of Oxford, “Tutankhamun: Anatomy of an Excavation”, 1st season (1922-1923).
- Agence France-Presse, “King Tut’s collection displayed for first time at Egypt’s grand museum” (4 November 2025).
- On the date of the Restoration Stela: W. J. Murnane and A. Dodson, cited in the scholarly debate on Tutankhamun’s early reign.
