Tutankhamun

Before 1922, the reign of Smenkhare’s successor Tutankhamun (c. 1334 – 1325) was a shadowy period in the chronology of Egypt. There were even doubts that the king existed at all, as the names of all the Amarna kings (from Akhenaten to Ay) were not included on the king lists which make up such a large part of our knowledge of the period. Even after the discovery of his tomb, his parentage remains unsure, though he was probably the son of Akhenaten and Kiya, a minor wife. He certainly spent some of his childhood at Akhetaten, as some of the relics found in his tomb by Howard Carter show the king there as a boy.

It is probable that, by the end of Akhenaten’s reign, some people in the upper echelons of government had probably realised that the monotheistic experiment was doomed to failure, and that a return to orthodoxy would be desirable.

Tutankhaten (as he was at the time) was crowned in Memphis, the traditional capital of Egypt, which had been returned to its former status by Smenkhare, at the age of 8 or 9. At this time, of course, he himself would have held very little power (if any at all), as this would have been in the hands of the two leading courtiers, Ay and Horemheb. It was they who would have decided that, in year 2 of the young king’s reign, the names of himself and his wife should be changed to Tutankhamun and Ankhsenamun respectively. The ditching of the -aten suffix showed that a return to the orthodoxy was not far off. To set these changes in stone, building works were commissioned at Karnak and Luxor (both of which would later be usurped by Horemheb). There were also attempts to re-establish control over the more far-flung areas of the empire, with military expeditions being mounted in Palestine and Nubia.

Tutankhamun died young – forensic analysis and the seals on the wine jars found in his tomb both suggest that he died at about 17 years of age. X-rays have shown that a small sliver of bone had entered the cranial cavity, which may well have caused his death. Whether this was caused by a blow, indicating murder, or by accident (such as a fall from a chariot), it is hard to say.

However, when considering Tutankhamun’s fate, it is worth bearing in mind what happened next, as it sheds an interesting, and not altogether flattering, light upon the minds of the men around the boy king. Following his death, the king’s wife wrote to King Suppiluliumas I of the Hittites to ask for a prince to be sent to Egypt so that she might marry him and therefore ensure that the royal bloodline was continued. After initial scepticism, the Hittite monarch eventually sent a Prince Zannanza to Egypt to marry Tut’s widow. Barely had he got across the border though, when he was murdered. The finger of blame for this can easily be placed at the door of Horemheb. Being the commander of the army, and a likely candidate to become pharaoh if the royal bloodline did fail, he had both the means and the motive to carry out such a thing.

Next: The end of the 18th dynasty