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- From Pharaonic Egypt
By the Egyptian government.
http://www.sis.gov.eg/rulers/html/en18p.htm
Tutankhamun
(Nebkheprure)
1336-1327 B.C.
The 12th king of the 18th Dynasty was only eight or nine years old athis succession. His father, Smenkhkare, died at the age of 25 and thecause remains a mystery. Tutankhamun was married to Ankhesenamon, thethird daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti.
The couple originally lived at el Amarna but later moved to Memphiswhere they refurbished the apartments of Amenhotep III. The RestorationStela gives an account of his effort to stabilize the government and torestore the temples and honors of the old gods after the Amarna period.He paid the priest and palace staff from his own pockets.
He built a mortuary temple close to Medinet Habu, with two colossalstatues, but they were usurped by his successors. Tutankhamun died at theage of 19 by a head injury. He was buried in the Valley of the Kings. Twomummified fetuses were found in coffins that had been sealed by his name.These are believed to have been his children that were born prematurely.
From
http://www.neferchichi.com/tutankhamun.html
at
Neferchichi's Tomb, Pharaohs
http://www.neferchichi.com/pharaohs.html
Tutankhamun
Birth name: Tutankhaten ("Living image of the Aten")
Adopted name: Tutankhamun Heqaiunushema ("Living image of Amun, Ruler ofHeliopolis in Upper Egypt")
Throne name: Nebkheperure ("Lord of Manifestations is Re")
Rule: 1334 - 1325 BC (12th king of the 18th dynasty, New Kingdom)
Noteworthy relatives: Akhenaten (father), Kiya (mother), Nefertiti(stepmother/mother-in-law), Ankhesenamun (half-sister/wife), Smenkhkare(brother). [Check out the family tree]
THE LIFE OF KING TUT
Egypt had experienced few cultural changes for thousands of years- untilKing Tut's father Akhenaten came along and turned everything upside downand inside out! Noticing that the influential priesthood was getting toobig for its britches, he put all the priests out of work by declaringthat the old gods of Egypt no longer existed. Instead, there was now onlyone god, the Aten, and it was the sun itself! Since the old religion wasgone, the temples dedicated to the gods were closed down and the priestswere suddenly unemployed.
Akhenaten moved the capital of Egypt from Thebes to a new city calledAkhetaten ("the Horizon of the Aten") were he spent most of his timewriting poetry to the Aten and frolicking with his family. He neglectedmost of his pharaonic duties, leaving his vizier Ay and the militarygeneral Horemheb to deal with all that official stuff. Public resentmenttoward Akhenaten was growing, so Ay urged Akhenaten to appoint aco-regent (another pharaoh to rule simultaneously) who would go back toThebes and keep the people in line. So Akhenaten's son Smenkhkare (whosemother was the minor queen Kiya) was married to one of his andNefertiti's daughters, Merytaten, and together they returned to Thebes tohopefully ease the escalating tensions.
The historical record gets a bit confusing here, because at around thesame time Nefertiti is no longer mentioned. Then, within a just a coupleyears, Akhenaten, Kiya, Smenkhkare, and Merytaten are all dead too.
So at this point, all the powerful royals who were associated with theAten and all the other dreadful changes that Akhenaten brought about weresuddenly dead. Only the younger members of the royal family remained,including the next male heir to the throne: Tutankhaten, the very young(like eight years or so) son of Akhenaten and his lesser queen Kiya.
It was the perfect time to set things back to normal! So with the supportof Horemheb and the unemployed priests, the vizier Ay quickly arrangedfor Ankhesenpaaten (one of Akhenaten and Nefertiti's young daughters) andTutankhaten to be married, and made Tut the next pharaoh.
Under influence of the priests, the religion was restored and templeswere reopened. Tutankhaten and Ankhesenpaaten had their names changed toTutankhamun and Ankhesenamun shortly after Tut became pharaoh. This wasto show that the Aten was "out" and Amun (the king of the gods) was "in!"Ay continued his job as vizier to the king, and still was making all thedecisions- after all, Tut was only a small child and not exactly capableof running an entire civilization.
Tutankhamun died at a very young age- only 18 or so. He had no male heirsto take his place. Even though Ankhesenamun had been pregnant twice, bothbabies were girls and they died before birth. Soon after Tut's death,Ankhesenamun remarried the vizier Ay and he became the new pharaoh. Seemslike a strange move for a grieving widow, doesn't it?
Archaeologists agree that she did not want to marry Ay but that she wasforced to do it. She sent a letter to the King of the Hittites, begginghim to send a prince for her to marry. In the letter, she said "I don'twant to marry a commoner. I am very afraid." The Hittite prince was sent,but he was murdered right outside the edge of Egypt. Shortly after Aymarried Ankhesenamun, she too was dead, and then Ay's favorite wifebecame the queen!
King Tut appears to have died from a head wound. Was it an accident? Orwas he murdered by his scheming vizier, Ay? There is a lot of evidence tosupport a murder: Ay had always been ambitious and power-hungry. He musthave enjoyed running Egypt during Akhenaten's reign, and probably wantedto stay pharaoh. As Tut got older, he might have started to want to makehis own decisions. If Tut ever had a son, that boy would be the nextpharaoh... so Tut had to be killed before he could have a male heir. Theonly way Ay could stay in charge would be to become the husband ofAnkhesenamun. So he did, then killed her too. Every last member of Tut'sfamily was now out of the picture! But Ay only reigned for 4 years- bythis time he was very old. The military general Horemheb replaced Ay aspharaoh.
KING TUT'S TOMB
Despite the interesting history of Tut's family, he was a veryinsignificant king in Egypt's history. He built no spectacular monuments,nor did he wage any major wars. Tutankhamun's claim to fame is his intacttomb, which was discovered in 1922 by an English archaeologist namedHoward Carter.
Tutankhamun was the only pharaoh whose tomb hadn't yet been discoveredand Carter had spent several years looking for it with no luck. Hisdigging expeditions had been paid for by Lord Carnarvon, a richEnglishman who was interested in ancient Egypt. After five diggingseasons without any luck, Carnarvon was starting to lose hope but Cartermanaged to get him to pay for one last excavation. Their final chancewould be to dig in an area near the tomb of Ramses VI.
As luck would have it, Carter arrived at the dig site one morning to findthe digging crew strangely quiet. A young Egyptian boy, who had beenhired to carry large clay jars of drinking water, had made an accidentalbut important find. While kicking aside some sand to prop up the jars sothey wouldn't spill over, he had struck something hard. It turned out tobe the first step leading downward to Tut's tomb! ...
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