Reign of Tutankhamun
Tutankhamun reigned for about nine years, died at nineteen, and mattered chiefly because his tomb was not robbed. He came to the throne around 1332 BC as a child, in the wreckage of his father's religious revolution. Akhenaten had closed the temples of Amun, moved the capital to a new city in the desert, and made the sun disc Aten the only object of worship, and the country had spent seventeen years with its priesthoods dispossessed and its foreign policy neglected. The boy was named Tutankhaten and changed it within a few years to Tutankhamun, which is the whole policy in one word. His restoration stele records the temples reopened, the priesthoods re-endowed, and the land put back in order, and the work was presumably done by the officials Ay and Horemheb, who ruled after him. He died around 1323 BC of causes still argued over — a fractured leg with signs of infection, malaria, and the effects of a family tree with repeated brother-sister marriage, evident in his skeleton. He was buried in a small tomb, apparently not made for a king, and the entrance was covered by debris from later construction and by workmen's huts. Howard Carter found it in November 1922 after six seasons of digging and reported seeing wonderful things through a hole in the door. It contained over 5,000 objects and is the only substantially intact royal burial found in Egypt. The excavation took ten years, and the discovery reshaped both Egyptology and Egypt's argument about who owns its past.
- Year: 1332 BCE
- Category: Political
