No one knows how the boy king died
An x-ray from 1968 found inter-cranial bone fragments, prompting the theory that he was murdered with a blow to the head. However this damage seemed to be the result of the modern unwrapping.
In 2013, because parts of the chest wall and ribs are missing, a theory emerged that the king had died in a a chariot accident. But when the body was photographed at the time of Carter’s excavation in 1926, the chest wall was still intact. The damaged chest wall seems to have been inflicted by robbers during the theft of the beaded collar.
It’s also possible the young king died from natural causes. Some think he contracted malaria, and he is likely to have had a bone disease or an inherited blood disease.
He was not always called Tutankhamun
At birth, he was named Toutankhaton, meaning ‘living image of Aton’, referring to the sun god. When he ascended the throne, he changed his name to Tutankhamun, meaning ‘living image of Amon’ – the king of the Gods. This may have been to disassociate with the reign of his father, King Akhenaten.
Akhenaten had tried to shift the culture away from Egypt’s traditional religion of polytheistic worship, which had been unpopular. After his death, his monuments were dismantled and hidden and his name excluded from the king lists. Perhaps it’s no surprise his son wanted to keep his distance.
The Egyptians didn’t even call him Tutankhamun anyway
Egyptian kings had five names, and the last two were the most important – the prenomen and the nomen. These were the names written on monuments. So, although we know him by his nomen, Tutankhamun, the Egyptians knew him by his prenomen: Nebkheperure.
He was surrounded by jostling political advisers
Tutankhamun’s father died when he was 7, leaving his young son to rule from the age of about 9 until 18. The youth of the ‘boy king’ was taken advantage of by several powerful viziers, his high-ranking political advisers.
One of these was Ay, the possible father of Nefertiti, who was Tutankhamun’s mother. It was Ay’s idea to distance the new rule from the unpopular changes made by King Akhenaten, and he reverted the kingdom back to the old religion and made Tutankhamun change his name. The military commander Horemheb was also a powerful influence.
Memory of his reign was obliterated after his death
Tutankhamun’s death brought an end to his bloodline, as his two daughters didn’t reach infancy. His powerful adviser, the Grand Vizier Ay, ruled for four years, followed by the army chief, Horemheb.
Horemheb, the last king of the Eighteenth Dynasty, went about tarnishing Tutankhamun’s legacy, and replaced Tutankhamun’s name with his own on many monuments. He also made sure Tutankhamun’s resting place was plain and unadorned. In doing so Horemheb inadvertently granted Tutankhamun immortality, as his tomb escaped the eyes of grave robbers, and was the most intact tomb ever discovered by modern men, making it, and the boy King himself, famous around the world, and starting a craze for all things Egyptian. King Tut is now the most famous pharaoh that ever ruled.