Tutankhamen (3 page)

While it is understandable that in 1939 the eyes of the world were not focused on ancient Egypt, the lack of interest in Woolley's work is at first sight baffling, given its obvious connection to Biblical archaeology. However, three important differences distinguished the two excavations. First, unlike the anonymous servants buried in the grim death pits, Tutankhamen was a named individual: an ancient yet curiously modern young man, revealed to the Western world at a time when the West had lost so many of its own young men. The art and fashions of his age – the Late Amarna Period – fitted neatly with the art and fashions of post-war Europe, allowing him to appear both glamorously remote and reassuringly familiar. Second, while Tutankhamen was by no means the first pharaoh to be discovered – Cairo Museum already had an entire gallery full of kings – he was the first to be discovered with a vast amount of gold. Treasure, and treasure-hunting, has a universal, timeless appeal that cuts across boundaries of age, race and gender, and it seems that it was Tutankhamen's gold death mask, rather than his actual face, which so captured the public imagination. Finally, Carter's excavation was conducted under an intense media scrutiny, which ensured that, even if they wished to, the public could not forget about ongoing events in the Valley of the Kings.

In many ways this fame has been a good thing. Tutankhamen, and the study of his life and times, have brought a great deal of pleasure to many, me included. His instantly recognisable brand has proved particularly valuable to the Egyptian economy. In January 2011 tourism accounted for 11 per cent of the Egyptian national income, with visits to the Cairo Museum (home of Tutankhamen's grave goods) and the Valley of the Kings (modern Luxor: home of Tutankhamen's tomb) an important part of all itineraries.
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It is therefore an unfortunate paradox that Tutankhamen's very popularity threatens to destroy his legacy. The tourists who make their way to the Valley of the Kings disembark from vibrating, polluting coaches to breathe and perspire in his cramped tomb, causing incalculable damage to the fragile decorated walls. The negative effects of tourism – the Valley's own curse of Tutankhamen – are an ongoing and very serious problem for the Egyptian Antiquities Service (EAS), the government agency with responsibility for the care and protection of Egypt's ancient monuments.
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In response, and as a way of balancing the needs of the visitors with the needs of the conservators, the EAS has recently announced ambitious plans to build a full-sized replica of Tutankhamen's tomb in a nearby valley. This false tomb will allow visitors an ‘authentic' experience while preserving the genuine tomb.

It is sad, but perhaps predictable, that his celebrity status has resulted in some Egyptologists drawing away from Tutankhamen lest they be perceived as pandering to, exploiting or even (perish the thought) enjoying popular taste. Confessing an interest in Tutankhamen is, for a few, the equivalent to confessing a preference for television soaps over Shakespeare or musical theatre over opera, while writing about Tutankhamen may be interpreted as a venal attempt to make money, which, in the world of academia, has not always been seen as a good thing. This elitism is, however, rare. Many others have simply dismissed Tutankhamen as insignificant: a short-lived boy, weak, manipulated and unworthy of any detailed study.
He is a ‘sensitive youth, a Hamlet totally unequal to the crushing responsibilities he was called upon to bear'; a ‘youthful nonentity'; a king who simply does not deserve to serve as the representative of the Dynastic Age.
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This criticism is in part true. His was a short reign that started at a young age; much of what he accomplished must have been done under the guidance of others. However, while Tutankhamen's decade is brief when compared with the thirty-eight-year (prosperous but, perhaps, slightly dull) reign of Amenhotep III, it compares favourably with the seventeen-year (far from dull) reign of Akhenaten and the four (presumably dull: we know little about them) years of his successor Ay. Ten years, in a land where elite males had a life expectancy of approximately forty years, was a long time. While it would be going too far to regard the twenty-year-old Tutankhamen as middle-aged, he outlived many of his contemporaries, and he died a man, not a boy.

Tutankhamen's decade was far from dull. It was the turning point between the unique religious certainties of the Amarna Age and the traditional polytheism of later reigns.
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It included a change of capital city and a return to traditional royal propaganda that was reflected in the development of official art and writings. Tutankhamen's own curse is surely the early death that stopped him achieving his destiny. Had he lived for twenty more years there is a fair chance that he would have succeeded in restoring his country to its former prosperity. He may even have been hailed as the first king of the 19th Dynasty. Instead, his brief reign did not allow him sufficient time to distance himself from the ‘heresies' of his predecessors Akhenaten and Smenkhkare. Forever linked to them and their unorthodox ideas, he was deliberately excluded from the 19th Dynasty King Lists – the official record of Egypt's rulers – and effectively became a non-person. This, to a king who believed that he needed to be remembered if he was to have any hope of living beyond death, was a serious matter indeed.

Although the evidence is complex, and there are gaps in our
knowledge, there is enough archaeological and textual evidence to allow us to reconstruct Tutankhamen's reign with a fair degree of accuracy. There are many areas of scholarly disagreement – Tutankhamen's parentage being a subject of continuing, vigorous discussion even after the recent publication of DNA tests, for example – but on the whole, the bare bones of his story are agreed and we know much about his life and times. Yet alongside this orthodox and entirely satisfactory history Tutankhamen has developed a second, very different ‘history'; an intuitive, post-discovery cultural construct that makes him the subject of a whole spectrum of interpretations including murder plots, archaeological conspiracies and the occult. Modern technologies – the internet in particular – have helped these constructs to spread so that, in just ninety years, Tutankhamen has advanced from long-dead, barely remembered king to cultural phenomenon.
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This is an important contemporary, and still evolving, aspect of Tutankhamen's legacy, but conspiracies and curses sit uneasily alongside biomedical Egyptology and the forensic examination of ancient texts. I have therefore divided this book into two complementary but entirely separate sections. The first deals with the evidence for Tutankhamen's life and death. The second considers the development of the post-discovery Tutankhamen. Together they tell one complete tale.

The king of Egypt (or pharaoh: the two words are interchangeable) had many duties. As the earthly representative of the gods he was the head of the army and the civil service, and the chief priest of every state cult. But his principle, overriding duty, the duty that linked all other duties and justified his existence, was the maintenance of
maat
. The constant conflict between
maat,
the correct order of being, and its opposite
isfet,
or chaos, was fundamental to Egyptian thought.
Chaos is easy for us to understand: in ancient Egypt this concept encompassed all uncontrolled behaviour, including illness, crime and the strangeness of foreigners.
Maat
is more difficult; with no equivalent English word it is best defined as a powerful combination of truth, rightness, status quo, control and justice.

The Theban god Amen, ‘The Hidden One', smiled on the 18th Dynasty kings, allowing a series of mighty warriors (Ahmose, Tuthmosis I, Tuthmosis III) to be interspersed by monumental builders and astute diplomats (Hatshepsut, Tuthmosis IV, Amenhotep III). With an empire stretching from Nubia in the south to Syria in the north, 18th Dynasty Egypt was to all intents and purposes invincible and her kings were wealthy as Egypt's kings had never been before. The treasury was filled with gold, the granaries were overflowing and the people were peaceful and content in a land whose ancient mud-brick towns and cities were now dominated by imposing stone temples built to house the cult statues of the many gods.

Amenhotep III succeeded to the throne as the richest and most powerful person in the eastern Mediterranean world. He ruled Egypt for thirty-eight peaceful and extremely prosperous years, his reign characterised by diplomacy and great building works. A series of impressive stone temples and sumptuous mud-brick palaces made it obvious to all that Amenhotep was truly blessed by the gods. While remaining loyal to, and investing in, the traditional state deities, Amenhotep showed a growing devotion to the solar cults. At the same time, he developed an unprecedented interest in his own divinity.

Amenhotep III was succeeded by his son, Amenhotep IV. The new reign started conventionally enough, but within five years Amenhotep had made radical changes to state theology. There was now to be one main god; a faceless solar disc known as the Aten. Amenhotep changed his name to Akhenaten and retreated with his consort, Nefertiti, to worship the Aten in the purpose-built Middle Egyptian city of Amarna. It is highly likely that this is where Tutankhamen was born.
Akhenaten and Nefertiti are such strong characters, and there is so much that one can write about their deeds, beliefs and even appearance, that they threaten to overwhelm any biography of Tutankhamen.

Akhenaten ruled Egypt for seventeen years: years which are extremely ill-documented outside the claustrophobic Amarna court. The end of his reign is something of a mystery, but there is good archaeological and textual evidence to suggest that he was associated with a co-regent named Smenkhkare. It is not, however, clear who Smenkhkare was, and we do not know if he – or even she – lived long enough to enjoy an independent reign. Smenkhkare's death goes unmentioned and, after a brief period of confusion, the next historical certainty comes when, in approximately 1336 BC, the young Tutankhamen inherits the throne as the sole surviving male member of the nuclear royal family. His ten-year reign will be dedicated to erasing all obvious memory of Akhenaten's unfortunate religious experiment. His untimely death will plunge his country into a succession crisis which will cause the 18th Dynasty to fall.

The worthy conclusion is that there is indeed a purpose to all human activity, no matter how pointless it may initially seem, as:

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