New Evidence Suggests That King Tutankhamun May Have Been A More Fearsome Ruler Than Once Believed
For 100 years, Tutankhamun has been known to the world as the boy king — a young, inexperienced ruler, who was still a child when he came to the throne. And even with all of our knowledge today, Tutankhamun is presented as frail, sickly, and possibly deformed. But now new evidence has emerged that suggests the ancient Egyptian pharaoh may have been a fearsome warrior in his own right.
The boy king
Thanks to the work of modern archaeologists, we have thousands of relics from the tomb of Tutankhamun, who died more than 3,000 years ago. But until recently, we knew little about his life. Now archaeologists have uncovered a series of stone carvings that paint a very different picture of the boy king.
Howard Carter
Before his tomb was discovered in 1922, Tutankhamun was little more than a footnote in ancient history, known to few outside the realms of Egyptology. But all that changed when Howard Carter, an archaeologist working in collaboration with the British aristocrat Lord Carnarvon, began digging in the Valley of the Kings.
Lord Carnarvon
While wintering abroad in Cairo for the sake of his health, Carnarvon had begun studying Egyptology as a way to pass the time.This hobby soon developed into a full-blown passion, and he began funding digs to search for ancient treasures. In 1907 Carter joined the team, tasked with supervising excavations in Thebes.
The Valley of the Kings
According to reports, the pair quickly formed a bond. And in 1914 they traveled to the Valley of the Kings on the western banks of the Nile River. Although some archaeologists had dismissed the idea that further tombs were waiting to be discovered at the site, Carnarvon and Carter still held out hope for something special.
