Tutankhamun was nineteen when he died — around 1323 BC, at the height of ancient Egypt’s power. A teenage pharaoh, supposedly a living god, dead before he could even grow a full beard. For over three thousand years, nobody knew why. Then, in the twentieth century, scientists slid his mummy into X-ray machines and CT scanners — and what they found launched one of history’s greatest murder mysteries.
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Ghosts & Curses·1/3·1′
The place
Valley of the Kings
The Boy King's Murder Mystery
Who killed Tutankhamun — and silenced his widow forever?
New Kingdom (c. 1323 BC)Valley of the Kings
Moral of the Story
“Power silences the powerless, and the desperate letters of a young queen echo across millennia as witness to political cruelty.”
Characters
T
TutankhamunA
Ankhesenamun (Queen)A
Ay (Vizier)H
Horemheb (General)P
Prince Zannanza (Hittite)S
Suppiluliuma I (Hittite King)Source
Hawass, Z. et al. "Ancestry and Pathology in King Tutankhamun's Family," JAMA 303:7 (2010); Hittite archives, Bogazkoy