Imagine
you were walking through the desert near the Valley of the Kings and you
find a mysterious tomb. You sneak your light to see what the tomb has in
it. You see that the tomb is full of treasures and history. Opening
the tomb gives you and many other people a look into the past.
King Tutankhamen has a long
list of family members. First we start out with his grandfather.
His grandfather King Amenholep III. Amenholep married a women named Tiy.
They had a son named Amenholep IV, who later changed his name to Akhenaten.
He was a man who had many wives. His most famous wife was Nefertiti. With
Nefertiti he had three children, which were all apparently girls. Only
two of the girls lived to be as old or older than their father. Their names
were: Meretaten and Ankhesenpaaten.
One of King Akhenaten's
other wives was a women named Kiya. She was known as being one of the king's
favorite wives besides Nefertiti. With Kiya, King Akhenaten had one child.
It was a boy! His name was Tutankhamen. After the birth of Tutankhamen
Kiya was never heard from or seen from again. Some say she might of died
during or after the birth of her son.
The death of King Akhenaten
was not very well known by any one in Egypt. It is said that he was killed.
Some say he was buried in a tomb in the desert near Amarna, but his tomb
was robbed and left very empty. The body of the king was also probably
destroyed at that time also. The tombs of Nefertiti and Kiya have not been
found.
When King Akhenaten died
Tutankhamen was not old enough to rule as king yet . So he had a regent.
The regent's name was Smenkhkare. He married one of Akhenaten's daughters
who's name was Meretaten. She was Tutankhanen's half sister. Smenkhkare
and Meretaten died childless.
When the moment came and
Tutankhamen was old enough to be pharaoh he decided to elect a wife. He
chose one of Nefertiti and Akhenaten's daughters . Her name was Ankhesenpaaten.
King Tut (as he was also referred to) was a very young king. He started
to reign as king at the age of 9. Peace was brought to Egypt during
his reign as the worship of the god Amon. Akhenaten did not worship
Amon. King Tut also restored Thebes, a sacred city to Amon, which
was made Egypt's capital again. King Tutankhamen died very young he died
at the age of 18 and he and his wife Anknesenpaaten died childless.
King Tut's tomb was discovered
in 1922 by a British archaeologist named Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon.
They found the tomb pretty much in-tact. On the tomb there were many clues
to who the person inside was. The clues also told us that he was part of
a royal family. The strange thing about the two was that it
did not talk about neither Nefertiti or Kiya, the two women who suspected
to be Tutankhamen's mother. Another thing is that King Tut's body was not
the only one in the tomb. There were also two babies in the tomb. One was
about five months old and the other one about nine months old. A theory
scientist have is that they were placed there because King Tutankhamen
and his wife Ankhesenpaaten died childless. The body of King Tut was studied
thoroughly and scientist found out that the body looked a lot like a previous
body they found. The two bodies had the same blood type. The other person
they found was Smenkhkare. Some people think they might of been brothers.
The discovery of King Tutankhamen's
tomb has been one of the most beautiful and mysterious achievements of
archeology . Our walking through this period of history gives us a glance
of the past and helps increase our hunger for knowledege of ancient Egypt.