Ancient Egypt · c. 1332–1323 BCE; tomb found 1922

How Did King Tut Die? Tutankhamun and His Tomb

By the Aurelius editorial team · 3 min read · Updated 15 October 2026

Last time: Akhenaten replaced Egypt's gods with the sun disk, and after his death his city was abandoned.

On 26 November 1922, the British archaeologist Howard Carter made a small hole in a sealed doorway in the Valley of the Kings, in Egypt. He held up a candle. Behind him stood Lord Carnarvon, the rich man who paid for the dig. Carnarvon asked whether he could see anything. For a moment, Carter could not speak. He was looking into the tomb of Tutankhamun, a boy who had ruled Egypt more than 3,000 years before.

Born into a revolution

The boy in the tomb was born around 1341 BCE as Tutankhaten, “living image of the Aten”, probably in Amarna. Amarna was the desert capital of Akhenaten, the king who had replaced Egypt's old gods with one god, the Aten, the disk of the sun.

DNA tests published in 2010 suggest that Tutankhaten's father was the man buried in tomb KV55, very likely Akhenaten. The tests also suggest that his mother was a full sister of that man.

Tutankhaten became king around 1332 BCE, at about eight or nine years old. He was married to Akhenaten's daughter Ankhesenpaaten. Because the king was a child, real power was in the hands of older advisers, above all the official Ay and the general Horemheb.

Undoing his father's work

A few years into the reign, the young king and queen changed their names to Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun. The new names honoured Amun, the king of the gods, whom Akhenaten had rejected. The court left Amarna. A stela, a carved stone slab, was set up at Karnak. It described a land in crisis: the temples were abandoned, and the gods had turned away from Egypt. It announced that the gods and their temples would be restored.

Tutankhamun ruled for about nine or ten years. He was not a great conqueror or builder. He matters in history because he was king when Egypt returned to the old order.

How did he die?

Tutankhamun died around 1323 BCE, aged about eighteen or nineteen. In 1968, an X-ray found small pieces of bone inside his skull. This started a theory that he was murdered. But later CT scans showed that the damage most likely happened during embalming, or when Carter examined the body.

The 2010 DNA study of Tutankhamun found a broken left thigh bone that had not healed. It also found signs of bone disease in his feet, and DNA of the parasite that causes severe malaria. The study's authors concluded that bone disease and malaria most likely killed him, perhaps after he broke his leg. Others have suggested a chariot accident. There is no proof he was murdered, and there is no single answer.

“Wonderful things”

Tutankhamun was buried in a small tomb, KV62, which was possibly made for someone else. Robbers broke in soon after but were caught, and the tomb was sealed again. About two centuries later, workmen were cutting the tomb of a later king, Ramses VI. They dumped rubble, broken rock, and built huts over the entrance of KV62. That hid it.

Howard Carter had searched the Valley for years, with money from the Earl of Carnarvon. On 4 November 1922, his workmen found a step. Three weeks later Carter looked inside by candlelight. In his book he describes “strange animals, statues, and gold—everywhere the glint of gold.” His famous reply to Carnarvon, “wonderful things”, also comes from the book. His own notebook for that day records something plainer: “Yes, it is wonderful.”

Clearing the tomb took Carter ten years: it held more than 5,000 objects. They included chariots, trumpets and a lock of hair from Tutankhamun's grandmother, Tiye. There were also two tiny coffins holding babies who were born dead, probably Tutankhamun's daughters. The famous gold mask was found on the king's mummy in 1925.

The curse that wasn't

On 5 April 1923, Lord Carnarvon died in Cairo of blood poisoning, after a mosquito bite became infected. Carnarvon had made a deal with The Times newspaper, which gave it the only right to report on the dig. Other newspapers were shut out. They filled the gap with stories of a pharaoh's curse.

No curse was found written in Tutankhamun's tomb. Most of the people who were there when it was opened lived for many more years. Carter himself died in London in 1939, seventeen years later. The tomb's real legacy was different. It was a royal burial that was almost complete, and it showed the world what the richest tombs had held.

In their own words

“…as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold—everywhere the glint of gold.”

Howard Carter, The Tomb of Tut.ankh.Amen, vol. 1, ch. 5, 1923

Written with A. C. Mace for publication a year after the discovery. The book has Carter answer “Yes, wonderful things”; his own journal for 26 November 1922 records “Yes, it is wonderful.”

Why it happened

• Akhenaten's religious revolution had disrupted temples, priests and the economy.
• A child on the throne left power with experienced officials who favoured the old order.
• Rubble and workmen's huts from a later royal tomb hid the entrance to KV62.

What happened next

• Amun and the traditional gods were restored, and Akhenaten's memory was condemned. Read the story →
• Tutankhamun's general Horemheb became king and was followed by the family of Ramses I. Read the story →
• The 1922 discovery set off a worldwide craze for Egypt in design, film and fashion.

Why it still matters

Tutankhamun's complete burial treasure went on display together for the first time at the Grand Egyptian Museum near the Giza pyramids, which formally opened in November 2025. The gold mask, the coffins and thousands of objects Carter catalogued now share one building.

Connected stories

• Akhenaten and Nefertiti: The Sun-Disk Revolution: Tutankhamun's reign was spent undoing his father's religious revolution.
• Mummies: Seventy Days to Eternity: His mummy, canopic shrine and coffins are the most complete royal burial ever found.
• The Rosetta Stone: Cracking the Code of the Pharaohs: Carter could read the names in the tomb thanks to Champollion's decipherment a century earlier.

Sources

• Howard Carter and A. C. Mace, The Tomb of Tut.ankh.Amen, vol. 1 (1923)
• Nicholas Reeves, The Complete Tutankhamun (1990; 2nd ed. 2022)
• Zahi Hawass et al., Ancestry and Pathology in King Tutankhamun's Family, JAMA 303 (2010)
• Joyce Tyldesley, Tutankhamun: The Search for an Egyptian King (2012)

Images are credited under each picture. Paintings and photographs come from public collections via Wikimedia Commons; scenes with no surviving image are marked as illustrations.