Tutankhamun, or King Tut as he is often called today, was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who was buried in a lavish tomb filled with gold artifacts in the Valley of the Kings near modern-day Luxor. His tomb was discovered in 1922 by an archaeological team led by British Egyptologist Howard Carter.
Today he is also sometimes called the “boy-king” because he ascended the throne at age 9 or 10 in the 14th century B.C. He died about a decade later. His treasure-filled tomb was discovered mostly intact, which is extraordinary given that most of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings had been looted in ancient times.
The discovery of his tomb in 1922 attracted worldwide attention and turned King Tut into a household name. “It’s difficult to imagine the past century without Tutankhamun and the discovery of that time-capsule tomb,” Christina Riggs (opens in new tab), a history professor at Durham University in England, wrote in her book “Treasured: How Tutankhamun Shaped a Century (opens in new tab)” (Atlantic Books, 2021).
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