Was King Tut Murdered? (Part 1)

Was King Tut murdered? That question is posed by Bob Brier's 1998 book "The Murder of Tutankhamen." Tutankhamen lived -- and died -- 3,000 years ago, and a later pharaoh tried to erase him from Egyptian history. Until the rediscovery of his tomb early in this century, little was known about Tutankhamen. Even today, it's difficult to piece together his tale, but Brier believes there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Tutankhamen was a victim of foul play.

We don't know for sure who Tutankhamen's parents were. He was probably the son of the pharaoh Akhenaten and his secondary wife, Kiya. Egyptian kings often had more than one wife at a time, and Akhenaten's most important wife, or "Great Wife," was the famous beauty Nefertiti. Apparently Akhenaten and Nefertiti had six daughters (one of whom may also have become Akhenaten's wife).

In a strange departure from tradition, artists of Akhenaten's day portrayed their pharaoh with female characteristics -- wide hips, large breasts. It's not clear if this was a reflection of reality or some sort of symbolism. Akhenaten and his daughters were also shown with very long heads, fingers and toes. Brier explains that they may have suffered from a genetic disorder called Marfan's Syndrome. (Compounding the mystery, even Nefertiti is sometimes shown with these deformities.)

But perhaps it isn't so strange that Akhenaten's portraits depart from tradition. The pharaoh himself certainly was no traditionalist. Early in his reign he renounced Egypt's gods and established a new religion based around the worship of just one god, represented as the Aten, or sun disk. He also abandoned the traditional cities and palaces of the pharaohs and moved his family to a remote spot in the desert, where he built a new city in an area now called Amarna. There, in splendid isolation, the pharaoh devoted himself to his family and his god, while his neglected nation began to fall apart.

Tutankhamen spent his early years in Amarna and probably knew little of the outside world. His mother seems to have died giving birth to him. When Tutankhamen was just ten years old, Akhenaten also died. Young, inexperienced Tutankhamen was now the pharaoh of Egypt. He quickly abandoned Amarna, returned to Egypt's traditional capital, Thebes, and resumed the worship of the old gods. He also married his half-sister Ankhesenamen, who was about his age. Brier believes that all of these decisions were made for the boy king by Egypt's powerful vizier, Aye.