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Was King Tut Murdered? (Part 2)

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Tutankhamen became the pharaoh of Egypt when he was just ten years old. The previous pharaoh -- who was probably Tutankhamen's father -- had built a new city in the desert and founded a new religion, but "King Tut" soon returned to Egypt's traditional capital, Thebes, and resumed the worship of the old gods. He also married a girl named Ankhesenamen, who was about his age (and probably his half-sister). Bob Brier, author of the book "The Murder of Tutankhamen," believes that all of these decisions were made for the boy king by Egypt's powerful vizier, Aye.

We have no way of knowing how Tutankhamen felt about the abandonment of his childhood home and religion, but his marriage seems to have been a very happy one. Paintings and objects in the Tutankhamen's tomb show the affection between the young husband and wife. Ankhesenamen offers her husband flowers; Tutankhamen pours perfume into his wife's hands. Also found in the tomb were the mummies of two fetuses, apparently children miscarried by Ankhesenamen. It seems Tutankhamen and his wife had no surviving children.

At the age of eighteen, Tutankhamen suddenly died. There are no historical records explaining the cause or circumstances of his death. According to Brier, X-rays show that the young pharaoh might have been killed by a blow to the head, although this is not certain. More suspicion is raised by what happened after Tutankhamen's death. His widow sent desperate messages to the king of the Hittites -- Egypt's enemies -- begging him to let her marry one of his sons. She stated that she was afraid. She also said that she "refused to marry a servant." Brier believes that the servant she referred to was Aye, who wanted to marry her in order to establish his own claim to the throne.

The Hittite king did send one of his sons to marry Ankhesenamen, but the young prince was murdered on the way at the order of Egypt's highest general, Horemheb. The evidence suggests that poor Ankhesenamen ended up marrying Aye. What happened to her next is not known. Aye became pharaoh of Egypt. After his death he was succeeded as pharaoh by Horemheb, who did his best to erase the memories of Tutankhamen and Aye from history. He was so successful that very little was known of Tutankhamen until the rediscovery of the boy king's almost-intact tomb in 1922.

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