Tutan Khaman:

The child king untimely thrown into the darkness of death

by Amal HEWAVISSENTI

The eighteen-year-old Pharaonic child king who flourished as the sun god in the Egyptian sky 3,000 years ago, was suddenly thrown, for some unexplained reason, into the depths of darkness with his premature death in which he lay mummified till he was discovered 90 years ago.

The how and why this legendary child king fell prey to the premature and tragic death is a mystery that baffles us the more we think about it. The most momentous events of his life are revitalised on highly decorated altars, well carved chairs, decorous chests of drawers and stone tablets found intact in his tomb.

Unfortunately history does not even draw an outline of how the kingship fell on him and the vital details of his parents are hidden under a blanket of haze. What we know of him has come from epigraphs, unmatched paintings and other royal articles found in his tomb excavated 90 years ago.

The most marked feature in his identity is that he had 'royal blood' in him which had linked him to the royal lineage consequently rendering him well deserved of the kingship as the successor to the powerful king Akhenaton.

The general picture of Tutan Khaman shows an immature child king royally married to an equally young inexperienced princess and maneuvred by a powerful, experienced and highly influential hand from behind. The pictorial evidence from his tomb shows him to be a sportive prince (a king) who had centred much of his interest on hunting or chasing animals with his young queen.

The impression conveyed by his mummified body and all the priceless items used and loved by him evoke mysterious feelings mixed with a sense of awe, and takes us to the grandeur and majesty that once touched the Egyptian palace.

This youth in a way can be easily identified as an ordinary youth who valued living with nature and was honoured to be the sole messenger of the sun god Re...on earth. This young Pharaoh was a symbol of youthful dynamism and he made the most of it as he was at the top of supreme royal power at the time.

His link to the royal blood

We know that for centuries, the Egyptian dynasties flourished only to perish without trace - to perish with more accelerated pace than they rose to power. After the 15th century BC the subsequent regimes initiated by Tutmos, the third were characterised by turbulence, upheaval and rapid decline.

In other words, state affairs frequently came under operation against the backdrop of increasing instability and internal unrest and uprisings were the order of the day. This is exactly what the Pharaoh King Akhenaton had to face during his reign lulled by his own dreams and fantasies.

Akhenaton first oppressed people by declaring and forcing a new religion on them and by cancelling age-old beliefs customs and rituals.

This use of power without restraint enraged the priests who had to run the gauntlet for having lost their limitless privileges to the newly introduced religion and they in turn protestingly campaigned for a change to undermine the kingdom.

To add to the unstable future of the Kingdom Akhenaton's death left the kingdom without a prospective successor to the throne because he had not been blessed with the much needed male child and the inevitable question as to the successor to the throne arose amidst numerous intrigues in the palace.

With the deaths of the two elder daughters Akhenaton's third and youngest daughter Ankhezenpaton was given in marriage to Akhenaton's blood relation, Tutan Khaman who then stood legitimate heir to the Egyptian throne.

This royal child marriage was brought to pass either during Akhenaton's lifetime or immediately after his death to lawfully licence him to have right to the kingship as was the Egyptian custom.

Nothing, however, is revealed about when this child marriage took place or the nature of the blood relationship Tutan Khaman had with his uncle, King Akhenaton.

Moreover, the royal palace at Tel el Amran must have been a place full of intrigues and invisible influences because the royal couple was much too inexperienced and immature to politically control the kingdom.

Most probably, the influential man behind the child king was a head priest called Aiy who had regularly been in the palace and had exclusive ties with Akhenaton and the royal supreme.

He undoubtedly guided and manipulated Tutan Khaman in the political administration but presumably was having his own ambition to rise to power by means of a (weak) child king in due course.

Aiy was indeed privy to everything in the palace of Tel el Amran and as the paintings in Tutan Khaman's tomb show, he was fully in charge of the responsibility of successful completion of Tutan Khaman's funeral.

He might have been awaiting the ideal opportunity to declare himself the King of Egypt and strangely enough, we can find a written nomination of him as the successor to Tutan Khaman in the latter's tomb.

In any case, Tutan Khaman's period of rule must have been full to the brim with confusion, conspiracies and manipulations without his knowledge because the most powerful head priest was having his eyes on the throne.

His lifestyle

From the evidence left of ancient Pharaohs, it is pretty obvious that their inborn nature never was distinguished by human kindness or sympathy but was the symbol of inhuman traits coupled with use of total power.

Yet, in perfect contrast, the decorative articles and furniture discovered in the tomb of Tutan Khaman clearly imply that he was a ruler highly sensitive to the art and concepts of love and kindness. No convincing picture at all can be formed of his political or religious theories or what plan he had in mind to expand and develop Egyptian kingdom.

However, the artist who deftly recreated Tutan Khaman and scenes from his life, has been able to shed enough light on the King's extreme passion for domestic life and youthful pleasures.

The fragmented poetry and artists representations on tablets, furniture and walls of the tomb bespeak Tutan Khaman's romantic moments with the queen his appetite for choosing and hunting animals and other simple habits peculiar to an eighteen-year-old boy and a sixteen-year-old girl. But much has yet to be explored as to what he did and who he was.

His period of rule has been proved to be six or seven years and during this time, he received many priceless gifts from some tribal chiefs of Sudan and Syria who were under his rule. Pictures in his tomb show him sitting on his chariot and shooting prisoners of war with his bow. This clearly shows that even he was not a perfect exception from the typical pharaoh.

Passion and flair for hunting

A drawing on a fan kept on his stone coffin shows Tutan Khaman hunting geese for feathers and on the other side of the fan he is seen returning victorious after hunting while two of his entourage are carrying two hunted geese.

Many of the carvings and paintings found in the tomb portray him engaged in sports, archery training, hunting and riding the chariot. As a felicitation to his flair for archery, many bows and arrows were kept in the tomb.

The child king is often shown sitting on the hunting chariot aiming the bow and accompanied by an excellent pack of hounds who catch jungle fowl. Another painting in the tomb features a hunting scene where Tutan Khaman is piercing a lion with a spear with the help of his hounds who were exclusively featured in hunting scenes.

Another painting shows the King, with the lion's appearance, trampling foreign enemies on the ground and the King is shown to keep African and Asian Kings under his feet with greater dynamism.

Even in bottle scenes, the brutal hounds tear the King's enemies apart and the King seated on the fast moving chariot drawn by high power horses, is chasing all the animals, even lions, on the desert. The deathly fright marked on the running animals is also clearly shown.

Love for the Queen

Tutan Khaman limitlessly loved and respected his queen, Ankhezenpaton and carved her name and extremely charming figure virtually on all the priceless furniture found in his tomb.

It is rightly assumed that he respected her because it was she who indirectly blessed him with the Kingship through the marriage and because she proved an everloving and caring queen for him by accompanying her husband wherever he went.

Two superior paintings show the highly elevated emotional relationship between the two. The first shows a poignant scene in a jungle where she, lying at the feet of Tutan Khaman, offers an arrow for him while pointing her fingers at a big goose. The second painting features Ankhezenpaton applying perfume on the Kings body.

The viewer of this carving is inevitably moved because this sixteen-year-old child queen would not have dreamed of losing her husband and becoming a widow at such a young age. It is strange, however, that the wreath of water lilies that she kept on her husband's coffin, lay intact for three-thousand years with the original colour a bit changed.

Another painting displays the child queen offering flowers to her young husband who is about to set off on hunting with a pet lion cub and the bow. This young couple is portrayed even in their extremely personal moments and another appealing painting depicts Tutan Khaman with his queen on a boat made of reed; sailing on a river.

The King is seen shooting jungle fowl while the queen is holding his hand lovingly. These carvings and paintings vividly show the love and affection they felt for each other and the active, playful life they led in spite of the royal duties and responsibilities in the Kingdom.

This enchanting story coupled with the captivating but mysterious past of Egypt is written on the exquisitely carved chair, carved altar, chest of drawers and the walls of the tomb. We are automatically transported to that beautiful Kingdom where a child King with child queen and hounds go on hunting sport or sail in a reed boat and play in the jungle with their entourage surrounding them protectively.

However, the child Pharaoh, the lord of Egypt died mysteriously leaving an enigma unsolved yet. We can possibly guess that while he was engaged in hunting in the jungles, he might have fallen prey to the mysterious death plotted by Aiy who was the dominant "royalty" in the Palace to succeed Tutan Khaman.

As previously said, the priest Aiy was the decisive factor to place Tutan Khaman on the throne and he was definitely anticipating the Kingship through the inexperience of a child King enthroned.

The carvings and paintings in the tomb illustrate the dead body of Tutan Khaman being brought, kept on a coffin like thing before King Aiy who arranges the royal funeral. Another painting illustrates King Aiy smiling sarcastically on the dead body of Tutan Khaman, his predecessor, probably because he has gained his end.

Queen adamant

The child queen, widowed, must have known all the precise details of the cause of her husband's death, but she presumably, did her utmost to prevent Aiy coming to power. It is correct to say that she did not at all like to spend the latter half of her life in obscurity and loneliness considering the risk of the prospective queen driving her away from the "royal atmosphere" of the Palace.

She was a practical and self-confident girl in the first place. Ankhezenpaton's sister too had been married to a foreign King and she decided to resort to the custom of inter-marriage between dynasties.

At this crucial moment, she was resolved to dispel Aiy with the support of a foreign King. She wrote, "I am the daughter of Akhenaton the lord of Egypt. My husband, King Tutan Khaman died suddenly. The throne is vacant, because there is no successor to my husband.

There should be royal blood in whoever deserves the Kingship of Egypt. Do send a handsome prince of yours to me. He will be my husband and I will make him the unrivalled lord of Egypt. Send him to me as soon as possible with an Army."

This was purely an act of prudence. A reference to a conspiracy in the Egyptian Palace is found in the fragmented text of an inscription in Boghuskuay but the most important segment of it has decayed.

However, the plan by Ankhezonpaton misfired because her letter did not reach the foreign King in time and in addition, the King did not take any interest in the letter though. The story of whether the Priest Aiy sensed her plan or a foreign prince came to Egypt is in the part of the inscription which has been broken away.

Cross the river of death

Tutan Khaman's tomb remained unplundered by ruthless treasure hunters and was rediscovered in 1922 by Howard Carter. The tomb had been cut out of rock far below the ground level and the explorers had frightful experiences when they saw the priceless treasure on opening the tomb after 3,000 years.

Articles and furnitures decorated with gold and precious stones together with other articles loved by the child King were kept alongside the mummy. The sorrowful royalties placed gold, precious stones, ivory and priceless furniture near the mummy that the dead King can cross the river of death with the self-same majesty.

The explorers saw some wooden paddles on the floor of the narrow passage to the tomb to signify that they were for the King on his voyage from the river of death into the nether world.

Furthermore, the explorers made a spectacular find of two mummies of new born infants who had died at birth and were kept alongside the stone coffin of Tutan Khaman suggesting that they were Tutan Khaman's princess born of Ankhezenpaton.

Anyone who enters the dismal tomb, is continually obsessed with the feeling that the child King was lost in untimely death. The golden decorated cup with a moving funeral message on it, the wreath of lotus and water lilies, all kept on the coffin of Tutan Khaman, bespeak the severe sorrow felt by those who came to pay their last respects.