How did Egypt’s most famous pharaoh die?

Imagine a pharaoh who ascended the throne as a child, lived surrounded by constant intrigue, and died before even reaching the age of twenty. His body was buried hastily, and his name almost entirely disappeared from history. For over three thousand years, nobody knew exactly what had happened to him. However, when his tomb was finally opened, the world discovered gold, immense treasures, and one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time. Behind all that wealth lay the tragic story of a sick, frail young man who was used by men far more powerful than himself.

To understand all the suffering and challenges that Tutankhamun faced from the day he was born, we have to look back at his family. The great confusion began with his father, Pharaoh Amenhotep, a man who decided to turn Egypt upside down and change all the rules overnight. For centuries, the Egyptians worshipped several different gods, with the powerful god Amun being the main deity. The royal family and the priests of the cult of Amun had accumulated so much wealth that the priests actually owned more land than the pharaohs themselves. Deciding that this was completely wrong, Amenhotep, heavily influenced by his mother Queen Tiye, changed his own name to Akhenaten—meaning the living spirit of Aten—and forced his people to abandon the old religion. He demanded that everyone worship only one god from that moment on: the sun disk god, Aten.

Not satisfied with this radical shift, Akhenaten and his famous wife, Queen Nefertiti, built a new capital deep in the desert in the middle of nowhere and named it Amarna. He closed ancient temples, ordered the names of Amun and other traditional gods to be erased from stone walls, and stripped the traditional priests of all their power. In the new city, temples to the sun god were left completely without roofs, exposing everyone to the brutal heat and generating complaints even from foreign kings. This left the country in absolute chaos. Egypt’s economy was severely weakened, political and military relations with neighboring countries were completely abandoned because the king had lost interest in diplomacy, and the people grew revolted by a ruler they viewed as a madman and a tyrant.

It was amidst all this confusion, revolt, and crisis, around the year 1341 BC, that Tutankhamun was born. At birth, he was given the name Tutankhaton, meaning the living image of Aten, to honor the new sun god his father so deeply idolized. Yet, the young prince’s greatest enemy was not the religious conflict gripping the nation, but rather something silently hidden within his own blood and family genetics. Modern genetic testing on royal mummies by Cairo University scientists revealed a shocking family secret: Akhenaten had fathered the boy with his own biological sister. In ancient Egypt, marriages between close relatives were common among royalty because they believed they were living gods on Earth and wanted to keep their divine blood pure without mixing with ordinary people.

Biology, however, does not forgive such practices, and the price exacted by this incest was terrible for the newborn boy. Born to two closely related parents, he inherited an extremely weak immune system alongside many physical deformities. Far from being a strong, imposing warrior, he was thin, very frail, and burdened by serious health issues. He suffered from a painful bone condition known as avascular necrosis, meaning the bone tissue in one of his feet did not receive enough blood, causing his bones to slowly die while he was still alive. Furthermore, he was born with a clubfoot turned inward and downward, severe spinal scoliosis, a partially cleft palate, and very large front teeth that served as a trademark of his lineage.

Imagine the chronic, constant pain this boy felt every single day as he grew up. Unable to walk properly, he relied on canes and crutches just to take a few steps around the palace. When archaeologists eventually discovered his tomb thousands of years later, they found more than 130 walking sticks of all kinds scattered around. To make matters worse, his deficient immune system meant he contracted malaria repeatedly throughout his short life.

When young Tutankhaton was around eight or nine years old, following a brief period of mysterious rulers after his father’s death, the crown of absolute leader of Egypt fell upon his frail and sickly shoulders. He ascended the throne around the year 1332 BC, becoming the pharaoh of the famous 18th dynasty. Yet, being realistic, a nine-year-old child barely able to stand on his own could never truly run an empire. Behind the scenes, ambitious, politically experienced adult advisors governed the country, manipulating the boy and turning him into a puppet. The two most influential state advisors were a high-ranking palace official named Ay and the supreme commander of the Egyptian armies, General Horemheb.

Seeing the ideal opportunity to fix the political and religious mess created by the boy’s father, these men sought to soothe the suffering populace and appease the former priests who had lost their power and wealth. Consequently, they ordered the young king to change his name. He abandoned Tutankhaton and became Tutankhamun, meaning “the living image of Amun,” while his young wife similarly changed her name to Ankhesenamun. Following his advisors’ directives, the young pharaoh made monumental decisions: he abandoned the desert city built by his father, moved the government capital back to Thebes and Memphis, set aside the single god Aten, and restored the old polytheistic religion. He reopened ancient temples, rebuilt sanctuaries, commissioned new gold statues, and restored luxurious privileges to the old priests, spending his life trying to bring peace and balance back to his nation. His efforts earned him deep respect, to the point where he was even worshipped as a living god in Nubian temples.

To uphold royal tradition and secure an heir, Tutankhamun married his half-sister, Queen Ankhesenamun. Sadly, this union was marked by profound sorrow. The cruel genetic inheritance claimed a heavy toll once again, as the young queen became pregnant twice, but neither child survived. One daughter was stillborn around the fifth or sixth month of pregnancy, while the other passed away in the womb and was born without breath. By their ninth month, the tiny bodies were carefully mummified, placed in small boxes, and buried in the tomb alongside their father. Having lost everything and remaining without an heir, the young king continued to carry the weight of an entire country while growing increasingly ill.

Although historical legends and items like battle shields, leather armor, dozens of bows, and hundreds of arrows found in his tomb suggested he might have participated in battles, most historians doubt a young man with a clubfoot, malaria, and brittle bones could actually fight on the front lines. Those warrior images were almost certainly political propaganda designed to present the young ruler as a national hero, while General Horemheb handled the actual military command.

The greatest tragedy for the boy king arrived far too soon. His reign lasted a mere nine years, and near the year 1323 BC, at the age of nineteen, his life came to an end. For decades, scientists debated the cause of his premature death, initially suspecting murder due to a broken piece of bone inside the skull found in early X-rays. Modern medical technology later debunked this, proving the bone had been accidentally dislodged by excavators removing his golden mask. Other theories suggested a chariot accident, but modern CT scans and genetic tests ultimately confirmed that he suffered a severe open fracture in his left leg just above the knee, complete with dried healing oils and mummification fluids indicating the injury occurred while he was still alive.

Combined with a fresh bout of malaria and chronic pain from his clubfoot, the shattered and infected leg caused the young pharaoh to suffer a painful death. This untimely demise threw the priests into a panic. Because his grand tomb was far from finished, ancient tradition gave them exactly seventy days to preserve, wrap, and bury the king’s body to ensure his soul reached eternal life. Desperate, the team improvised by placing him inside a small tomb in the Valley of the Kings originally prepared for the advisor Ay. Walls were hastily painted, and the cramped space was packed from floor to ceiling with nearly 5,400 luxury items, including golden goblets, animal-shaped beds, and a dagger made from meteorite iron. Amidst the gold, someone placed a modest woven garland of olive leaves and blue flowers upon his coffin.

Outside, a new crisis unfolded immediately. The young widowed queen, desperate to avoid marrying the ambitious advisor Ay, secretly wrote to the Hittites—Egypt’s worst enemies—asking one of their princes to marry her and become pharaoh. Although initially suspicious, the Hittite king sent Prince Zannanza, but the prince was assassinated in an ambush on his journey to Egypt. Left with no other choice, the queen was forced to marry Ay, after which she mysteriously vanished from historical records entirely. Ay ruled briefly before dying, allowing General Horemheb to ascend the throne. Filled with rage toward the entire lineage, Horemheb launched a campaign to erase Akhenaten, Ay, and Tutankhamun from history by smashing statues and scraping away their names.

Ironically, this attempt to erase the past ended up saving Tutankhamun. Forgotten by history, his small tomb was overlooked by ancient grave robbers. Heavy rains washed away rocks and sand to completely cover the entrance, and later workers even built stone huts directly on top of it, completely unaware of what lay beneath. The boy king rested peacefully and undisturbed for over three thousand years.

That silence ended in November 1922, when British archaeologist Howard Carter, funded by the wealthy Lord Carnarvon after years of fruitless searching, finally uncovered a hidden stone step beneath the desert sand. Excavating further, they found a sealed door bearing Tutankhamun’s name. Carter made a small hole, peered inside with a candle, and beheld a breathtaking sight of gold and riches. It took the team ten full years to carefully catalog and remove the treasures, eventually reaching a stone sarcophagus containing three giant human-shaped coffins. The innermost coffin, crafted from pure solid gold and weighing over 100 kilograms, revealed the pharaoh’s face covered by his iconic golden death mask adorned with precious stones and blue glass.

The discovery instantly became global news. When Lord Carnarvon tragically died from an infected mosquito bite shortly afterward, the press sensationalized the event into the myth of the “pharaoh’s curse.” In reality, nearly everyone on Carter’s team lived long lives, and the curse was nothing more than a fiction sold by newspapers. In the end, the frail and sickly boy who had been deliberately scrubbed from the historical record achieved a quiet, enduring triumph. Defying time, his golden mask traveled the globe to be viewed by millions, cementing Tutankhamun as one of the most famous and unforgettable names in human history.