Tutankhamun: Revolution's End

Gayle Gibson is a respected Canadian Egyptologist and a Departmental Associate at the Royal Ontario Museum. She worked for over 20 years as a popular teacher, lecturer and Egypt specialist at the ROM, appears frequently on television as a "guest expert" and has led many groups around Egypt! Her main area of expertise as an Egyptologist concerns mummies and their coffins. Gibson was partially responsible for identifying Pharaoh Ramesses I, (Ramesses II's grandfather!) among the forlorn mummies at the old Niagara museum, and giving him an assist on the road home to Egypt.

Explore Akhenaten and the Amarna Age—Nefertiti, Tutankhamun, and rivals—in a talk series on Egypt's most controversial era.

Akhenaten, a king of the Eighteenth Dynasty, was called 'the first individual in history' by the Egyptologist James Henry Breasted. He's been called some other things, too: a madman, a fascist, or maybe Moses. Respectable scholars have almost come to blows about him.

Akhenaten was not the only larger-than-life figure in his world. In this series of talks we'll also meet his father, Amenhotep the Magnificent, his wife, Nefertiti, and son, Tutankhamun. Among the non-royals, we'll visit one of the greatest geniuses of human history, Amenhotep sa Hapu; the elusive Ay, Master of Horses, God's Father, and, eventually, pharaoh; and the brilliant, inscrutable General Horemheb who put an end to Akhenaten's Revolution and set the stage for Seti I and Ramesses the Great.

Akhenaten's life and reign end with mysteries. Who was Smenkare, his successor? Was Tutankhamun always under the thumb of Horemheb and Ay or did he manage to assert his own will? Did his widow Ankhesenamun write to the king of the Hittites for a new husband? Did the Amarna revolution leave any lasting mark on Egyptian culture?

Gayle Gibson's Bibliography for Talk: Tutankhamun: Revolution's End

Web

Gannon, Megan, reporter. 2022. "King Tut's Parents were Cousins, not Siblings." Live Science. This is a quick summary of Dr. Luc Gabolde's opinions about Tutankhamun's parentage. Very clear. https://www.livescience.com/27106-king-tut-parents-were-cousins.html

Hawass, Zahi. "King Tut is the son of Akhenaten." A good description of the Ashmunein block that names Tutankhamun as 'the king's son of his body.' https://www.guardians.net/hawass/articles/tut_akhenaten.htm

Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2026. In 1921, the MMA was able to obtain about a hundred and fifty-five fragments of royal statues from the Petrie-Howard Carter excavations at Amarna of 1891-1. Many are available, along with some from the Neues Museum at Berlin online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Fragments_of_Akhenaten_statues. You can also find some on the MMA site, at MMA 21.9.2 along with a little more information about each.

van Dijk, Jacobus. 2005. "The Death of Meketaten." https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.memphis.edu/dist/4/463/files/2014/03/Van_Dijk-vfbzm4.pdf

If those scenes in the burial chamber of Princess Meketaten intrigue you, Dr. van Dijk goes over all the evidence and all the theories in this 10 page paper, freely available to read or download. After considering many possibilities, he concluded that the baby in the scene must be the reborn Meketaten herself and dismisses the idea that she was shown having died in childbirth. His arguments are hard to refute. The problem with almost any interpretation, as Dr. van Dijk admits, is that there are no parallels for these scenes in any other Egyptian tombs, and do not know much about Akhenaten's views of the Afterlife.

Books

Darnell, John Coleman and Colleen Manassa. 2007. Tutankhamun's Armies: Battle and Conquest during Ancient Egypt's Late 18th Dynasty. The Darnells dive their own clear and authoritative take on the many confusing names of the period, and proceed with a very reasonable take on Tutankhamun's actual career and eventual hand-over to Horemheb. Much of the book is concerned with the political and military situation in Nubia and in the North during this period.

Dodson, Aidan. 2022. Tutankhamun, King of Egypt. AUC Press. As always, Dr. Dodson has all the facts, but in this book he gives his own speculations a little more space. The book is filled with very good colour images.

Marchant, Jo. 2013. The Shadow King: The Bizarre Afterlife of King Tut's Mummy. Philadelphia: DaCapo Press. Marchant's book is a good read. She goes over many of the events and disasters of Tutankhamun's afterlife, and discusses most of the theories about his death, possible murder, and general health.

Reeves, Nicholas. 1990. The Complete Tutankhamun: The King – The Tomb – The Royal Treasure. London: Thames and Hudson. Foreword by the Seventh Earl of Carnarvon. Reeves goes over the story of the Eighteenth Dynasty and of the Amarna episode and of Tutankhamun and his family, and then of the modern European discovery of his existence and then his tomb. Lots of pictures, though only a few in full colour, and lots of gossip.

Just for fun, here are some of the many varieties of the names of Nefertiti and Smenkare as King. The names on the left can all be read as masculine. Sometimes that name is written Ankhet-kheperu-re, and is unequivocally feminine.

The names on the right are more complex. The first name is a masculine form. The second and third are masculine forms but refer to a husband and the fourth actually uses a feminine form. The fifth is masculine.

Hatshepsut sometimes used the feminine pronouns, and sometimes masculine, so Nefertiti's use of male or ambiguous forms is not without precedent.