Tutankhamen

January 2, 2012
British Egyptologist Tyldesley (Daughters of Isis) adds her voice to numerous books and articles illuminating the life, reign, and death of the world’s best-known pharaoh. Tutankhamen was the young 18th Dynasty king who famously rejected the chaotic and unpopular radical religious innovations of his sun-god-worshipping predecessor, Akhenaten, for the certainties of traditional Egyptian polytheism. Reigning for 10 years, 3,000-plus years ago, his untimely death at 18 plunged his country into a succession crisis that caused the 18th Dynasty to fall. Records of the early 19th Dynasty Ramesside kings, X-rays, autopsy evidence, and grave artifacts indicate that, contrary to popular belief, Tutankhamen probably wasn’t a great or victorious general, didn’t die of tuberculosis, and wasn’t murdered by his successor, but likely died by accident, perhaps while engaging in the dangerous royal sport of ostrich hunting. While still a child, Tutankhamen married the third-born daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, and Tyldesley presents the DNA analysis pointing to the likelihood that his wife was his older half-sister, guiding readers through the maze of complex royal family relationships and issues of identification of mummies. His mother was one of Akhenaten’s secondary harem queens and his elderly successor, Ay, was possibly King Tut’s great-grandfather. This is an authoritative, well-documented addition to a much-trodden field of inquiry. Photos, maps. Agent: George Lucas, Inkwell Management.

January 1, 2012
A catch-all study by a British Egyptologist of the most famous boy king of the 18th Dynasty. The search for the probable "truth" behind King Tutankhamen's short reign (1336–1327 BCE) continues in this engaging reconstruction of his tomb discovery, family and life. Fluent in her subject, Tyldesley (Myths and Legends of Ancient Egypt, 2011, etc.) gives her own spin to the story in order to get beyond the sensational nonsense. She first looks at Howard Carter's remarkable pinpointing of the tomb named KV 62 in the Valley of the Kings. The 18th Dynasty kings had broken with the earlier tradition of building enormous pyramids in the deserts of northern Egypt and chose instead the remote west-bank valley, clustered around the temple of the ascendant deity of the time, Amen. Bankrolled by George Herbert, aka Lord Carnarvon, Carter discovered in 1922 a tomb improbably crammed with royal objects inscribed with the names of the various 18th Dynasty kings and queens, as well as intact seals of the residing king, Tutankhamen, and his untouched burial chamber. The tomb had apparently been protected and hidden from sight by a flood shortly after burial, then forgotten; moreover, evidence suggested that Tut's successor, Ay, inheriting the throne as an elderly man, had swapped Tut's original, large tomb for the one intended for him. Deceptions and lies abound, not only in Carter's discovery (removal and rearrangement of objects), but in the ensuing autopsies (a missing penis, two mysterious female fetuses). The handling of the artifacts strikes us now as shockingly casual, while the supposed curse of the mummy is merely silly. Tyldesley does an admirable detective job of reconstructing the boy king's narrative. Proves that there is no end to the fascination, and speculation, around this subject.

(COPYRIGHT (2012) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 1, 2012

Sources on the life of Tutankhamen are mainly fragmentary, e.g., inscriptions, decorative temple reliefs, tomb paintings, funerary equipment, and 14th-century B.C.E. mummies. The paucity of evidence has permitted rather speculative publications such as Christine El Mahdy's Tutankhamen: The Life and Death of the Boy-King. Tyldesley (Centre for Biomedical Egyptology, Univ. of Manchester, UK; Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt) tries to stick to the available facts. In Part I, "Tutankhamen: Life and Death," she explores sources, in particular the excavation and clearance of the young king's tomb by Howard Carter and the latest DNA analysis. She presents various scenarios for Tutankhamen's parentage on both sides but finally opts for his being the son of Akhenaten and Kiya, a secondary wife in the royal harem. In the shorter Part 2, "Tutankhamen: Life After Death," the author assesses the impact of Tutankhamen's legacy on Western culture, e.g., the legendary "curse" and the waves of Tutmania that influenced art, fashion, and fiction during the 20th century and beyond. VERDICT In this well-researched study for the general reader, Tyldesley acknowledges the fragile nature of her biographical reconstructions, presenting the conflicting theories and drawing careful conclusions. Highly recommended for all Egyptophiles.--Edward K., Werner, St. Lucie Cty. Lib. Syst., Ft. Pierce, FL

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2012
In this absorbing overview of the sensational discovery of Tutankhamen in 1922, Tyldesley, a prolific author in Egyptology (Nefertiti, 1999; Cleopatra, 2008), recounts both the course of Howard Carter's search and the biographical and historical weight of the evidence found in the tomb. While her discussion about hieroglyphics, tomb goods, and anatomy and DNA might swamp those visually tantalized by Tutankhamen's golden funerary magnificence, the facts she marshals demonstrate the inveigling quality of Egyptology, in which divergent interpretations abound about particular artifacts, artwork, and philology. Tyldesley shows this debate-stoking aspect of the subject in her description of the Tutankhamen cache, ultimately giving a narrative that she believes it supports about the life and significance of the pharoah. Alongside the evidence-grounded Tutankhamen, however, exists the celebrity Tutankhamen, whose campy inspiration to popular culture, from mummy movies to fiction, Tyldesley covers with the bemused sigh of a professional scholar. Writing with signal clarity, Tyldesley taps into the ever-popular fascination with ancient Egypt.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)