Akhenaten upended a centuries-old religious system to favor worship of a single deity, the sun god Aten, and moved Egypt’s religious capital from Thebes to Amarna.Īfter Akhenaten’s death, two intervening pharaohs briefly reigned before the nine-year-old prince, then called Tutankhaten, took the throne.ĭid you know? Carter’s patron, Lord Carnarvon, died four months after first entering the tomb, leading journalists to popularize a “Curse of the Pharaohs,” claiming that hieroglyphs on the tomb walls promised swift death to those who disturbed King Tut.

Genetic testing has verified that King Tut was the grandson of the great pharaoh Amenhotep III, and almost certainly the son of Akhenaten, a controversial figure in the history of the 18th dynasty of Egypt’s New Kingdom (c.1550-1295 B.C.).