Tutankhamen: The Life and Death of the Boy-King [Hardcover]

Christine El Mahdy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2000

The spectacular excavations at Bawiti, Egypt, in the summer of 1999 captured headlines all across the United States and rekindled America's fascination with Ancient Egypt. In that spirit comes this timely volume on the young monarch whose mummified remains and fantastic treasure provided the other amazing find of the twentieth century . . .When his tomb was discovered in 1922, even the most experienced archaeologists joined the international community in marveling at the incredible wealth-and seemingly bizarre rituals-of Ancient Egypt. The king's golden coffin alone is today valued at more than $6 million.What kind of society could produce such spectacular treasures only to bury them forever? Lost in a frenzy of speculation-anthropological, scientific, and commercial-was Tuankhamen himself.3500 years ago, the mightiest empire on earth crowned a seven-year-old boy as its king, then worshiped him as a god.Nine years later, he was dead.Despite the young monarch's almost universal recognition in death, Egyptologists know very little about his life.Traditional histories, founded on incomplete investigation and academic dogma, shed almost no light on the details of a life as complicated and as fascinating as it was short.In TUTANKHAMEN: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE BOY-KING, Christine El Mahdy finally delivers a coherent portrait of King Tut's life and its historical significance. Based on stunning tomb records, lost since their discovery, this revolutionary biography begins to answer one of the Twentieth Century's most compelling archaeological mysteries: who was Tutankhamen?

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When British archeologist Howard Carter first opened King Tutankhamen's tomb in November 1922, his patron, Lord Carnarvon, standing behind him, impatiently asked if he saw anything. In one of the great moments in archeological history, Carter, dumbstruck, could only utter, "Yes, wonderful things." Briskly written by Egyptologist El Mahdy, this book is also a wonderful thing. El Mahdy seeks to shift attention away from the headline-grabbing elements of the tomb and toward the historical figure of Tutankhamen himself. Despite immense interest in his tomb, our knowledge of Tutankhamen's life, including who his parents were and how he died, is sparse. In fact, El Mahdy maintains, the accepted story of Tutankhamen is marred by inaccuracies and misperceptions. By scrutinizing the evidence from his tomb (which was full of intriguing anomalies), she reconstructs a spate of long-hidden details about his life and death. Examining Tut's mummy, El Mahdy argues that he was not murdered, but died suddenly of natural causes, probably a tumor. This is significant because his sudden death could easily have led to a power struggle and political crises in Egypt. Instead, it led to a cover-up: Tutankhamen was secretly buried by his successor, the author argues, in order to ensure order in Egypt. Accessible and informative and full of the author's enthusiasm for her subject, El Mahdy's book provides some long-absent historical context to the life of the famous king. Although at times she overextends herselfAas when she posits that homosexuality did not exist in ancient EgyptAEl Mahdy has, generally speaking, produced a concise and lively account of life in ancient Egypt and a balanced historical discussion of Carter's discovery. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Biographies can be controversial even when based on richer documentary sources than a small corpus of often fragmentary inscriptions, decorative temple reliefs, tomb paintings, funerary equipment, and mummies from the 14th century B.C.E. El Mahdy (Egyptology, Liverpool Univ.) employs the fallacious premise that "we now have incontrovertible archaeological evidence for the true story of Tutankhamen, and can recreate the events of his life and death." Previous biographies of the short-lived king include Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt's classic Tutankhamen: Life and Death of a Pharaoh (1990) and Bob Brier's highly imaginative and sensational The Murder of Tutankhamen: A True Story (LJ 12/97). El Mahdy' s work fits somewhere in between and includes all of the evidence currently available for analysis. The author provides an introductory primer on Egyptian culture during the Eighteenth Dynasty and outlines the 1922 discovery and subsequent clearing of Tutankhamen's tomb. Unfortunately, El Mahdy includes totally speculative commentary, e.g., that Nefertiti and her purportedly half-sister Mutnodjme "regarded each other as full sisters" and that "it seems that Nefertiti was the more beautiful of the two." To her credit, she includes as appendixes the complete texts of Tutankhamen's Restoration Stela, Akhenaten's Hymn to the Aten, Amenhotep III's commemorative scarabs, and Thutmose IV's Dream Stela. El Mahdy rejects the "murder" of Tutankhamen as "out of the question" based on the lack of evidence but proceeds to accept Julia Samson's theory that there was no ephemeral King Smenkhkare but rather Nefertiti as coregent using that name. Most of this same material is handled more judiciously by Joyce Tyldesley in Nefertiti: Egypt's Sun Queen (LJ 2/15/99). If only one book is to be purchased, Tyldesley's is the most "factual." To appreciate the complexities of the archaeological puzzle, the books by Brier and El Mahdy offer the lay reader interesting alternative conjectures.DEdward K. Werner, St. Lucie Cty. Lib. Sys., Ft. Pierce, FL
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 341 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr (August 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312262418
• ISBN-13: 978-0312262419
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,320,722 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A thought provoking analysis of ancient Egypt, August 4, 2000

By 

Bruce Trinque (Amston, CT United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tutankhamen: The Life and Death of the Boy-King (Hardcover)

I give very high marks to Christine El Mahdy's "Tutankhamen" for its vigorous, insightful examination of the reign of the so-called Boy-king. Actually, her book could be accurately titled "Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Smenkhare, Tutankhamen, and Ay" because her study extends to include all the "Amarna Period". El Mahdy contends, and rightly so I believe, that much of the conventional wisdom about this era of Egyptian history and its rulers is based not on a careful examination of the evidence, but upon outdated theories first published early in the Twentieth Century or even earlier, when the amount of information available was much smaller and our overall understanding of Egyptian culture far poorer. In this book El Mahdy goes back to basics, not blindly accepting the conclusions of other Egyptologists (many of whom appear to somewhat blindly repeat what others had written before them) but examining the original inscriptions for herself. Not infrequently they have previously been mistranslated or particular interpretations placed upon them without good justification. Inscriptions, art, tombs, and mummies are all re-examined with a rigorous application of common sense and logic. What emerges is a story strongly at variance with popular understanding of the period. El Mahdy rejects the notion that Akhenaten's "new" religion was really something radically different than the Egyptian mainstream, and she finds flaws in the notion that the so-called "heretic king" was widely hated by the Egyptian people. She also argues strongly and effectively against the idea that Smenkhare and Tutankhamen were interlopers from outside of the 18th Dynasty royal family (she supports the theory that Smenkhare was Nefertiti's identity upon ascending to a co-regency with her husband and she contends that Tutankhamen was Akhenaten's son by another wife). I have read a good many books about this era of Egyptian history, and I can think of no other which has been so thought provoking. Whether or not all of El Mahdy's conclusions will stand the test of time is something we will have to wait and see, but anyone who feels that they already "know" Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and Tutankhamen would be well advised to read this book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Yes, but . . ., January 6, 2004

By 

kallan - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tutankhamen: The Life and Death of the Boy-King (Paperback)

There are many good points about El Mahdy's book. It demonstrates clearly, for the non-specialist, the importance of going back to primary sources when examining historical/archaeological issues, and the need always to employ a sceptical eye and a hefty dose of common sense. It also explains matters in a way that makes them very accessible to the non-specialist. Though I can't speak for the accuracy of the evidence she presents and her conclusions, being a non-specialist myself, in the first three quarters of the book which deal with the "Armarna Period" her material was presented clearly and understandably, and seemed reasonable for the most part. However, I found her examination of Tutankhamen's life in the final part of the book much harder to swallow. It was very rushed and seemed to jump to an awful lot of conclusions.
One final quibble: I am sick to death of authors telling us about their childhood in what so often appears to be an attempt to claim some extra authority in their particular field. El Mahdy has always loved Egypt, taught herself to read hieroglyphs as a child, and decided at the age of ten she was going to be an Egyptologist? So what? What counts is her academic achievements, not her childhood quirks.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars a good story that could be better told, January 7, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Tutankhamen: The Life and Death of the Boy-King (Hardcover)

Christine el Mahdy obviously has a fascinating take on the life of Tutankhamen, with what are apparently new and very interesting theories about his parentage, his life and death, the cultural and political life of his time, and his entombment.

However, while she criticises other archeologists, past and present, for jumping to conclusions, making unwarranted assumptions, and cutting data to fit the shape of their expectations, her writing invites her readers to conclude that she's done the same thing herself. It's one thing to say that evidence "suggests" a conclusion, and it's something else again to present such a conclusion as a fact, as El Mahdy often does in writing of her own findings. The problem, as el Mahdy repeatedly says, is that we don't KNOW--we can only infer based on evidence, and I could wish she's taken this precept to heart in presenting her own conclusions, which would appear to be more serious if she had presented them more judiciously.

I also found this book an irritating read, because it is full of repetition as well as typographical (1959 for 1859) and editorial (it's for its, everyone...their) errors. Can't help but feel that a month or so under the pencil of a good editor would have given the book a much cleaner shape and a good deal more pace and excitement.

El Mahdy's not to blame for the failings of her publishers, though, and it is a good story, once you get to it.