Tutankhamun’s gold mask, found on the king’s mummy. Photo Roland Unger.
The discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb in November 1922 sparked imaginations across the globe. While Howard Carter emptied its treasures, Tut-mania gripped the world—and in many ways, never left. But who was the “boy king,” and what was his life really like?
In this talk, Garry J. Shaw, Egyptologist and author of a new biography on Tutankhamun, uses the most up to date research to present him as a person, rather than as a distant god-king or a symbol of ancient Egypt. Numerous intriguing details are woven together from the boy king’s treasures and possessions, from a lock of his grandmother’s hair to a reed cut with his own hands, to reveal the life of this enigmatic young king and his modern rediscovery. How he managed an empire, abandoning his family’s religious teachings to return Egypt to its traditional beliefs, before his untimely death and his successors’ attempts to erase him from history. The talk looks too at Ankhesenamun, Tutankhamun’s wife, the power queens held, and explores ancient Egyptian culture.
The Story of Tutankhamun: An Intimate Life of the Boy Who Became King, by Garry J. Shaw is published (11 October 2022) by Yale University Press. Ticket holders will receive a code to purchase via their website for the offer price of £13.99 (RRP £16.99). UK residents only.
Proceeds from our ticket sales benefit museums, galleries and other arts-based organisations and projects.
This is an online event hosted on Zoom which can be watched live, or on-demand for three weeks afterwards. You will receive your link to access the event in your email confirmation and the on-demand link after the event ends.