King Tutankhamen:
His Role on the 18th Dynasty of Egypt

Peter San Juan

CHW 3M1
Mr. Di Tomaso
April 4, 2014 Tutankhamen, son of former King, Akenhaten, inherited his power at the young age of nine. He had inherited a throne where his father ruled much more differently than a previous pharaoh, which is a large burden placed on a nine year old boy. Tutankhamen is mostly known by his tomb, which was found intact by archaeologist Howard Carter, but some individuals do not know what he had done as a ruler of the New Kingdom. Tutankhamen wanted to change the New Kingdom back to the way it was before his father ruled. He also had changed his name from Tutankhaten, -aten representing the sun god, Ra, into what we know today as Tutankhamen, -amen representing Amenhotep III. In result, Tutankhamen converted Egypt after his father had reformed it, which makes Tutankhamen the most important King of the New Kingdom. Anybody at the age of nine would not be given full control of an empire, and King Tutankhamen was no exception. His throne was not fully his, as his many of his actions while king was done by other individuals. One of these was converting Egypt back to its original state, such as: restoring its previous gods, moving the capital back to Thebes from Amarna. This is important to the New Kingdom because it takes lots of work to convert an empire back to its original state and reign as if its previous King had never ruled or had done anything significant to its empire. Though Tutankhamen was almost exclusively a placeholder for the role of King and a lot of the decisions made during his reign were not his, he still played a major role of the period of the New Kingdom. Egypt was so serious on converting back to its original state; Tutankhamen had to change his name from Tutankhaten into the name we know today. Once again the –aten representing, Ra, the sun god and Akenhaten, and now –amen representing the king before Akenhaten, Amenhotep III. This is important to the New Kingdom because it represents the