The Golden King

This title offers a concise, beautifully illustrated history of the life of King Tut and the fascinating period of Ancient Egypt in which he lived. More than 3000 years after the death of King Tut, interest in the Pharaoh continues to grow. Tutankhamun has captivated the world ever since Howard Carter’s spectacular discovery of his treasure-filled tomb in the Valley of the Kings in 1922. Zahi Hawass is one of the world’s premier Egyptologists, and here, he tells the story of the golden king, a short-lived pharaoh who came to the throne as a child and died before the age of twenty, and of the royal dynasty that bred him. The reader meets Tutankhamun’s grandparents, the Sun King Amenhotep III and his beautiful wife Tiye, as well as the boy-king’s ‘heretic’ father Akhentaten, his stepmother Nefertiti, and his half-sisters, the princesses of Amarna. Tutankahmun lived and died during one of the most fascinating periods on Egyptian history; this book provides a window into this extraordinary time of turmoil and treasure. The Golden King is beautifully illustrated, primarily with photographs of objects from Cairo’s Egyptian Museum collections. Many of these photographs were taken by National Geographic photographer, Kenneth Garrett, supplemented by archival photographs taken from the era of the tomb’s discovery - a fascinating period of transition, in archaeology as much as politics - between the age of colonialism and the dawn of Egyptian nationalism.