7. King Tut Had Been Written Out of History
Possibly the primary reason King Tut’s tomb was intact and not subject to pillaging and grave-robbing is that, following his reign, his successors all but completely purged his memory. His grandfather, Ay, succeeded him as pharaoh and continued with the religious reforms that King Tut had initiated. He remained leading the country in polytheistic worship, particularly the praise of Amun, the king of the gods. His reign lasted only four years, as he was already aged. Horemheb, one of King Tut’s advisors and the commander-in-chief of the Egyptian military, succeeded Ay as pharaoh.
Horemheb, whose name means “festival of Horus,” took the reforms of King Tut and King Ay even further by abolishing the worship of Aten. Images of Akhenaten, which showed him in reverence of the sun god, were defaced or destroyed. Monuments to Aten and Akhenaten were demolished. To make his point clear, Horemheb moved his capital to Memphis from Thebes, which was a city built to Aten. After the reign of Horemheb ended, the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt came to an end. History all but completely forgot King Tut and his father, until Carter discovered Tut’s burial chamber in November of 1922.