Lecture 2 - Tutankhamun: Inheritance

The thousands of beautiful and perfectly crafted items, piled into the hastily-equipped tomb, serve to tell archaeologists the story of the impact of Egypt’s past and her enduring unique society and beliefs. For Tutankhamun’s cultural inheritance, even from the earliest days of Egypt (some 1,700 years before) is loud and clear, once you know where to look.

After his father, Akhenaton’s heretical removal of the ancient gods and religion, the boy-king had begun to re-install the old ways, ‘the right way’. As we take a closer look at the ‘wonderful things’ buried with Tutankhamun, we can see how he was a product of his time and of a rich and uniquely abiding culture. They also reveal how Egypt collided with the many thriving civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean in trade and in war, and was inevitably influenced by them, even as she influenced those cultures too.