# Tutankhamen Was a Minor King: Why Was So Much Good Stuff Buried With Him? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 14, 2011, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tutankhamen-was-a-minor-king-why-was-so-much-good-stuff-buried-with-him/592728 "2011-08-14T22:57:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2011, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tutankhamen-was-a-minor-king-why-was-so-much-good-stuff-buried-with-him/592728/1 "2011-08-14T22:57:28Z")
Egyptologists tell s that Tutankhamen was a very minor pharoah-he died at 19, and had almost no impact upon Egyptian history. Yest, his tomb was loaded with gold objects, and nice furniture-the gokd maks is magnificent. Why is it that big-time kings like Ramses III and Imhotep didn’t have treasures like Tut’s buried in their tombs? ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2011, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tutankhamen-was-a-minor-king-why-was-so-much-good-stuff-buried-with-him/592728/2 "2011-08-14T23:03:18Z")
How do you know that? Imhotep’s tomb is still unfound as far as I know, and Ramses III’s tomb has been open since antiquity. Anything gold there would have disappeared centuries ago. ---
**Author:** ![Lucretia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/13edae/32.png) [@Lucretia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucretia)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2011, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tutankhamen-was-a-minor-king-why-was-so-much-good-stuff-buried-with-him/592728/3 "2011-08-14T23:15:10Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Egyptologists tell s that Tutankhamen was a very minor pharoah-he died at 19, and had almost no impact upon Egyptian history. > Yest, his tomb was loaded with gold objects, and nice furniture-the gokd maks is magnificent. > Why is it that big-time kings like Ramses III and Imhotep didn’t have treasures like Tut’s buried in their tombs? They did, but grave robbers got to them first, probably not long after said kings were buried. Those responsible for burying Tutankhamen did it hurriedly (as evidenced by the jumbled stacking of the grave goods), probably with little publicity, in an obscure tomb. This was an attempt to prevent grave looting, and was successful, too, at least until Howard Carter came along. The grave goods in the tombs of the great kings of Egypt probably made Tutankhamen’s tomb look like a child’s playroom. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2011, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tutankhamen-was-a-minor-king-why-was-so-much-good-stuff-buried-with-him/592728/4 "2011-08-14T23:17:34Z")
They didn’t know he was minor at the time, surely… ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2011, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tutankhamen-was-a-minor-king-why-was-so-much-good-stuff-buried-with-him/592728/5 "2011-08-15T02:10:04Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > They didn’t know he was minor at the time, surely… They most probably did. He was a teen whose reign was very brief, during an agited political era (involving way more significant rulers) that ended with a change of dynasty. It’s a good bet, however, that the gold in his tomb had been recycled many times. As a previous poster mentioned, royal tombs were regularly looted and attempts to prevent it were all in vain (pile up a lot of riches in a vault somewhere, and people will become very inventive). There wouldn’t have been enough gold in antiquity to bury all pharaohs with such splendor (and probably even more splendor for many of them) if such “recycling” had not taken place (the amount of gold in existence, even in the whole world nowadays, let alone in ancient Egypt, is surprisingly low). So where is the gold of of, say, Thutmoses I? A part of it is probably melted in the funeral apparel of Thutankhamen. By the way, even Thutankhamen’s grave was looted. May be the robbers were unable to retrieve most of the wealth, or were caught? ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2011, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tutankhamen-was-a-minor-king-why-was-so-much-good-stuff-buried-with-him/592728/6 "2011-08-15T02:27:43Z")
For the record, [here’s a link](http://www.egyptology.nl/pdf/art2.pdf)( **WARNING : PDF** ) to an article by someone who thinks that others, more important, pharaoh’s graves might not have contained much more (or even less, in the case of latter Pharaohs). ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2011, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tutankhamen-was-a-minor-king-why-was-so-much-good-stuff-buried-with-him/592728/7 "2011-08-15T02:32:18Z")
I would assume especially after a Dynasty or regime change, all that gold sitting useless in a tomb would be a tempting target for rapid funds for your own regime. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2011, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tutankhamen-was-a-minor-king-why-was-so-much-good-stuff-buried-with-him/592728/8 "2011-08-15T02:35:47Z")
> [@Lucretia](#): > > The grave goods in the tombs of the great kings of Egypt probably made Tutankhamen’s tomb look like a child’s playroom. Yep. > [@clairobscur](#): > > By the way, even Thutankhamen’s grave was looted. May be the robbers were unable to retrieve most of the wealth, or were caught? From memory, indications are that they were caught. Some of the grave goods were in piles and bundles indicating that they were just shoved back in before the robber’s tunnels were plugged. It’s a mystery to me as to why no other robbers gave it a try. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2011, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tutankhamen-was-a-minor-king-why-was-so-much-good-stuff-buried-with-him/592728/9 "2011-08-15T09:37:27Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Egyptologists tell s that Tutankhamen was a very minor pharoah-he died at 19, **and had almost no impact upon Egyptian history.** > Yest, his tomb was loaded with gold objects, and nice furniture-the gokd maks is magnificent. > Why is it that big-time kings like Ramses III and Imhotep didn’t have treasures like Tut’s buried in their tombs? Actually his reign cuts across the only major religious uphevel in Egyptian history. (Until Christianity showed up that is). ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2011, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tutankhamen-was-a-minor-king-why-was-so-much-good-stuff-buried-with-him/592728/10 "2011-08-15T14:24:07Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Why is it that big-time kings like Ramses III and Imhotep didn’t have treasures like Tut’s buried in their tombs? Imhotep was not a king at all. (As he was famous and, no doubt, wealthy, he probably did have quite an impressive tomb, but it is hardly likely to have been on the scale of a pharoah, a living god.) Otherwise the answer is as others have said above. Other pharoahs probably had more impressively furnished tombs than Tutankhamen, but somebody else found and looted them long, long ago. > [@AK84](#): > > Actually his reign cuts across the only major religious uphevel in Egyptian history. (Until Christianity showed up that is). Well, yeah, but that does not make him an important ruler in his own right. It is not clear that he, through his own personal qualities, influenced events very much. Romulus Augustulus was there for the fall of Rome, but that does not make him a great emperor (Or even a particularly bad one - it wasn’t his fault). ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2011, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tutankhamen-was-a-minor-king-why-was-so-much-good-stuff-buried-with-him/592728/11 "2011-08-15T14:55:37Z")
He wasn’t a minor king he was a (minor) God. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2011, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tutankhamen-was-a-minor-king-why-was-so-much-good-stuff-buried-with-him/592728/12 "2011-08-15T16:18:11Z")
I’d also expect that, since burial is for the living and state burial always involves, at ;least on some level, a society’s self-conception, that there would be emphasis on treating him “properly” even if he was disliked. So even as a minor and young and controversial figure, I’d expect him to be given some form of relatively “standard” royal burial. **clairobscur** ’s link seems to bear that out, with an additional personal element I had not considered – the pharaoh who followed Tut felt pressure to legitimize his own shaky grip on the throne, and properly burying one’s predecessor was a potent sign that one was a good king. Hence, Tut may have been decently buried partly as a political ploy. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2011, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tutankhamen-was-a-minor-king-why-was-so-much-good-stuff-buried-with-him/592728/13 "2011-08-15T16:18:25Z")
How’d he get so funky? ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2011, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tutankhamen-was-a-minor-king-why-was-so-much-good-stuff-buried-with-him/592728/14 "2011-08-16T02:06:30Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > How’d he get so funky? He was buried with a donkey. hh ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2011, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tutankhamen-was-a-minor-king-why-was-so-much-good-stuff-buried-with-him/592728/15 "2011-08-16T02:54:34Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#): > > He was buried with a donkey. > > hh Got a condo made of stone uh ---
**Author:** ![Maiira](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f04885/32.png) [@Maiira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maiira)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2011, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tutankhamen-was-a-minor-king-why-was-so-much-good-stuff-buried-with-him/592728/16 "2011-08-16T03:43:36Z")
> [@Lucretia](#): > > The grave goods in the tombs of the great kings of Egypt probably made Tutankhamen’s tomb look like a child’s playroom. And it actually kind of is. A fair amount of the grave goods consist of toys and games, as well as teeny-tiny furniture and other things clearly made for a child.