Why Did King Tut Die at 19? The Murder Theory, the Malaria Evidence and the So-Called Curse

Nobody knows for certain how Tutankhamun died, but the best-supported answer today is illness plus injury rather than murder. The pharaoh died at about 19, around 1323 BC, and a team led by Zahi Hawass proposed that a combination of weakening disorders, a broken thigh bone, perhaps from a fall, and a severe malaria infection killed him. The famous theory that he was struck on the head came from bone fragments seen in his skull on a 1968 X-ray, but later analysis showed those fragments were loose and almost certainly caused when the mummy was unwrapped in modern times. The story of how a minor boy-king became the most famous pharaoh of all is stranger than the murder theory.

A boy king born into a religious revolution

Tutankhamun ruled roughly from 1332 to 1323 BC, near the end of Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty. He was born with a different name, Tutankhaten, during the reign of Akhenaten, the pharaoh who had pushed Egypt toward the worship of a single sun-disc god, the Aten.

That name change is the key to his reign. Under Tutankhamun the traditional gods returned. The cult of Amun at Thebes was restored to prominence, and the young king and his wife changed their names from "-aten" to "-amun": Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun. He also moved the court from Akhenaten's new capital at Amarna back to Memphis. A child of nine or ten was not making these decisions alone; powerful officials, including his eventual successor Ay, stood around the throne.

A family tree full of questions

DNA testing published in 2010 identified Tutankhamun's father as the mummy from tomb KV55, thought to be either Akhenaten or his short-lived successor Smenkhkare. His mother appears to be an anonymous mummy known as "the Younger Lady", and the genetic results suggest his parents were full brother and sister. Other scholars have questioned how reliable DNA from ancient mummies can be, so this remains debated.

Close family marriages were not unusual in Egyptian royalty, and some researchers have connected the inbreeding to the health problems they believe the young king had. That leads directly to the debate about how he died.

The murder theory and why it collapsed

For decades a dramatic idea dominated documentaries: Tutankhamun was killed by a blow to the back of the head, perhaps by a rival at court. The evidence was the 1968 X-ray showing two bone fragments inside the skull. A CT scan and further analysis showed the fragments were loose and not stuck to the embalming resin, so they had been broken off after embalming, most likely during the rough unwrapping of the 1920s. No signs of a fatal head injury were found.

In fact the mummy had been badly damaged by its modern handlers: it was sawn through at the torso and the head and limbs were separated. That damage has led to misdiagnoses, which is one reason claims about his body should be treated carefully.

Malaria, a broken leg, and a disputed limp

The 2010–2012 studies found evidence of malaria and a fracture of the thigh bone, and concluded that the combination was probably fatal. Some researchers also argued that he had a club foot and walked with a cane, pointing to the more than 130 sticks and canes found in his tomb.

Other Egyptologists disagree strongly. Many of the sticks were ceremonial staffs and symbols of royal office rather than medical aids, and Salima Ikram has argued that the supposed foot problem may come from damage to the mummy and does not match the wear on the canes. A widely shown virtual reconstruction of a frail king with a club foot was criticised as scientifically unfounded. So the honest answer is that he probably died of disease and injury, but his day-to-day health is still argued over.

A hasty burial in a borrowed tomb

Tutankhamun had probably begun a royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings, but it was unfinished when he died. He was buried instead in a small non-royal tomb adapted for him. His successor Ay reigned briefly, and the next king, the general Horemheb, completed the religious restoration while usurping Tutankhamun's monuments and erasing Amarna-era rulers from official memory.

That act of forgetting helped preserve him. Over a century later, debris from cutting a later tomb, KV9, buried the entrance to his tomb, and workmen built huts on top of it. Robbers had entered in antiquity, but the burial was then sealed off by luck.

November 1922: the discovery

Howard Carter, funded by the Earl of Carnarvon, had been searching the valley systematically since 1915. The first step of the tomb's staircase was uncovered on 4 November 1922. The tomb, later numbered KV62, is the only royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings found in near-intact condition. It held 5,398 objects, including a solid gold coffin, the famous gold mask, thrones, bows, trumpets, sandals and even linen underwear, and Carter needed ten years to catalogue them all. One dagger has a blade of iron that analysis suggests came from a meteorite.

Was there really a curse?

Almost as famous as the gold is the "curse of the pharaohs." Despite popular belief, no curse was inscribed in Tutankhamun's tomb, and the Egyptologist Donald Redford dismissed the Tutankhamun curse stories as nonsense. The legend took off when Lord Carnarvon died in 1923 after an infected mosquito bite, which he had cut while shaving, led to blood poisoning. The novelist Marie Corelli had just published a letter warning of "dire punishment" for disturbing sealed tombs, and newspapers ran wild.

The numbers do not support a curse. Of 58 people present when the tomb and sarcophagus were opened, only eight died within a dozen years. Carter himself lived until 1939, and Carnarvon's daughter Lady Evelyn Herbert, one of the first people to enter the tomb, lived until 1980.

Why a minor king became the most famous pharaoh

In his own time Tutankhamun was a short-reigning king whose successors tried to forget him. In ours he is "King Tut", the face of ancient Egypt, because his tomb survived when grander ones were stripped. His treasures toured the world to enormous crowds and in 2025 were moved to the Grand Egyptian Museum. The mystery of his early death keeps people asking questions, but the real wonder is that we can ask them at all.

Learn with Tutankhamun: English phrases about discovery and mystery

Phrase	Meaning	Example
to strike gold	to find something very valuable	Carter struck gold in November 1922.
a needle in a haystack	something very hard to find	The tomb was like a needle in a haystack.
to stand the test of time	to last a very long time	The gold mask has stood the test of time.
an open question	something not yet decided	His exact cause of death is an open question.
to debunk a myth	to show a popular belief is false	The survival numbers debunk the curse myth.

Try this: Write three English sentences about the "curse", using "debunk a myth" and "an open question".