Under Horemheb, the restoration of the traditional ancient Egyptian religion was completed; Ay and Tutankhamun's constructions were usurped and earlier Amarna Period rulers were erased.

The discovery received worldwide press coverage; with over 5,000 artifacts, it gave rise to renewed public interest in ancient Egypt, for which Tutankhamun's mask, now preserved at the Egyptian Museum, remains a popular symbol.

He shares this Y-haplogroup with his father, the KV55 mummy (Akhenaten), and grandfather, Amenhotep III, and his mtDNA haplogroup with his mother, The Younger Lady, his grandmother, Tiye, and his great-grandmother, Thuya.

The first of these studies had investigated familial relationships among 11 royal mummies of the New Kingdom, which included Tutankhamun and Amenhotep III, as well as potential inherited disorders and infectious diseases.

[34] The second of these studies (described above) had investigated the Y-haplogroups and genetic kinship of Ramesses III and an unknown man buried along with him in the royal cache at Deir el Bahari.

[49] But several pieces of evidence suggest that his court was trying to reconcile Atenism with the traditional religion,[50][51][52] and activity at Amarna decreased during the first four years of his reign.

[60] Memphis became the main seat of royal administration,[60] continuing a trend that dated back to Akhenaten's predecessors, toward administering the country from that central location rather than the more outlying site of Thebes.

[60] Tutankhamun enriched and endowed the priestly orders of two important cults, initiated a restoration process for old monuments that were damaged during the Amarna Period, and reburied his father's remains in the Valley of the Kings.

[63] As part of the restoration of the traditional cults, the king initiated building projects, in particular at Karnak in Thebes, where he laid out the sphinx avenue leading to the temple of Mut.

He commissioned new statues of the deities from the best metals and stone and had new processional barques made of the finest cedar from Lebanon and had them embellished with gold and silver.

[78] Yet some experts, such as Sofia Aziz and other researchers have taken the position that the speculations of Tutankhamun's physical frailty are overestimated, arguing that mummy damage has led to misdiagnosis.

[87] It has also been suggested that he had inherited temporal lobe epilepsy in a bid to explain the religiosity of his great-grandfather Thutmose IV and father Akhenaten and their early deaths.

[93] James Gamble instead suggests that the position is a result of Tutankhamun habitually walking on the outside of his foot due to the pain caused by Köhler disease II;[94] this theory has been refuted by members of Hawass' team.

[78] Genetic testing for STEVOR, AMA1, or MSP1 genes specific for Plasmodium falciparum revealed indications of malaria tropica in 4 mummies, including Tutankhamun's.

[101][102] Stuart Tyson Smith, Egyptologist and professor of anthropology at University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2008 expressed criticism of the forensic reconstruction in a journal review.

[105] However, Timmann and Meyer have argued that sickle cell anemia better fits the pathologies exhibited by the king,[106] a suggestion the Egyptian team has called "interesting and plausible".

[110] It has also been suggested that the young king was killed in a chariot accident due to a pattern of crushing injuries, including the fact that the front part of his chest wall and ribs are missing.

[111][112] However, the missing ribs are unlikely to be a result of an injury sustained at the time of death; photographs taken at the conclusion of Carter's excavation in 1926 show that the chest wall of the king was intact, still wearing a beaded collar with falcon-headed terminals.

Notably, during the standard damnatio memoriae process that each new Egyptian pharaoh undertakes, Horemheb defaced Ay's tomb, but left Tutankhamun's untouched, presumably out of respect.

[121] Davis did find several objects in KV58 referring to Tutankhamun, which included knobs and handles bearing his name most significantly the embalming cache of the king (KV54).

The Earl of Carnarvon and Carter had hoped this would lead to their gaining the concession when Davis gave it up but had to be satisfied with excavations in different parts of the Theban Necropolis for seven more years.

The tomb's entrance was buried by mounds of debris from the cutting of KV9 over 150 years after Tutankhamun's burial; ancient workmen's huts were also built on the site.

A day and time were selected to unseal the tomb with about twenty appointed witnesses that included Lord Carnarvon, several Egyptian officials, museum representatives and the staff of the Government Press Bureau.

[146] For many years, rumors of a "curse of the pharaohs" (probably fueled by newspapers seeking sales at the time of the discovery[147]) persisted, emphasizing the early death of some of those who had entered the tomb.

[152] The last survivors included Lady Evelyn Herbert, Lord Carnarvon's daughter who was among the first people to enter the tomb after its discovery in November 1922, who lived for a further 57 years and died in 1980,[153] and American archaeologist J.O.

[159] While The Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibit was touring the United States in 1978, comedian Steve Martin wrote a novelty song "King Tut".

[160] In 2023, an extinct whale discovered in the Eocene deposits of Egypt was named Tutcetus, after Tutankhamun, due to the small size and immature age of the type specimen.

[171] The exhibition started in Los Angeles, then moved to Fort Lauderdale, Chicago, Philadelphia and London before finally returning to Egypt in August 2008.

[172] After Dallas the exhibition moved to the de Young Museum in San Francisco, followed by the Discovery Times Square Exposition in New York City.

[173] The exhibition visited Australia for the first time, opening at the Melbourne Museum for its only Australian stop before Egypt's treasures returned to Cairo in December 2011.