A majority of his reign was devoted to restoring Egyptian culture, including religious and political policies; his predecessor and father Akhenaten had altered many Egyptian cultural aspects during his reign, and one of Tutankhamun's many restoration policies included changing the political capital from Akhenaten's Amarna back to Memphis.

As medical technology has advanced throughout the years, new techniques have been utilized on the mummy to discover the true age, genealogy, and cause of death of the young pharaoh, speculated by some to be from a blow to the head, battle wound, or a chariot accident, so that some of the mysteries surrounding the "Boy-King" might finally be resolved.

[6] Ancient robbers had entered the burial chamber and unsealed the doors of the outermost of the series of shrines that surrounded Tutankhamun's sarcophagus.

[10] On 3 January 1924, the doors of the third and fourth (innermost) shrines were opened, revealing the king's sarcophagus, of yellow quartzite with a granite lid tinted to match.

The innermost coffin, made of solid gold, was covered with a red shroud, save for the face, and wore a large floral collar.

[27] Characterised by Carter as a "beautiful and unique specimen of ancient portraiture"[28] it depicts the king as the god Osiris with a curled divine beard and wearing the striped nemes-headdress with vulture and uraeus emblems at the brow.

Between the hands sat a large resin scarab, bearing the image of the Bennu-bird and inscribed with Chapter 29b of the Book of the Dead, suspended on flexible straps.

Additionally, the unguents had undergone a chemical reaction, characterised by Carter as "a kind of slow spontaneous combustion", which carbonised the linen wrappings.

The crook and flail had disintegrated, the resin scarab was cracked, and the threads securing the separate hands and mummy bands were decayed, rendering the whole assemblage very fragile and which "fell apart at the slightest touch".

Attempts were made to separate the mummy from the inner and middle coffin troughs by placing them in the midday sun for several hours, with the temperature reaching 65 °C (149 °F).

[38] Carter had intended the examination to take place at the start of the excavation season in October but it had been delayed by a month to allow Pierre Lacau to attend.

The arms were disarticulated at the shoulders, elbows, and wrists in order to continue the unwrapping of the torso and to remove bracelets;[50][51] each body part was treated with hot paraffin wax to stabilise it.

[54] This thorough disarticulation of the body gave clear views of the ends of each of the relevant bones, allowing the anatomists to make an accurate estimate of the king's age.

This similarity indicated a close genetic relationship to the royal line; it was previously thought he had gained the throne only through marriage to Akhenaten's daughter Ankhesenamun.

[72] Around his neck were twenty amulets of various forms and materials including stones such as a red jasper tyet, a green feldspar was-sceptre, and a carnelian snake head, all suspended on gold wires.

[66] Tutankhamun's forearms were covered from elbow to wrist with 11 bracelets (seven on the right arm and six on the left), all of which were likely worn in life, and bore devices of scarabs, eyes of Horus, and display a wide variety of techniques and materials.

The fact that skull fragments were discovered led many to assume the king was murdered by a blow to the head, but the X-ray could not support or discredit this theory.

While Harris ultimately did not publish anything about his examination, it apparently did not yield further information regarding the condition of the king’s mummy, although still photos taken at the time and released to the public confirmed the findings of the 1968 Harrison team.

The results showed that the bone fragments inside the skull had moved, indicating that traumatic injury to the head happened after death, and murder due to blunt force trauma was ruled out.

Based on all the data, the study concluded the most likely cause of death for the young king was the combination of avascular necrosis, malaria and a leg fracture.

[87] Inherited temporal lobe epilepsy, suggested to explain the increased religiosity in the reigns of his immediate predecessors and their early deaths, has little physical evidence to support it.

[91] In 2010, a team led by Zahi Hawass diagnosed Tutankhamun with a clubbed left foot with avascular necrosis of the second and third metatarsals (Köhler disease II).

[96] Depictions of kings shooting while seated date back to the Old Kingdom and canes were common symbols of status in ancient Egypt and frequently included in burials.

[87] Since the discovery of Tutankhamun's mummy, there has been a lot of speculation and theories on the exact cause of death, which until recent studies had been hard to prove with the evidence and data available.

While it was a widely debated topic for many Egyptologists, it had also spread to the general public as popular culture has come up with many conspiracy theories that played out in movies, TV shows, and fictional books.

[100] There are many educated and respected Egyptologists as well as trained professionals in other fields[101][102] who have devoted a lot of time researching Tutankhamun and who have varying beliefs to his cause of death.

[104][101] A violent murder is rule out because it is now known that they are a result of the mummy's modern unwrapping as the fragments are loose inside the skull[105] and there is no evidence of bone thinning or calcified membranes indicative of a fatal blow to the head.

[117] Egyptologist Christine El Mahdy uses the original assumption from Carter's examination that Tutankhamun had a quick burial ceremony since some elements of the mummification appeared rushed, as proof that he needed to be buried quickly following his unexpected death because the man who was next in line for the throne, presumably Ay, wanted to avoid a power struggle that might have occurred if the burial process had taken too long.

[85] Since its discovery and widespread popularity, it has led to DNA testing done on it and other mummies from the time period that now give a proven family tree for many of the royalty during the 18th Dynasty.

Ikram observes that "the king's body was of less interest to the public than his treasures, or the alleged curse", which continued to be published on into the 1930s, after the clearance of the tomb was completed.