A Look at Tut's Tomb

The tale of King Tut, the boy king buried with over 5000 objects of golden treasure made with exquisite craftsmanship, has captivated us for nearly a century.  But his tomb is so much more than the gold found within it. It’s a story of a boy, rejecting his father’s religious revolution. 

It’s a story of his young widow struggling to give him a proper burial when almost nothing was prepared after his untimely death.  It’s a story of political mayhem after the end of the royal family’s male bloodline. 

And it’s a story of the archaeologist, Howard Carter fighting to find King Tut when most Egyptologists thought he was an unimportant blip of history that might not even exist. 

Kate Liszka is the Benson and Pamela Harer Fellow in Egyptology and Assistant Professor of History at California State University, San Bernardino. 

She received her PhD in Egyptian Archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2012.  Prior to working at CSUSB, she was a member of the Society of the Fellows in the Liberal Arts at Princeton University.  As an Egyptologist, Kate Liszka works on two main projects.  She studies the interactions between Egyptians and Nubians, primarily looking how a group of people called the Medjay evolved from itinerant pastoral nomads into an elite military force. 

She is currently revising a monograph that reexamines each piece of evidence for the Medjay.  Additionally, she directs the Wadi el-Hudi Expedition, which is an archaeological project in the Egyptian Eastern Desert that investigates the organization of Ancient Egyptian amethyst mining practices using Egyptian and Nubian laborers. 

She has also had the privilege of talking to people about King Tut for over the last decade and given hundreds of lectures and tours on the topic.