Egypt. Secrets of the Pharaohs: life in the ancient times. Secrets of the Pharaohs: 2. Lost City of the Pyramids (2000) Ancient History. Dr Joyce Tyldesley - SCHOOL OF ARCHAEOLOGY, CLASSICS AND EGYPTOLOGY. ‘Tutankhamen,’ by Joyce Tyldesley. Mansell/Time & Life Pictures — Getty Images The outer coffin of Tutankhamen. Today, Tut the boy king — about 18 at death — is the superstar of museum and touring exhibitions, one of antiquity’s celebrities, sharing a firmament with the likes of Nefertiti and the ever lusty Cleopatra. Indeed, he is so much a celebrity that Joyce Tyldesley, an Egyptologist at the University of Manchester who wrote a biography of Cleopatra four years ago, says that for some aloof colleagues, confessing an interest in Tutankhamen is “the equivalent to confessing a preference for television soaps over Shakespeare.”
Nonetheless, she evidently believes the moment right for a book rethinking the Tutankhamen craze and assessing new biological and archaeological evidence for perspective on his place in Egyptian history. Five months after the tomb’s opening, Lord Carnarvon died of blood poisoning from an infected mosquito bite. Tyldesley offers no definitive solutions to many of the mysteries surrounding Tut. The Leading Astronaut Site on the Net.