i can tell i’m sleep deprived bc i just made myself cry about tutankhamun and i have, like, negative interest in the kid
have now made the rest of the discord cry about this little boy who had multi-coloured ducks sewn onto a tunic that he loved so much he wore it to a Very Important Event because he was EIGHT and have you SEEN my DUCKS
sorry no i’m not done i’m gonna make you all cry some more i’m bringing you down with me
there was once a little boy.
he is born disabled. his body hurts, and he can’t walk properly the way the other children do. he doesn’t understand why. he’s a little boy. but he plays with wooden boats and pulls toys on a string.
somebody makes him a tunic. they sew ducks onto it in red and green and yellow and blue. the bright colours of a child.
the little boy is eight years old, and he’s going to be king now. there’s a big ceremony about it. he doesn’t really fully understand what’s going on, because he’s eight, but he wears the tunic with the brightly coloured ducks for the occasion because he loves it. look at his ducks! aren’t they great?
he is a child. the adults around him manipulate and coax him to gain more power for themselves. he still plays with toys.
as a teenager, not yet an adult, he fathers children. they do not survive. he’s not even old enough to have full agency in his job and is still being manipulated, but he had babies and they died.
he does not make it to his twenties. at eighteen or nineteen years old he dies, and is buried. his babies, so tiny, are buried with him.
and so is his tunic with the little ducks that he loved so much he kept it long after it no longer fit.
there was once a little boy.
yeah i think that like. especially with historical figures in your mind people who were kings and queens or important nobles were adults. even if you know how old they were it doesn’t really click. it doesn’t seem real
but then you get something like a little tunic with brightly coloured ducks on it and it hits you like a fucking truck that this really was a little kid and no matter how far removed you are a little kid is still a little kid. their brains didn’t develop any quicker back then. he was just as developed/mature mentally as any 8 year old now. he had cartoonish animals on his clothes and he played with toy boats and probably terrorised the local cat population.
tutankhamun was a child and he didn’t make it to adulthood because he was unfortunate enough to be a very important child
his dad died when he was 8. he saw his own babies die when he was still just a boy himself.
but he had brightly coloured little ducks on his favourite shirt, and he kept it.
and he did not just keep the duckie shirt either
tutankhamun had a little pair of sandals with ducks on them. he had earrings decorated with ducks. he kept those, and other items of childhood clothing. some toys. keepsakes. things he loved, and treasured. he kept them all in a little wooden chest. the chest… was carved with ducks.
and that little duck chest, filled with things he kept from his childhood, was buried with him. maybe he was keeping them for the little babies who did not make it. maybe they just reminded him of good days and fun times.
but he was a little boy who thought ducks were just the best
WITH PLEASURE
(greyscale makes it hard but the duck head is on the right above the toe strap. always takes me a while to find it too)
King Tut was treated horrible as well because his father, Akhenaten, had been the Pharaoh to try and completely change the religious and cultural structure of Egypt which had been stagnating for a few hundred years. He moved the Capital away from Thebes, he rewrote the Egyptian religion under a singular god named Aten, which took a LOT of political power away from the religious priests. His wife was Nefertiti. Tutankhamun had a different name when he was born, Amenhotep.
We don’t know for sure how Akhenaten died, whether it was poor health or assassination, but Nefertiti died very soon after and disappears from all records. Tutankhamun is renamed with a more traditional name.
All of Akhenaten’s statues, temples, and murals are attempted to be destroyed as much as possible. The religion of Aten is scrubbed as much as possible. Power is wrestled back into the hands of the old priests where it used to be before Akhenaten tried to implement changes. Everyone tries to make things back the way they were before so they can once more control Egypt the way they used to. SO that they can have back that power.
8 year old Tutankhamun is made Pharaoh.
