Tut-Ankh-Amen

Tut-Ankh-Amen or Tutankhamun, occasionally referred to as King Tut, was a pharaoh of ancient Egypt who died as a boy.

Tutankhamun gifted the Second Doctor several pieces of jewellery, but the latter never wore them. (PROSE: The Nameless City) The Third Doctor recalled that he was a "nice boy", but did not like it when he beat him at Senet. (PROSE: The Christmas Inversion)

In 1938, Monroe Stahr referred to Raschid Karnak, who was costumed as a mummy, as "King Tut." (COMIC: The Curse of the Scarab)

Tomb

Shortly after the king's death, the Second Doctor materialised the TARDIS inside Tut's tomb. Within a few minutes, the TARDIS crew heard the sound of approaching bandits. Ben Jackson, who bore a striking resemblance to the dead king, donned his mask and confronted the robbers, wailing like a ghost. They fled, creating a rockslide in their haste that sealed the tomb, which lay mostly intact until 1923, when it was discovered by Howard Carter (PROSE: The King of Golden Death) and the Doctor. (AUDIO: The Movellan Grave)

The Fourth Doctor claimed to have once used his Gladstone bag to help Carter find Tutankhamun's tomb. (AUDIO: The Movellan Grave)

The next summer the 3000 years-old tomb of Prim was discovered in Lower Mesopotamia. (AUDIO: The Boundless Sea) In 1926, the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb led to an increase in archaeological expeditions in Egypt. One archaeologist said that Tutankhamun was nothing compared to his discovery of a tomb that held Styx. (COMIC: The Gods Walk Among Us) It was rumoured that there was a "curse of King Tut" which struck down upon egyptologists; the former owner of the building which became HQ to Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart's special forces was said to have been killed by this curse. (AUDIO: Memories of Tomorrow) In actuality, Marcus Scarman had been killed as a consequence of having entered an unrelated Egyptian monument, the Black Pyramid of Sutekh. (TV: Pyramids of Mars)

Behind the scenes

• The King of Golden Death (1967) refers to him as "Tut-Ankh-Amen", a hyphenated spelling which has fallen somewhat out of favour. The Gods Walk Among Us (1981) uses the "Tutankhamun" spelling.
• Although it goes unreferenced, Akhenaten was his father and Nefertiti was his stepmother.
• In the real world, the tomb itself was found already in 1922, but the burial chamber was opened only in 1923. Most probably, the date in the story refers to the second of these events.