Tutankhamun

Born Tutankhaten around 1342 BC, he became pharaoh at roughly nine years old and immediately began dismantling his predecessor's religious revolution, restoring the old gods and changing his own name to Tutankhamun to reflect it. He moved the court from Amarna back to Memphis, rebuilt the cult of Amun at Thebes, and recorded his restorations on what's now called the Restoration Stela - rare among Egyptian kings, he was worshipped as a deity in his own lifetime. He carried out campaigns in Nubia and the Near East and began a royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings, but died unexpectedly around 1323 BC, likely from malaria and a leg fracture, at about eighteen. Buried in a small adapted tomb, he was succeeded by his vizier Ay, then by his military commander Horemheb, who erased him from the record along with the other Amarna rulers. Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon found him in 1922: robbed in antiquity but still packed with over 5,000 artifacts, including the undisturbed mummy, and that mask - now the icon that carries his name forward as "King Tut," long past the empire that tried to forget him.