Still a child , Tutankhamun ascended the throne at Amarna . But soon afterwards – perhaps as early as his first year of regency or shortly afterwards – he abandoned the city founded by Akhenaten .
People continued to live in
Akhetaten
for some time , but the court moved back to Memphis , the traditional seat of government .
The old cults were restored and
Thebes
once more became the religious centre of the country . The King's name was changed to Tutankhamun and the epithet 'Ruler of Southern Heliopolis' was added to it , as a deliberate reference to Karnak as the centre of the cult of the Sun-god Amun-Re . The name of his great royal wife , Ankhesenpaaten , was likewise altered to Ankhesenamun .
As the King ascended the throne as a child , a senior military official with no blood links with the royal family , the Commander-in-Chief of the army ,
Horemheb
, played the role of regent .
The titles of Horemheb as regent indicate that he gained the right to succeed Tutankhamun if he were to die . Horemheb would in fact become the king himself , and in his Coronation text (which gives an account of his rise to power ,
a text carved on the back of a statue of him now in the Museum of Turin) it seems that it was he who advised the King to abandon Amarna 'when chaos had broken out in the palace' . The most important document of Tutankhamun's reign is the so-called Restoration Stela , which presents an extremely negative description of the state in which Akhenaten's reforms had left the country . The temples of the gods had become ruins , their cults abolished . The gods therefore abandoned
Egypt
, and no longer answered any prayers .
There is a possibility that early in Tutankhamun's reign , Horemheb must have been engaged in military confrontations with the Hittites .
In Egypt itself , a major campaign was launched to restore the traditional temples and to reorganize the administration of the country . This was led by the chief of Tutankhamun's treasury , Maya , who was sent on a major mission to temples from the Delta to
Elephantine
in order to impose taxes on their revenues , which had previously been diverted to the
Aten
temples . Maya was also responsible for the gradual demolishing of the temples and palaces of Akhenaten , first at Thebes , but later at Amarna as well . Most of
the talatat found their way into the foundations and pylons of new construction works in
Luxor
and Karnak . As overseer of works in the Valley of the Kings , Maya must have organized the transfer of Akhenaten's mortal remains to a small undecorated tomb in the valley (assuming that the body found in KV 55 is indeed Akhenaten's body) . Later , he was responsible for the burials of Tutankhamun and his successor
Ay
and for the reorganization of the Workmen's Village at Deir el-Medineh when work began on the Tomb of Horemheb .
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