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Secondary sourcePhotograph1912

Temple of Tutankhamun's Deified Form at Faras

Francis Llewellyn Griffith · 1912

A 1912 photograph of the excavated Nubian temple at Faras, built to honour Tutankhamun as a living god.

This temple was built to worship Tutankhamun as a living god, showing his religious status beyond Egypt's borders.

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Sepia-toned photograph of an excavated desert site with low, scattered stone foundations and rubble in the foreground. In the distance, flat sandy ground extends to a hazy horizon, with a few small upright figures or objects near a pole.
Francis Llewellyn Griffith, photograph of the Temple of Tutankhamun's deified form, Faras, Nubia, 1912.

About this source

What it is

This is a 1912 photograph of the excavated remains of a temple at Faras in Nubia, dedicated to a divine form of Tutankhamun worshipped during his own lifetime. The photograph was taken by Francis Llewellyn Griffith.

Why it matters

The temple shows that Tutankhamun, like other pharaohs, was honoured as a god even while alive, reflecting how Egyptian kingship extended religious authority beyond Egypt itself into Nubia. The site also shows how little remains physically of such temples today.

Look closer

  • What does the scattered, ruined state of the site tell us about the passage of time since Tutankhamun's reign?
  • Why might a pharaoh be worshipped as a god while still alive?
  • What does the photograph not show about how the temple originally looked or functioned?

This photograph is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Tutankhamun on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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c. 1333 BCE

Black and white photograph of a wooden figure wearing a striped royal headdress with a uraeus cobra, crossed arms holding ceremonial objects, and hieroglyphic inscriptions in columns on the lower body.Photograph

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Photograph of Tutankhamun's Shawabti Figure

Harry Burton · 1920s

Interior wall of an Egyptian tomb painted gold, with rows of painted baboon figures and hieroglyphs in boxed panels, a boat scene at top left, and a painted standing figure of a pharaoh at right. A glass display case is visible at the bottom.Artifact

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Tomb of Tutankhamun

14th century BCE

Black and white photograph of two men inside a tomb opening the carved, hieroglyph-covered gilded doors of a shrine. One man in a light cap kneels and reaches toward the doors, while another man in a jacket leans over from the right. Carved relief figures and inscriptions cover the panels.Photograph

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Opening the Doors of the Fourth Shrine in Tutankhamun's Tomb

Harry Burton · 1920s

Photo of the Restoration Stela, a tall round-topped reddish stone stele in a museum with carved relief figures at the top and rows of hieroglyphic text below, with a diagonal crack running through it.Document

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Restoration Stela

Tutankhamun · c. 1326 BCE

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