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The restoration stela with a pair of Tutankhamun statues. Since the long-anticipated opening of Tut’s galleries at GEM is postponed once again hopefully for the last time to be in the last quarter of this year (Nov, 1, 2025), it’s important to highlight the currently displayed artifacts from Tutankhamun’s reign in the Main Galleries: the historical restoration stela and two identical royal granite statues. The stela is crucial for Egyptologists to understand the political situation following the end of Akhenaten’s reign and the succession of Tutankhamun, describing how the young King restored the old pantheon (especially the cults of Amun and Ptah) after abandoning their temples during the time of Akhenaten. After mentioning the pharaoh’s epithets, the text goes “When His Majesty arose as king, the temples of the gods and goddesses, from Elephantine [to] the lagoons of the Delta, had [fallen] into ruin. Their shrines had fallen into decay and had become ruins overgrown with plants. The land was in distress, and the gods were turning away from this land. His Majesty surpassed what had been done before.” Later on, King Horemheb usurped the stela erased Tut’s name and epithets, and carved his own to promote himself as the real savior of chaos. There was a failed attempt to split the stela into two parts maybe in medieval times for construction purposes. They were found buried and broken into numerous fragments, within Karnak temple Cachette by Georges Legrian between 1903-1905, more than a decade before the discovery of Tut’s tomb in 1922. The statues depict the young king with some features of the Amarna style.

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