Gold Pendant of Amenhotep III

The gold pendant of Amenhotep III, found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, is a remarkable piece of jewelry that highlights the connections between these two pharaohs. This pendant, often featuring intricate designs and symbols associated with royalty and divinity, reflects the high level of craftsmanship typical of the 18th Dynasty.

It is believed that the pendant may have belonged to Amenhotep III and was later placed in Tutankhamun’s tomb, possibly as a symbolic inheritance or as a mark of reverence for the earlier pharaoh.

In this solid gold pendant, king Amenhotep III is portrayed in a squatting position, wearing the Blue Khepresh Crown and carrying the crook and the flail. He wears a real gold necklace with glass beads. The statuette was suspended by a looped gold chain to be used as a pendant.

Amenhotep III was a powerful and prosperous ruler of the 18th Dynasty. As he was the grandfather of King Tutankhamun, this golden statuette of Amenhotep III was found in the Tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62), Valley of the Kings, West Thebes.

Tutankhamun never met his grandparents. King Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye, the parents of the ‘renegade’ king Akhenaten, died around five years before young Tutankhamun was born.

When he was interred in his pokey little tomb in the Valley of the Kings, Tutankhamun was accompanied by a solid gold pendant of a squatting king, strung on a heavy, woven gold chain.

Amenhotep wears the Khepresh, or Blue Crown and holds a scepter and flail, the insignia of an Egyptian king. The king’s feet are bare and around his neck is a string of tiny colored beads.

Amazingly all of this detail was packed into a tiny statuette just over 5.5 centimeters high. Howard Carter felt the figure represented Amenhotep III, and classified it as an heirloom from his famous grandfather.

New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, reign of Tutankhamun, ca. 1332-1323 BC. From the Tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62), Valley of the Kings, West Thebes. Now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. JE 60702