Who was King Tut?

King Tut, or Tut-ankh-amun, was a pharaoh of Egypt during the New Kingdom (ca. 1300 BCE). He was very young when he died, no more than 18 or 19, and the mystery surrounding his death remains.
His tomb was found in the Valley of the Kings by the famed archeologist Howard Carter in 1922. The tomb was largely undisturbed and featured a host of incredible artifacts, including King Tut's impressive solid gold sarcophagus. The discovery of King Tut's tomb created something of a stir in the popular imagination, and one witnesses a kind of "Egypt craze" in the 1920s as Egyptian art and aesthetics make their way into popular culture at this time. One of the reasons Tut's tomb remained undisturbed is because it was unusual, very small for a person of his stature and importance. It is because of this that people speculate about reasons for his early death.
There is also a legend associated with King Tut's tomb. A kind of "mummy's curse" or "curse of the pharaohs". Many important tombs featured curses and warnings to grave robbers, but this appears to have garnered more interest in the case of King Tut, likely because of the untimely death of Lord Carnarvon, who financially backed Howard Carter's expedition, soon after the tomb was found.