Nakhtmin belonged to the circle of officials who served Egypt after Akhenaten's religious reforms. Tutankhamun's reign saw renewed royal support for traditional cults and the reorganisation of a court inherited from the Amarna years. Nakhtmin's titles identify a man with military and scribal responsibilities, including royal scribe and fan-bearer at the king's right side. Such titles expressed access to the ruler as well as service. They establish that he was a significant court figure, but they do not provide a continuous account of his campaigns or an exact ladder of promotions.

The clearest connection with Tutankhamun comes from the burial itself. Five wooden shabtis were dedicated by Nakhtmin for the king. Shabtis were funerary figures associated with service in the afterlife, and these examples joined the equipment placed in KV62. Their inscriptions carried the donor's identity into a royal tomb. The treasurer Maya also supplied funerary gifts, showing how senior officials could commemorate their relationship with the dead ruler. Nakhtmin's donations are evidence of that relationship; they are not an eyewitness attendance list for the funeral or proof that only two people ever contributed to the burial.

His background is usually connected with Akhmim, the Upper Egyptian centre of the god Min. A fragmentary family statue naming a mother called Iuy, a priestess associated with Min and Isis, has been brought into the reconstruction of his family. Several men called Nakhtmin are known from this setting, however, and deciding which monuments belong to the general is part of the problem. His relationship to Ay is therefore less certain than a simple family tree suggests. He has been described as Ay's son, grandson or chosen heir, but those possibilities should remain distinct rather than being combined into one assured biography.

The most consequential evidence is a damaged inscription on a statue originally representing Nakhtmin and his wife. It preserves King's Son, but the following portion is broken. A possible completion as King's Son of Kush would make it an official title connected with the administration of Nubia, rather than a statement of royal parentage. Scholars have questioned that restoration because the known succession of viceroys does not readily accommodate him. Together with his other high-ranking titles and association with Ay, the inscription has supported the proposal that he was being prepared for kingship. The interpretation is important, but the stone does not state in full that Ay appointed a biological son as his successor.

Ay took the throne after Tutankhamun and ruled briefly. Horemheb then became king. Nakhtmin does not appear as a reigning pharaoh in this sequence. The transition has often been reconstructed as a rivalry between powerful court figures, and Jacobus van Dijk interpreted Nakhtmin as Ay's intended successor who was displaced. The surviving evidence does not reveal whether Nakhtmin had already died, lost influence or was removed during a struggle. Nor does the wider diplomatic crisis involving Egypt and the Hittites supply a missing record of his individual actions. A precise date or cause of death cannot be recovered from his disappearance alone.

Fragments of Nakhtmin's sculpture preserve both accomplished workmanship and deliberate damage. The surviving upper part of his wife's figure retains a finely pleated garment, an elaborate wig and a menat necklace associated with Hathor; the official collection description confirms that it belonged to a double statue and carries her husband's titles on the back. Damage to Nakhtmin's monuments is commonly interpreted in connection with the suppression of Ay's circle under Horemheb. It records an attack on commemoration, not the circumstances of the general's death. His tomb has not been securely identified, and his final years remain open to investigation. What can still be seen is how a prominent official placed his name beside royal power, and how incomplete such a record can become.