King Tut Revealed
By A.R. Williams
He was just a teenager when he died. The last heir of a powerful family that had ruled Egypt and its empire for centuries, he was laid to rest laden with gold and eventually forgotten. Since the discovery of his tomb in 1922, the modern world has speculated about what happened to him, with murder the most extreme possibility. Now, leaving his tomb for the first time in almost 80 years, Tut has undergone a CT scan that offers new clues about his life and death—and provides precise data for an accurate forensic reconstruction of the boyish pharaoh.
Inside King Tut's subterranean burial chamber, against a backdrop of sacred murals, Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, removes padding to reveal the young pharaoh's remains. "When I saw his face, I was shocked," says Hawass. "My heart was pounding, and I could not speak." Moments later, workmen carried the mummy—still in the plain wooden box where British archaeologist Howard Carter placed it decades ago—to a trailer parked at the entrance of the tomb. There, a CT machine scanned the mummy head to toe, creating 1,700 digital x-ray images in cross section. Tut's head scanned in .62-millimeter slices to register its intricate structures, takes on eerie detail in the resulting image. With Tut's entire body similarly recorded, a team of specialists in radiology, forensics, and anatomy began to probe the secrets that the winged goddesses of a gilded burial shrine protected for so long.
Clues from Top . . .
Did the young pharaoh die from a blow to the head? Definitely not, say the nine doctors who studied the CT images. Some Egyptologists and amateur sleuths have long speculated that a stealthy foe murdered Tut by attacking him from behind.
As evidence, they cite an x-ray taken in 1968, which shows a fragment of bone (A) in the skull cavity—emptied by embalmers, according to custom. The CT scan, however, found no trace of lethal trauma to the head. A cross section reveals two loose pieces of bone (B and C), as well as additional chips embedded in the embalming resins that line the top and back of the skull. Packing material also appears near the ear canals and in the sinus cavities, and plugs close the nostrils. To remove the brain, pour in the resins—at two separate times—and stuff in the packing, the embalmers apparently entered the skull through the nose as well as the neck (D), perhaps breaking off bone in the process. Carter's handling of the mummy may also have produced bone fragments.
The maturity of the skeleton and wisdom teeth
confirms that Tut was about 19 years old when he died. His teeth had no cavities, and though his palate had a small cleft, he was probably unaware of it. The elongated shape of his skull—similar to that of other family members—was not caused by disease and falls within the range of normal variation.
. . . to Bottom
About five feet six inches tall (1.7 meters) and slightly built, Tut was in excellent health—well fed and free of any disease that would have affected his physique. Though his spine appears curved, it was probably misaligned during embalming. Something out of the ordinary, then, must have struck him down. But what? The experts can't say for sure because of the difficulty in distinguishing between possible injuries to Tut while alive and the damage Carter's team did to the mummy. Some believe, for instance, that a fracture above the left knee was Carter's fault. Others think it may be the result of an accident or assault that led to Tut's demise after a virulent infection set in and spread.
Tut's funerary equipment—including chariots, bows, arrows, and throwing sticks —
indicates that he had learned to hunt and fight like a proper pharaoh. In addition, a painted wooden box (above) shows him defending Egypt from its enemies, a symbolic scene but maybe based in truth. Could he have died in battle? Or might he have crashed his chariot while hunting?
Supporters of such possibilities point to Tut's mangled chest, with its breastbone missing and much of the front rib cage cut out. Carter's anatomist notes that resin-soaked linen packed in Tut's chest prevented an examination—so the bones were likely not removed at that time. Did the embalmers take them out while preparing a gravely injured Tut for eternity? It's an intriguing question, but for now the pharaoh is still keeping some secrets.
Splendour of the Inner Sanctum
Carved into the Valley of the Kings,
Tut's tomb hid his mummy and funerary regalia until archaeologist Howard Carter revealed its contents to world acclaim. Though the peripheral rooms were looted in antiquity, the burial itself remained untouched.
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Guide to the Great Beyond
Scenes infused with magical powers surround Tut's burial chamber and map out his journey to the next world. After the funeral procession, his successor, Aye, symbolically revives the dead king. Nut, the sky goddess, welcomes Tut to the realm of the gods, and Osiris, god of the afterlife, embraces him along with his ka, or spiritual double. Baboons on the far wall represent the start of his passage through the 12 hours of the night—a journey symbolized by a boat bearing a scarab, emblem of the sun god.
An angry wind stirred up ghostly dust devils as King Tut was taken from his resting place in the ancient Egyptian cemetery known as the Valley of the Kings. Dark-bellied clouds had scudded across the desert sky all day and now were veiling the stars in casket gray. It was 6 p.m. on January 5, 2005. In a few moments the world's most famous mummy would glide headfirst into a CT scanner brought here to probe the lingering medical mysteries of this little understood young ruler who died more than 3,300 years ago.
All afternoon the usual line of tourists from around the world had descended into the cramped, rock-cut tomb some 26 feet (8 meters) underground to pay their respects. They gazed at the murals on the walls of the burial chamber and peered at Tut's gilded face, the most striking feature of his mummy-shaped outer coffin lid. Some visitors read from guidebooks in a whisper. Others stood silently, perhaps pondering Tut's untimely death in his late teens, or wondering with a shiver if the pharaoh's curse—death or misfortune falling upon those who disturbed him—was really true.
When the valley closed to the public at dusk, Egyptologists in jeans and laborers in long robes and turbans got to work. Shouting directions and encouragements over the roar of fresh air being pumped into the tomb, they quickly attached ropes to the head and foot of the coffin lid and lifted it out of the sarcophagus. After a pause to reposition the ropes, they slowly pulled up a plain wooden box. Inside, cradled by cotton batting and yellowed muslin, lay the mortal remains of King Tutankhamun: a serene face with a scarred left cheek, a barrel chest, skeletal arms and legs, all blackened by resins poured on during his burial rites.
"The mummy is in very bad condition because of what Carter did in the 1920s,"
said Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, as he leaned over the body for a long first look. Carter—Howard Carter, that is—was the British archaeologist who in 1922 discovered Tut's tomb after years of futile searching. Its contents, though hastily ransacked in antiquity, were surprisingly complete. They remain the richest royal collection ever found and have become part of the pharaoh's legend. Stunning artifacts in gold, their eternal brilliance meant to guarantee resurrection, caused a sensation at the time of the discovery—and still get the most attention. But Tut was also buried with everyday things he'd want in the afterlife: board games, a bronze razor, linen undergarments, cases of food and wine.
After months of carefully recording the pharaoh's funerary treasures, Carter began investigating his three nested coffins. Opening the first, he found a shroud adorned with garlands of willow and olive leaves, wild celery, lotus petals, and cornflowers, the faded evidence of a burial in March or April. When he finally reached the mummy, though, he ran into trouble. The ritual resins had hardened, cementing Tut to the bottom of his solid gold coffin. "No amount of legitimate force could move them," Carter wrote later. "What was to be done?"
The sun can beat down like a hammer this far south in Egypt, and Carter tried to use it to loosen the resins. For several hours he set the mummy outside in blazing sunshine that heated it to 149 degrees Fahrenheit (65 degrees Celsius). Nothing budged. He reported with scientific detachment that "the consolidated material had to be chiseled away from beneath the limbs and trunk before it was possible to raise the king's remains."
In his defense, Carter really had little choice. If he hadn't cut the mummy free, thieves most certainly would have circumvented the guards and ripped it apart to remove the gold. In Tut's time the royals were fabulously wealthy, and they thought—or hoped—they could take their riches with them. For his journey to the great beyond, King Tut was lavished with glittering goods: precious collars, inlaid necklaces and bracelets, rings, amulets, a ceremonial apron, sandals, sheaths for his fingers and toes, and the now iconic inner coffin and mask—all of pure gold. To separate Tut from his adornments, Carter's men removed the mummy's head and severed nearly every major joint. Once they had finished, they reassembled the remains on a layer of sand in a wooden box with padding that concealed the damage, the bed where Tut now rests.
Archaeology has changed substantially in the intervening decades, focusing less on treasure and more on the fascinating details of life and intriguing mysteries of death. It also uses more sophisticated tools, including medical technology. In 1968, more than 40 years after Carter's discovery, an anatomy professor x-rayed the mummy and revealed a startling fact: Beneath the resin that cakes his chest, his breastbone and front ribs are missing.
Today diagnostic imaging can be done with computed tomography, or CT, by which hundreds of x-rays in cross section are put together like slices of bread to create a three-dimensional virtual body. What more would a CT scan reveal of Tut than the x-ray? And could it answer two of the biggest questions still lingering about him—how did he die, and how old was he at the time of his death?
King Tut's demise was a big event, even by royal standards. He was the last of his family's line, and his funeral was the death rattle of a dynasty. But the particulars of his passing and its aftermath are unclear. "This period is like a play," ZahiHawass explained in his busy Cairo office before the scan. "A part of this play is written. But the final scenes are not known."
These things we do know: Amenhotep III—Tut's father or grandfather, depending on how you read the evidence—was a powerful pharaoh who ruled for almost four decades at the height of the 18th dynasty's golden age. His son Amenhotep IV
succeeded him and initiated one of the strangest periods in the history of ancient Egypt. The new pharaoh promoted the worship of the Aten, the sun disk, changed his name to Akhenaten, or "servant of the Aten," and moved the religious capital from the old city of Thebes to the new city of Akhetaten, known now as Amarna. He further shocked the country by attacking Amun, a major god, smashing his images and closing his temples. "It must have been a horrific time," said Ray Johnson, director of the University of Chicago's research center in Luxor, the site of ancient Thebes. "The family that had ruled for centuries was coming to an end, and then Akhenaten went a little wacky."
After Akhenaten's death, a mysterious ruler named Smenkhkare appeared briefly and exited with hardly a trace. And then a very young Tutankhaten took the throne—King Tut as he's widely known today. The boy king soon changed his name to Tutankhamun, "living image of Amun," and oversaw a restoration of the old ways. He reigned for about nine years—and then died unexpectedly.
A crisis of succession gripped the royal court. With power plays and intrigues surely seething around her, Tut's widow, Ankhesenamun, appears to have launched a coup of her own, sending desperate letters to the king of the Hittites in Anatolia. "My husband is dead," she wrote. "Send me your son and I will make him king." It was an unprecedented request, but understandable. "Her grandmother was Queen Tiye, one of the most powerful queens Egypt ever saw," Ray Johnson explained. "Her mother was Nefertiti. They ruled as living goddesses, so of course Ankhesenamun felt she had the same power. And she found out that she didn't."
A Hittite prince, Zannanza, was eventually sent south to marry her, but he was killed—by a hit squad, some speculate—as he entered Egyptian territory. An elder courtier named Aye, possibly Ankhesenamun's grandfather, then became pharaoh. Was he an honorable official who stepped into the top job in the sudden absence of an heir? Or did he callously plot Tut's death for his own advantage? Either way, he reigned for only three or four years. When he died, army commander Horemheb took control.
The new ruler, a man of great ambition, had risen to the throne from obscure beginnings. Did he conspire with the aged Aye to eliminate Tut and the Hittite prince, and then bide his time until Aye's death? He had the motive, the opportunity, and the power. In any event Horemheb, still sadly childless late in his reign, named as crown prince his old army buddy Ramses, who became the founder of a new dynasty.
Egyptologists put little stock in conspiracy theories, but tales of intrigue have captured the imagination of countless King Tut sleuths, who cite the circumstantial evidence against Aye, Horemheb, and even Tut's wife, Ankhesenamun, as well as clues from the burial. For start-ers, Tut's tomb is unusually small for a king, and its contents were crammed in. Carter noted that the nested shrines surrounding the sarcophagus "had obviously been banged together, regardless of the risk of damage." In addition, workmen had hacked at the mummy-shaped outer coffin to make it fit into the sarcophagus. These factors, and more, make a litany of haste—but do they testify to murder?
King Tut could easily have succumbed to an infection or illness. Letters from that era record that a plague—as yet unidentified—ravaged Egypt and its neighbors. An accident is another possibility. It's easy to imagine Tut at the reins of a chariot feeling a young man's need for speed. He hits a bump, flies through the air, and lands with a deadly crunch. Could such a fall have damaged his breastbone and ribs so badly that the embalmers had to remove them?
Regardless of his fame and the speculations about his fate, Tut is one mummy among many in Egypt. How many? No one knows. The Egyptian Mummy Project, which began an inventory in late 2003, has recorded almost 600 so far and is still counting. The next phase: scanning the mummies with a portable CT machine donated by the National Geographic Society and Siemens, its manufacturer. King Tut is one of the first mummies to be scanned—in death, as in life, moving regally ahead of his countrymen.
The night of the scan, workmen carried Tut from the tomb in his box. Like pallbearers they climbed a ramp and a flight of stairs into the swirling sand outside, then rose on a hydraulic lift into the trailer that held the scanner. Twenty minutes later two men emerged, sprinted for an office nearby, and returned with a pair of white plastic fans. The million-dollar scanner had quit because of sand in a cooler fan. "Curse of the pharaoh," joked a guard nervously.
Eventually the substitute fans worked well enough to finish the procedure. After checking that no data had been lost, the technicians turned Tut over to the workmen, who carried him back to his tomb. Less than three hours after he was removed from his coffin, the pharaoh again rested in peace where the funerary priests had laid him so long ago.
Back in the trailer a technician pulled up astonishing images of Tut on a computer screen. A gray head took shape from a scattering of pixels, and the technician spun and tilted it in every direction. Neck vertebrae appeared as clearly as in an anatomy class. Other images revealed a hand, several views of the rib cage, and a transection of the skull. Analysis by a team of radiologists would take several weeks to complete—and would reveal no conclusive evidence for murder. But for now the pressure was off. Sitting back in his chair, ZahiHawass smiled, visibly relieved that nothing had gone seriously wrong. "I didn't sleep last night, not for a second," he said. "I was so worried. But now I think I will go and sleep."
By the time we left the trailer, descending metal stairs to the sandy ground, the wind had stopped. The winter air lay cold and still, like death itself, in this valley of the departed. Just above the entrance to Tut's tomb stood Orion—the constellation that the ancient Egyptians knew as the soul of Osiris, the god of the afterlife—watching over the boy king.
Treasures of a Golden Age
Tut's throne shows a rare intimate scene: his wife rubbing him with perfumed oil. For the first time since 1981 some of the masterpieces from his tomb are now on tour. "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," a National Geographic exhibition, opens June 16 in Los Angeles and includes his diadem, gilded statues, and an alabaster cup inscribed with hieroglyphs that read: ". . . may you, who love Thebes, spend millions of years with your face to the north wind, and may your eyes see joy."
Howard Carter and the Curse of Tut's Mummy
The rumor of an ancient curse didn't stop this archaeologist
from opening the tomb of King Tut.
Death Shall Come on Swift Wings To Him Who Disturbs the Peace of
the King... -Supposedly engraved on the exterior of King
Tutankhamen's Tomb
The king was only nineteen when he died, perhaps murdered by his
enemies. His tomb, in comparison with his contemporaries, was modest. After his
death, his successors made an attempt to expunge his memory by removing his
name from all the official records. Even those carved in stone. As it turns
out, his enemy's efforts only ensured his eventual fame. His name was
Tutankhamen: King Tut.
The ancient Egyptians revered their Pharaohs as Gods. Upon their
deaths the King's bodies were carefully preserved by embalming. The mummified
corpses were then interned in elaborate tombs (like the Great Pyramid)
and surrounded with all the riches the royals would need in the next life. The
tombs were then carefully sealed. Egypt's best architects designed the
structures to resist thieves. In some cases heavy, hard-granite plugs were used
to block passageways. In others, false doorways and hidden rooms were designed
to fool intruders. Finally, in a few cases, a curse was placed on the entrance.
Most of these precautions failed. In ancient times grave robbers
found their way into the tombs. They unsealed the doors, chiseled their way
around the plugs and found the secrets of the hidden rooms. They stripped the
dead Kings of their valuables. We will never know if any of the thieves
suffered the wrath of a curse.
A Few Authentic Curses from Mummy Tombs
Though historians dispute that a tablet with
a curse was found in Tut's tomb, there are records of such threats found in
other sacred locations:
As for anybody who shall enter this tomb in
his impurity: I shall ring his neck as a bird's.
As for any man who shall destroy these, it
is the god Thoth who shall destroy him.
As for him who shall destroy this
inscription: He shall not reach his home. He shall not embrace his children.
He shall not see success.
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Archaeologists from Europe became very interested in Egypt in
the 19th century. They uncovered the old tombs and explored their deep recesses
always hoping to find that one forgotten crypt that had not been plundered in
antiquity. They knew that the Pharaohs had been buried with untold treasures
that would be of immense artistic, scientific, and monetary value. Always the
archaeologists were disappointed.
The Search for the Missing King
In 1891 a young Englishman named Howard Carter arrived in Egypt.
Over the years he became convinced that there was at least one undiscovered
tomb. That of the almost unknown King Tutankhamen. Carter found a backer for
his tomb search in the wealthy Lord Carnarvon. For five years Carter dug
looking for the missing Pharaoh and found nothing.
Carnarvon summoned Carter to England in1922 to tell him he was
calling off the search. Carter managed to talk the lord into supporting him for
one more season of digging. Returning to Egypt the archaeologist brought with
him a yellow canary.
"A golden bird!" Carter's foreman, Reis Ahmed,
exclaimed. "It will lead us to the tomb!"
Perhaps it did. On November 4th, 1922 Carter's workmen
discovered a step cut into the rock that had been hidden by debris left over
from the building of the tomb of Ramesses IV. Digging further they found
fifteen more leading to an ancient doorway that appeared to be still sealed. On
the doorway was the name Tutankhamen.
It is said that when Carter arrived home that night his servant
met him at the door. In his hand he clutched a few yellow feathers. His eyes
large with fear, he reported that the canary had been killed by a cobra.
Carter, a practical man, told the servant to make sure the snake was out of the
house. The man grabbed Carter by the sleeve.
"The pharaoh's serpent ate the bird because it led us to
the hidden tomb! You must not disturb the tomb!"
Carter immediately sent a telegram to Carnarvon in England and waited anxiously for his arrival. Though under close inspection it appeared that the outer sections of the tomb had been entered in ancient times, the door to the innermost part of the tomb still seemed to be intact. Carnarvon made it to Egypt by November 26th and watched as Carter made a hole in the door. Carter leaned in, holding a candle, to take a look. Behind him Lord Carnarvon asked, "Can you see anything?"Scoffing at such superstitious nonsense, Carter sent the man home.
Carter answered, "Yes, wonderful things."
The day the tomb was opened was one of joy and celebration for
all those involved. Nobody seemed to be concerned about any curse. Rumors later
circulated that Carter had found a tablet with the curse inscribed on it, but
hid it immediately so it would not alarm his workers. Carter denied doing so.
The tomb was intact and contained an amazing collection of
treasures including a stone sarcophagus. The sarcophagus contained three gold
coffins nested within each other. Inside the final one was the mummy of the
boy-king, Pharaoh Tutankhamen.
The Press Discovers the Curse
A few months after the tomb's opening tragedy struck. Lord
Carnarvon, 57, was taken ill and rushed to Cairo. He died a few days later. The
exact cause of death was not known, but it seemed to be from an infection
started by an insect bite. Legend has it that when he died there was a short
power failure and all the lights throughout Cairo went out. His son reported
that back on his estate in England his favorite dog howled and suddenly dropped
dead.
By 1929 eleven people connected with the discovery of the Tomb
had died early and of unnatural causes. This included two of Carnarvon's
relatives, Carter's personal secretary, Richard Bethell, and Bethell's father,
Lord Westbury. Westbury killed himself by jumping from a building. He left a
note that read, "I really cannot stand any more horrors and hardly see
what good I am going to do here, so I am making my exit."
What horrors did Westbury refer to?
The press followed the deaths carefully attributing each new one
to the "Mummy's Curse" By 1935 they had credited 21 victims to King
Tut. Was there really a curse? Or was it all just the ravings of a sensational
press?
Herbert E. Winlock, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of
Art in New York City, made his own calculations about the effectiveness of the
curse. According to Winlock's figures of the 22 people present when the tomb
was opened in 1922, only 6 had died by 1934. Of the 22 people present at the
opening of the sarcophagus in 1924, only 2 died in the following ten years.
Also ten people were there when the mummy was unwrapped in 1925, and all
survived until at least 1934.
In 2002 a medicine scholar at Monash University in Melbourne,
Australia, named Mark Nelson, completed a study which purportedly showed that
the curse of King Tut never really existed. Nelson selected 44 Westerners in
Egypt at the time the tomb was discovered. Of those, twenty-five of the group
were people potentially exposed to the curse either because they were at the
breaking of the sacred seals in the tomb, or at the opening of the sarcophagus,
or at the opening of the coffins, or the unwrapping of the mummy. The average
age of death of the group that was "exposed" to the curse was 70
years. The average survival rate for those not exposed was 75. This might seem
like the curse may have had an effect, but statistically, given the small size
of the groups, the difference isn't significant.Statistics
Many of the stories surrounding the curse are also without
foundation. Carter's canary was never eaten by a snake (but given to a friend).
As for the lights going out all over Cairo at Lord Carnarvon death, power
failures in Cairo in 1923 were a common occurrences and a supernatural cause is
hardly needed to explain them. Even the Lord's demise seems hardly inexplicable
in itself as he was already known to be in poor health before the opening of
the tomb, and infections, especially in the days before the invention of
antibiotics, were a common cause of death.
Perhaps, the power of a curse is in the mind of the person who
believes in it. Howard Carter, the man who actually opened the tomb, never
believed in the curse and lived to a reasonably old age of 64 before dying of
entirely natural causes.
Was the Curse Actually a Fungus?
Dr. Nicola Di Paolo, an Italian physician identified another possible fungus, Aspergillusochraceus, at Egyptian archaeological sites suggesting it might also have made visitors to the tomb, or even those that just handled artifacts from the tombs, sick. Aspergillusochraceus has not been shown to be fatal, however.Several people have suggested that illnesses associated with the ancient Egyptian tombs may have a rational explanation based in biology. Dr. EzzeddinTaha, of Cairo University, examined the health records of museum workers and noticed that many of them had been exposed to Aspergillusniger (black mold), a fungus that causes fever, fatigue and rashes. He suggested that the fungus might have been able to survive in the tombs for thousands of years and then was picked up by archaeologists when they entered.
In 1999 a German microbiologist, Gotthard Kramer, from the
University of Leipzig, analyzed 40 mummies and identified several potentially
dangerous mold spores on each. Mold spores are tough and can survive thousands
of years even in a dark, dry tomb. Although most are harmless, a few can be
toxic.
Kramer thinks that when tombs were first opened and fresh air
gusted inside, these spores could have been blown up into the air. "When
spores enter the body through the nose, mouth or eye mucous membranes, “he
adds, "they can lead to organ failure or even death, particularly in
individuals with weakened immune systems."
These days archaeologists wear protective gear (such as masks
and gloves) when working in a tomb or unwrapping a mummy (though more because
of dust than fear of germs) something explorers from the days of Howard Carter
and Lord Carnarvon didn't do.
As much as the theories involving mold spores have often
appeared in the popular press, researchers have had a hard time tracing any
death - including Lord Carnarvon's - back to a microorganism coming from a
mummy or a tomb. In fact, F. DeWolfe Miller, professor of epidemiology at the
University of Hawaii wryly observed, "Given the sanitary conditions of the
time in general, and those within Egypt in particular, Lord Carnarvon would
likely have been safer inside the tomb than outside."
So was the curse of the mummy a mold spore named Aspergillusflavus or ochraceus?
Or was the whole thing just media hype?
