Science Aims To Solve Mystery Of King Tut
Ben Hoyle, The Times (London), 1/7/05
Tutankhamun's mummified body has been removed from its tomb and subjected to a CT scan that may finally solve the 3,300-year-old mystery of how he died.
A team of doctors and archaeologists conducted the 15-minute test in a specially equipped van parked in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor.
They hope to establish whether the boy king, made famous by the discovery of his dazzling sarcophagus in 1922, was in fact murdered while still a teenager.
An X-ray photograph by anatomists from Liverpool University in 1968 first suggested that Tutankhamun may have been killed by a blow to the back of his head when it revealed bone fragments inside the king's skull.
Historians have subsequently identified several possible murder suspects with plausible motives in the turbulent Egyptian court of 1350BC.
Tutankhamun succeeded Akhenaten, who may have been his father, at about the age of 8. Akhenaten had suppressed the worship of Egypt's ancient gods in favour of a single sun god, Aten. The boy king tried to cement his position by marrying Akhenaten's daughter, but he remained a puppet ruler. The real power resided with the elderly vizier Ay, who ascended the throne with unseemly speed on Tutankhamun's suspiciously early death.
"There are so many stories about his death and his age," Zahi Hawass, Egypt's chief archaeologist, said."Today we will determine what really happened." Dr Hawass said that the results would be announced this month in Cairo.
CT imaging, essentially a three-dimensional X-ray scan used in many medical procedures, has helped scientists to learn more about several Egyptian mummies, including Ramses I. The technique was used on the 5,200-year-old remains of a Copper Age man found in a glacier in the Italian Alps in 1991. It picked up what simpler X-rays photographs had missed, identifying an arrowhead in the man's body that may have killed him.
Tutankhamun's scan began with the removal of the wooden box that holds his mummy from beneath a stone sarcophagus in the underground tomb. The box was then carried out of the vault. The blackened mummy, still resting in the box to protect it, was then inserted into the CT machine, which was sent from Germany by Siemens, the technology company. An eerie outline of Tutankhamun's face was visible, as were his toes and fingers.
The mummy, which had not been removed from its final resting place for 82 years, was returned to the tomb immediately after the scan.
National Geographic will fund the project for the next five years, Terry Garcia, the organisation's executive vice-president, said. Other Egyptian mummies will be scanned.
Tutankhamun's scan has captured more than 1,700 images of his remains, which the team believes will enable them to clarify previously uncertain details including his royal lineage, his age (now estimated at 17) and the cause of his death.
But the most important aspect of the work is conservation. Dr Hawass said that the body had been badly damaged when it was first discovered.
Howard Carter, the British explorer, may have sparked a worldwide craze for Egyptology when he stumbled on Tutankhamun's tomb, but his men smashed the body to pieces when they prized off its gold and jewel-encrusted face mask.
Tutankhamun's mummified body has been removed from its tomb and subjected to a CT scan that may finally solve the 3,300-year-old mystery of how he died.
A team of doctors and archaeologists conducted the 15-minute test in a specially equipped van parked in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor.
They hope to establish whether the boy king, made famous by the discovery of his dazzling sarcophagus in 1922, was in fact murdered while still a teenager.
An X-ray photograph by anatomists from Liverpool University in 1968 first suggested that Tutankhamun may have been killed by a blow to the back of his head when it revealed bone fragments inside the king's skull.
Historians have subsequently identified several possible murder suspects with plausible motives in the turbulent Egyptian court of 1350BC.
Tutankhamun succeeded Akhenaten, who may have been his father, at about the age of 8. Akhenaten had suppressed the worship of Egypt's ancient gods in favour of a single sun god, Aten. The boy king tried to cement his position by marrying Akhenaten's daughter, but he remained a puppet ruler. The real power resided with the elderly vizier Ay, who ascended the throne with unseemly speed on Tutankhamun's suspiciously early death.
"There are so many stories about his death and his age," Zahi Hawass, Egypt's chief archaeologist, said."Today we will determine what really happened." Dr Hawass said that the results would be announced this month in Cairo.
CT imaging, essentially a three-dimensional X-ray scan used in many medical procedures, has helped scientists to learn more about several Egyptian mummies, including Ramses I. The technique was used on the 5,200-year-old remains of a Copper Age man found in a glacier in the Italian Alps in 1991. It picked up what simpler X-rays photographs had missed, identifying an arrowhead in the man's body that may have killed him.
Tutankhamun's scan began with the removal of the wooden box that holds his mummy from beneath a stone sarcophagus in the underground tomb. The box was then carried out of the vault. The blackened mummy, still resting in the box to protect it, was then inserted into the CT machine, which was sent from Germany by Siemens, the technology company. An eerie outline of Tutankhamun's face was visible, as were his toes and fingers.
The mummy, which had not been removed from its final resting place for 82 years, was returned to the tomb immediately after the scan.
National Geographic will fund the project for the next five years, Terry Garcia, the organisation's executive vice-president, said. Other Egyptian mummies will be scanned.
Tutankhamun's scan has captured more than 1,700 images of his remains, which the team believes will enable them to clarify previously uncertain details including his royal lineage, his age (now estimated at 17) and the cause of his death.
But the most important aspect of the work is conservation. Dr Hawass said that the body had been badly damaged when it was first discovered.
Howard Carter, the British explorer, may have sparked a worldwide craze for Egyptology when he stumbled on Tutankhamun's tomb, but his men smashed the body to pieces when they prized off its gold and jewel-encrusted face mask.