Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Before the tomb of Tutankhamun was found, we knew nothing about this king. We thought before, as Egyptologists, that he was a brother of Akhenaten, but now the study of Amarna period and the study of Akhenaten's life and the study of the reliefs really can show that he cannot be the son of Amenhotep III. He was actually born in Amarna and this is why we believe now that his mother could be Kiya. Now we have evidence that she was an Egyptian. And she died when she was delivering him as a child. Based on the CT scan that I did when I took a CT scanner to examine the mummy of King Tut, we found out that he died at the age of 19. Everyone thought that King Tut was murdered, because of a hole that they found in the back of the head. Now we are sure that that hole was not done by Howard Carter or it was really a sign of murder. It is a hole that they opened in Dynasty 18 when they did mummification. Then for the first time we found that there is a fracture in his left leg. This fracture was not from Howard Carter. You know, because Howard Carter, when he found the mummy, the mummy was covered with golden mask and over 100 pieces of gold. Then he began to take the mask out, he couldn't. He had to damage the mummy. He damaged the mummy to 18 pieces. And this is why many people could think that this fracture could happen because of that damage that Howard Carter did. But radiologists found that's not true. Found that this fracture is an accident that happened to Tutankhamun one day before he died. Tutankhamun used the desert of Memphis for hunting, for jumping. And then he could, number one, died while he was hunting in the desert or, the second thing, maybe in a war. Maybe he was participating in a war and he died. But at least we can know now the cause of his death for the first time.
A2 fracture mummy howard carter tutankhamun tut King Tut: Cause of Death 204 15 TeacherJennifer Bryne posted on 2015/03/29 More Share Save Report Video vocabulary