Tutankhamun: murder ruled out after 3,300 years

A detailed CT scan, involving 1,700 three-dimensional colour images of his mummified body, established that the teenage Egyptian pharaoh was not, as had been claimed, the victim of murder. However, it was unable to determine precisely what did kill him more than three millennia ago.

Researchers say it could have been something as mundane as complications following a broken leg.

"We don’t know how the king died, but we are now sure that it was not murder," said Dr Zahi Hawass, the secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, who chaired the investigating team.

He said the case should now be closed and the tomb of the king, who died aged about 19 in 1352BC, not be disturbed again.

Because Tutankhamun - who ascended the throne when he was about eight - died so young and lived in turbulent times, some historians had speculated he was murdered.

An X-ray study of his body in 1968 led Professor RG Harrison, of Liverpool University, to conclude that he had been killed by Pa-Nehesy, the high priest of Tutankhamun’s father, Akhenaten, after being accused of blasphemy.

Those X-rays were re-examined 13 years ago by an Egyptian writer, Ahmed Osman, who claimed the pharaoh had been hanged.

Then in 1999, Bob Brier, an American Egyptologist, argued in a book, The Murder of Tutankhamun, that the X-rays revealed a dense spot at the back of the skull, probably due to a chronic haematoma resulting from a blow. He argued that Tutankhamun had been killed by Ay, the commander of the army, who succeeded him.

According to the report by Dr Hawass’s team, the CT scan, which was performed in January and was the first on a member of Egypt’s ancient royalty, found no evidence of a blow to the back of Tutankhamun’s head and no other evidence of foul play.

Some team members said Tutankhamun may have died after a serious accident in which he broke his thigh, leaving a gaping wound which became infected.

"Although the break itself would not have been life-threatening, infection might have set in," the report said. "However, it is also possible, although less likely, that this fracture was caused by the embalmers."

Dr Hawass said: "I believe these results will close the case of Tutankhamun and the king will not need to be examined again.

"We should now leave him at rest. I am proud that this work was done, and done well, by a completely Egyptian team."

The team also believes that it has found Tutankhamun’s disembodied penis, which was present during the 1920s when his tomb was discovered but had gone missing by the time of an examination of the king’s body in 1968.

"Although they cannot be certain, the team believes that they have located it loose in the sand around the king’s body," the report said.

The CT scan showed the boy king had a slight cleft palate, although it did not show itself externally in the form of a hare-lip. He also had large incisor teeth and the typical overbite characteristic of other kings from his family.

The scan ruled out pathological causes for his bent spine - the report said the curvature was due to the way embalmers had positioned his body.

Tutankhamun came to the throne shortly after the death of the controversial Akhenaten, the "heretic" pharaoh who abandoned most of Egypt’s old gods and tried to impose a monotheistic religion based on worship of the Aten, the disc of the sun.

The boy king’s short life has fascinated people since Howard Carter, the celebrated British archaeologist, discovered his intact tomb, together with a trove of glittering treasures in gold and precious stones, in the Valley of the Kings in southern Egypt in 1922.