Tutankhamen (25 page)

The murder theory would probably have died a natural death were it not for the ‘evidence' provided by Harrison's 1968 skull X-ray and the publication of his
Buried History
article:

The bone fragment – actually there are two, and both are on the right side of the skull rather than the left – is a red herring; a post-mortem artefact which may well have been created when Derry entered the cranial cavity.
⁴⁰
Of greater interest was an area of darkness at the base of the skull, just where the head joins the neck. It has been suggested that it may represent a haemorrhage caused by a blow to the back of the head. Perhaps Tutankhamen had been attacked from behind while sleeping?
⁴¹
An area of clouding in the region of the thickening may, or may not, be evidence for a calcified membrane formed over a blood clot. If it is membrane, it complicates the issue by suggesting that he must have lived for at least two months after the blow to the back of his head.

Those who developed the blow-to-the-back-of-the-head murder theory had to rely on the one published radiograph. Recent re-examination of all the Harrison radiographs has shown that the ‘calcified membrane' is merely one side of the posterior fossa floor projecting above the other:

This diagnosis is confirmed by the recent Egyptian examination of the mummy, which discovered no evidence of a blow to the head.

If he was not murdered by a blow to the head, how did
Tutankhamen die? Initially the Hawass team suggested that his shattered left leg may have triggered a fatal infection or a fat embolism, or that Tutankhamen may simply have bled to death. Later, they suggested that he may have died from the effects of malaria on a constitutionally weakened body. Several experts have since expressed the view that this is unlikely, as, while malaria is life-threatening to young children, adults will usually develop an immunity to the disease. Others have proposed sickle cell disease or the hereditary metabolic bone disease hypophosphatasia. There is, of course, no need to look for exotic or unusual illnesses; in Tutankhamen's day simple diarrhoea was a killer.

Statistical evidence drawn from our own, risk averse society confirms what common sense already tells us. Accidents are far more common than murders, and accidents are the biggest cause of involuntary death among young males. The damage to Tutankhamen's chest, and his shattered leg, lend support to the death-by-accident hypothesis. Could he have been killed as has recently been suggested by Benson Harer, by a hippopotamus?
⁴³
Alternatively, the fact that he was not mummified to the highest standard, and that his heart was missing (maybe it was already putrefied?), suggests that there may have been a delay in getting his body to the embalmers. Assuming that this is not simply the result of post-mortem damage in the undertaker's workshop, it may well be evidence of death on a foreign battlefield.

There is another possibility. Tutankhamen's golden ostrich-feather fan is a beautifully constructed, self-referential object. The foil-covered handle tells us that the forty-two feathers, alternating brown and white, which once adorned the top of the fan, were taken from ostriches captured by the king himself while hunting in the desert to the east of Heliopolis (near modern Cairo). The embossed scene on the semi-circular top of the fan shows, on one face, Tutankhamen setting off in his chariot to hunt ostrich, and on the reverse, the
triumphant king returning with his prey. Ostriches were important birds, their feathers and eggs prized as luxury items. Hunting ostriches – a New Kingdom royal sport that developed following the Second Intermediate Period introduction of the horse and chariot – was an ideal way for a king to demonstrate his control over the unruly forces of nature. It was a substitute for battle and, as such, was a dangerous occupation. This fan was recovered between the walls of the third and fourth shrine in the Burial Chamber, close by the king's body. Could it have a particular relevance to his death?

 

6

Maspero, writing in 1912, was confused as to Tutankhamen's exact
place in the royal family. As I write, almost a century after Maspero, Egyptologists are, if anything, more confused, with every new piece of evidence seeming to contradict what has gone before. Nevertheless it is possible to use the evidence provided by his tomb, combined with information gleaned from Thebes and Amarna, to reconstruct a family – or, rather, a whole series of potential families – for Tutankhamen.

A key element in this work is genetic testing, or DNA analysis. In an ideal world this would allow any mummy to be slotted directly into its family tree. However, as always in Egyptology, things are not quite that simple. Ancient DNA does not preserve well in hot climates; it may simply prove impossible to obtain a valid sample for analysis. Contamination poses a real problem. Tutankhamen, for example, lay exposed in the embalmer's workshop for up to forty days before his bandages were applied; 3,000 years later he again lay exposed as Carter's team worked, sweated, shed skin and occasionally smoked around him. This leads directly to a third problem. While we undoubtedly have the mummies of many members of the 18th, 19th and 20th Dynasty royal families, we cannot be absolutely certain that we have identified these mummies correctly, and the fact that almost everyone buried in the Valley is likely to be related in some way to everyone else simply adds to our confusion. Without a precise understanding of who exactly is who, DNA results, no matter how accurate, become essentially meaningless.

We know that Tutankhamen is Tutankhamen – or, more accurately, we know that those who buried him believed him to be Tutankhamen – because he was discovered within his sealed shrines. Similarly, we are confident that Yuya and Thuya are who they say they are. But all the other royal mummies have been wrapped and rewrapped in antiquity, and their identifications are based on the labels scribbled by necropolis officials centuries after their deaths. Some of these labels can be accepted without quibble. The mummy labelled Ramesses II, for example, is that of an extremely old man, and this seems reasonable, as history tells us that Ramesses ruled 19th Dynasty
Egypt for over sixty years. Other labels are less convincing. In particular, the mummy identified as the veteran 18th Dynasty warrior Tuthmosis I appears to be a young man in his early twenties, and this is clearly incompatible with his known history.
²
Of more relevance to our study of Tutankhamen, the badly damaged mummy labelled Amenhotep III, which should be that of the father of Akhenaten and the grandfather of Ankhesenamen, has come in for a great deal of scrutiny as it exhibits an anachronistic packing technique and may therefore not belong to the late 18th Dynasty.
³

Conversely, our fascination with the Amarna royal family, and our familiarity with named individuals, has led us to focus on this period while ignoring others. The Younger Lady (KV 35YL), discovered in the side chamber of the cache tomb of Amenhotep II, is an excellent example of this. Although, superficially, there is little to suggest that this is an Amarna body, every investigation over the past decade has started with the assumption that it is. It is therefore curious that, while the Elder Lady (KV 35EL) and the Younger Lady have been subjected to intense scrutiny, the anonymous ‘prince' who lay with them has been virtually ignored. If these three are, indeed, Amarna bodies, could he be Akhenaten's prematurely deceased brother, Tuthmosis? Or, could he be Akhenaten's unnamed son? Or even a husband to the second-born Amarna princess, Meketaten?

At first read this seems very negative and discouraging. It is not meant to be. It is merely an explanation as to why we cannot simply analyse Tutankhamen's DNA then slot him straight into his family. The evidence is not as cut and dried as the popular press would have us believe, and other factors have to be taken into account. These include the more traditionally obtained anatomical and dental data and, of course, the historical and archaeological evidence.
⁴

One matter that can be immediately resolved is that of Tutankhamen's age at death and, from that, his age at accession. It was always understood that Tutankhamen had enjoyed a relatively brief reign.
Prior to 1922 there had been some speculation that he was an elderly courtier who, in the absence of an obvious male heir, became king through his marriage to the one surviving Amarna princess, Ankhesenamen, before dying of old age. This is now firmly disproved, as his body is undeniably that of a young man who died at somewhere between seventeen and twenty-two years old. As eighteen is the age most commonly cited, it is the age that we will use in our discussion. Tutankhamen's last undisputed regnal year, confirmed on a wine jar sealing discovered in his tomb, is Year 9. A ‘Year 10' sealing was also found; this is likely to refer to Tutankhamen, but it crucially omits the royal name and so could just possibly refer to a different king. A ‘Year 31' sealing belonging to another anonymous king probably refers to vintage wine sealed during the reign of Amenhotep III.

Combining this evidence, we may deduce that Tutankhamen came to the throne as a child of approximately eight years, and that he died in the tenth year of his rule, aged eighteen. This is supported by a consideration of his wardrobe, which includes at least one small-sized garment decorated with his cartouche: cartouches were only used by kings and queens. His age seems to prove that he became king by right – that he was born royal – rather than by force. It is difficult to imagine anyone supporting an eight-year-old candidate for the throne who was not directly in the line of succession.

Additional support for Tutankhamen's royal birth comes from the fact that, while still a child, he married the third-born daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Princesses, in the 18th Dynasty, did not marry outside the royal family; they married their brothers and half brothers and, very occasionally, their fathers, or they married no one. The argument that Tutankhamen must have married Ankhesenamen because she was a royal heiress who would transmit the right to rule to her husband is an entirely erroneous one: we can see, by considering the marriages of Amenhotep III and Tiy, and Akhenaten and Nefertiti, that kings had no need to marry an ‘heiress'.

Outside his tomb, Tutankhamen seems to confirm his own royal pedigree. Many of the stone blocks used to build the Amarna temples were recycled in the later buildings of the neighbouring city of Hermopolis Magna (modern Ashmunein). One such inscribed block, isolated from its fellows and badly damaged, mentions ‘the bodily son of the king, his beloved, Tutankhaten', Tutankhaten being the name used by the young Tutankhamen while resident at Amarna. It seems likely that this was part of a larger scene, and that Tutankhamen originally faced a princess whose name is represented by the ‘Aten' element.
⁵