King Tutankhamun’s Mummy May Reveal Secret Behind His Untimely Death
For many years experts tried to unravel the mystery behind King Tutankhamun’s early death, and now we may know the real reason why he died. Born in c1334 BC, King Tutankhamun, also known as King Tut, was just 18 years old when he died. Tutankhamun was the son of pharaoh Akhenaten and his biological sister known as ‘The Younger Lady’. Due to his inbred DNA, the young boy was physically disabled i.e. he needed a cane to walk and also had a number of health problems including scoliosis. Despite his physical disability and health conditions, he ascended the throne and rose to power when he was just nine years old.
Pharaoh Akhenaten had forbidden people to worship multiple gods and demanded them to worship a single god called Aten, also known as the sun disk. The king’s demand didn’t sit well with the Egyptians and thus they began calling him the “heretic king”. So as soon as King Tut became pharaoh he reversed his father’s decision, thus allowing people to worship multiple gods. During his time as pharaoh, the young king righted many of his father’s wrongs including restoring Thebes as Egypt’s capital. He even exhumed his father’s body from Akhetaten and buried him in the Valley of the Kings, his final resting place.
Despite being a popular pharaoh in his time, King Tut’s reign didn’t even last a decade for he was riddled with a variety of health problems that bothered him for the rest of his life. Usually, when a pharaoh dies, they’re laid to rest in an extra-large tomb, but King Tut’s tomb was relatively small. Experts think that because the 5 foot 6 inches king passed away sooner than anticipated, people had less time to build a grand tomb and thus they buried him in a tiny tomb that was presumably meant for someone less important than the king himself.
As years passed, King Tut’s story slipped from everyone’s minds; people stopped talking about him – he was long forgotten until British archaeologist Howard Carter came by, wanting to know more about the young king. After searching for years to find the young pharaoh’s tomb, it was on the 26th of November 1922 that Carter and Lord Carnarvon entered the tomb where King Tut was laid to rest. In the tomb, they found a massive amount of treasure, gold, thrones, archery bows, food, wine, lotus chalice, trumpets, sandals and clothes made of linen. It took Carter a good 10 years to catalog everything that they had discovered in the young pharaoh’s tomb.
On the 16th of February 1923, Carter discovered the gold coffin that housed the sarcophagus of King Tut, still intact after 3,000 years. The burning question arose in everyone’s minds – how exactly did King Tut die? Since there are no records that reveal how the young pharaoh died it was up to technology to provide some possible answers. Leading Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass claims that the new machine he used to analyze Tutankhamun’s body may finally tell us how the pharaoh died.
According to Hawass, Tutankhamun may have died in a chariot accident because just two days before his death the young pharaoh sustained a fracture on his left leg. Chances are that the injury caused an infection that killed the young pharaoh. However, Hawass’s theory is yet to be confirmed by genetic testing and he has promised that before the end of 2020 people will know exactly how King Tut died.
What do you think is the real reason behind King Tutankhamun’s death? Let us know in the comments below. Don’t forget to share this article with your friends.
