Message #144837

[Bianca]

The ancient Egyptians, who believed that life and death were a seamless process, traditionally placed food and medicine in containers to succour the dead in the afterlife. In Tutankhamun's case these were full of medicinal herbs to cure headaches and fever, indicating he might well have been ill at the end of his days.

But the tomb was also full of canes.

These suggest that the young pharaoh may have suffered from a bad curvature of the spine that made it difficult for him to walk unaided.

Recent scans of the body, however, show that contrary to previous assumptions, Tutankhamun was not a weakling at all.

All the signs are that, not only was he able-bodied, he was an exceptional athlete.

Indeed, according to Dr Zahi Hawass, of the Supreme Council of Egyptian Antiquities, he seems to have been a fan of extreme sports.

Chariots buried with him, as well as gauntlets for holding chariot reins and body braces designed to protect his body, indicate that the boy pharaoh was a daring charioteer who must have taken his life in his hands every time he whipped his horses over the rough desert roads at more than 25 miles per hour .
There are shoulder clothes to shield him from the blazing sun and hundreds of arrows, some of which have clearly been used for hunting.

The final clue is revealed by a break in the bone just above the pharaoh's left knee. Modern technology shows that the damage was not done after death, but that the young king broke it in life, probably as a result of a hunting accident.

The fracture had no time to heal before Tutankhamun died, probably of an infection contracted when he tumbled from his chariot at speed, crushing his thigh bone and ripping open the flesh. Despite all local herbal cures, he did not survive.

Such startling new discoveries paint an entirely new picture of the life and death of the most famous pharaoh of them all.

The Royal Horticultural Society in Britain has also established, from the nature of the garlands that were placed round the king's neck for his funeral, exactly when this would have taken place.

Significantly the flowers included cornflowers, which bloom in the Nile Valley between March and April - evidence, it would seem, that he was buried in spring.

And working back 70 days from that date - the time it took for the ancient Egyptians to mummify a body - the pharaoh, it seems, would have been out hunting in the cooler days, towards the end of the year, probably delighted, before his fatal accident happened, to get back into his chariot again after the unbearably hot summer.

So what of the broken ribs and the pharaoh's member, which were both intact when Howard Carter first opened the tomb, but have mysteriously disappeared?

So valuable was the tomb that it has been guarded round the clock since its discovery.

However, there was one period when a modern grave robbery might have taken place. During the Second World War when the Egyptian desert was reduced to a battleground.

The latest tests indicate quite clearly that someone must have used this opportunity to deliberately cut away the pharaoh's ribs in order to get to the jewelled collar he was wearing and which was glued fast to the body by the ancient embalmer's sticky black resin.

As for his ****, if it was not ground down by local robbers to use as primitive ****, perhaps it was stolen by a soldier as a memento of his war years in the desert.

If so, it may yet come to light.

The extraordinary story of Tutankhamun is not over yet.