AKHENATEN/TUTANKHAMUN

Tut's lateral skull x-ray

Tutankhamun has two mysterious chips of bone.

Look at the top left of Tutankhamun's X-ray and you may be able to see two fragments of bone, suspicious enough that some claim they are evidence that Tutankhamun was killed after being struck on the head or in the face. But are they right?

Layered evidence

The US team don't think so. Their evidence centres on the dense vertical and horizontal lines at the back of the skull - these are layers of resin, poured in by the mummifiers after they had removed Tutankmaun's brain.

Because the bone fragments stick out from the resin into the brain cavity, and are not covered by the resin, they must have come to rest there after the resin was added. That's after Tutankhamun died. So these bones are nothing to do with his death. Or are they?

Fatal fall?

Todd Grey still thinks it is possible that the bones tell of a nasty, possibly fatal fall for the Pharaoh. Even though there's no evidence that Tutankhamun cracked open the back of his head, says Todd, he could still have suffered a serious blow.

Did Tutankhamun fall and bang the back of his head, not enough to fracture it, but to set in place a series of events which may have led to his death?