Chapter 3 — Discovering Tut: the Saga Continues

"Discovering Tut: the Saga Continues" by A. R. Williams is a non-fiction article about the CT scan of King Tutankhamun's mummy conducted on 5 January 2005 in the Valley of the Kings. It examines the mysteries surrounding Tut's life, age at death, and the cause of his unexpected death more than 3,300 years ago, while also recounting Howard Carter's 1922 discovery of Tut's tomb and the damage caused during excavation.

King Tutankhamun was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who died as a teenager. He was the last heir of a powerful family that had ruled Egypt for centuries. He originally bore the name Tutankhaten but changed it to Tutankhamun — meaning 'living image of Amun' — and oversaw a restoration of Egypt's old religious ways after the radical changes introduced by his predecessor Akhenaten. He reigned for about nine years and then died unexpectedly.

The CT scan was conducted to answer two key questions still unresolved about Tut: how did he die, and how old was he at the time of his death? Computed tomography creates hundreds of X-ray cross-sections assembled into a three-dimensional virtual body, offering far more detail than earlier X-ray technology. The scan produced 1,700 digital images and provided precise data for an accurate forensic reconstruction of the young pharaoh.

The CT scan took place on the evening of 5 January 2005 in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt. Workmen carried Tut from his tomb, climbed a ramp and stairs into the open air, and then raised him on a hydraulic lift into a trailer holding the scanner. The entire procedure, from removal to return to the coffin, took less than three hours.

British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered Tut's tomb in 1922 after years of futile searching. Although the tomb had been hastily ransacked in antiquity, its contents were surprisingly complete and remain the richest royal collection ever found. They included stunning gold artefacts — collars, inlaid necklaces, bracelets, rings, amulets, a ceremonial apron, finger and toe sheaths, an inner coffin and mask of pure gold — as well as everyday items like board games, a bronze razor, linen undergarments, and cases of food and wine.

The ritual resins used in Tut's burial had hardened and cemented the mummy to the bottom of its solid gold coffin. Carter's team could not free it even after heating the mummy to 149 degrees Fahrenheit in blazing sunlight. They ultimately had to chisel away the consolidated material from beneath the limbs and trunk. To separate Tut from his gold adornments, they also removed the mummy's head and severed nearly every major joint before reassembling the remains in a wooden box.

In 1968, more than 40 years after Carter's discovery, an anatomy professor X-rayed Tut's mummy and revealed a startling fact: beneath the resin caking his chest, his breastbone and front ribs were missing.

Akhenaten was the son of Amenhotep III (Tut's father or grandfather) and the pharaoh who preceded Tut's immediate predecessor Smenkhkare. Born Amenhotep IV, he promoted the worship of the Aten (the sun disk), changed his name to Akhenaten meaning 'servant of the Aten', moved the religious capital from Thebes to the new city of Akhetaten (now known as Amarna), and attacked the major god Amun by smashing his images and closing his temples. Ray Johnson, director of the University of Chicago's research centre in Luxor, described this as a 'horrific time' and said Akhenaten 'went a little wacky'.

The chapter notes that since the discovery of his tomb in 1922 the modern world has speculated about what happened to Tut, with murder being the most extreme possibility. The particulars of his passing remain unclear. The CT scan was undertaken specifically to probe the lingering medical mysteries of this young ruler who died more than 3,300 years ago. Visitors to his tomb pondered his 'untimely death in his late teens', and some wondered whether the so-called pharaoh's curse — death or misfortune falling upon those who disturbed him — might be real.

During the scan, the million-dollar CT machine stopped working because sand got into a cooler fan. Two technicians sprinted to a nearby office and returned with a pair of white plastic fans as substitutes. The substitute fans eventually worked well enough to complete the procedure, and no data was lost. A guard nervously joked, 'Curse of the pharaoh.'

Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, oversaw the CT scan. He had been so worried about the procedure that he had not slept the previous night. After the scan was successfully completed and the technician displayed the astonishing images on screen — including neck vertebrae, a hand, rib cage views, and a transection of the skull — Hawass sat back visibly relieved and said he would now go and sleep.

The Egyptian Mummy Project was an initiative that began an inventory of Egyptian mummies in late 2003. By the time the article was written it had recorded almost 600 mummies and was still counting. The next phase of the project involved scanning mummies with a portable CT machine donated by the National Geographic Society and Siemens. King Tut was one of the first mummies to be scanned under this project.

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