The death of Tutankhamun, often referred to as Tut, has for years been shrouded in mystery. At age 19, he became the youngest pharaoh of Ancient Egypt to enter the annals of history after dying.
It was entirely premature, and ever since his tomb was discovered in 1922, Egyptologists alike have been scratching their heads over the true cause.
Many theories have been floated, but with his remains almost inaccessible and such a timeline of thousands of years standing between his passing and now, the task has been all but impossible.
That is until a team of experts used cutting-edge techniques to take samples from his burial cloth and, they claimed, identify how the Boy King’s end came so soon.
Dr Chris Naunton, director of the Egypt Exploration Society, along with a group of other experts believe they solved the riddle after linking Tutankhamun’s injuries with those sustained in a chariot accident.
Dr Naunton’s interest was piqued after he found references from Howard Carter, the British Egyptologist who found Tut’s tomb, suggesting that parts of his body had been burnt.
One clue came from notes made by Dr Robert Connolly, an anthropologist at Liverpool University, who was part of the team that X-rayed Tutankhamun’s remains in 1968.
In 2013, among many relics relating to Tut, he found a piece of the pharaoh’s flesh, which was the only known sample outside Egypt.
Partnering up with Dr Matthew Ponting, Dr Connolly used a scanning electron microscope to conclude that the flesh had been burnt.
Later chemical tests determined that Tutankhamun’s body had been burned as he was sealed inside his coffin.
Enabling oils combined with oxygen and linen to cause a chemical reaction which essentially “cooked” the pharaoh’s body at a temperature exceeding 200C.
“The charring and possibility that a botched mummification led the body spontaneously combusting shortly after burial was entirely unexpected, something of a revelation,” said Dr Naunton.
Working with scientists from the Cranfield Forensic Institute, researchers performed a “virtual autopsy” which turned up a “pattern” of injuries straddling the side of his body.
Their work could explain why Tutankhamun is also the only mummy ever found to be missing its heart: because it was seriously damaged.
Car crash investigators went on to create computer simulations of chariot accidents and further confirmed the theory.
The team believe a chariot smashed into Tutankhamun while he was on his knees, in the process smashing his ribs and pelvis, and crushing his heart.
The findings were explored in Channel 4’s ‘Tutankhamun: The Mystery of the Burnt Mummy’,
