Frail boy-king Tut died from malaria, broken leg

[superconnected]

Source: AP

CAIRO – Egypt's famed King Tutankhamun suffered from a cleft palate and club foot, likely forcing him to walk with a cane, and died from complications from a broken leg exacerbated by malaria, according to the most extensive study ever of his more than 3,300-year-old mummy.

The findings were from two years of DNA testing and CT scans on 16 mummies, including those of Tutankhamun and his family, the team that carried out the study said in an article to be published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

It also established the clearest yet family tree for Tut, indicating for the first time that he was the child of a brother-sister union.

The study said his father was most likely Akhenaten, the pharaoh who tried to revolutionize ancient Egyptian religion and force his people to worship one god. The mummy shown by DNA to be that of Tut's mother also turned out to be a sister of Akhenaten, though she has not yet been identified.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ml_egypt_king_tut

[catbyte]

1. Awwww. He coulda won a Grammy, buried in his jammies...

:rofl: Sorry, I just love Steve Martin's ode to the Boy King!

Diane

Anishnabe in MI

[Fridays Child]

4. Born in Arizona. Moved to Babylonia.

King Tut.

[catbyte]

6. How'd you get so funky?

did you do the monkey?









Anishnabe in MI

[Mari333]

10. he had a condo made of stone-a!

[Warpy]

2. While close inbreeding is generally not a great idea

congenital deformities like cleft palate and club foot aren't the types of things to arise from them. Of greater concern are diseases like muscular dystrophy and hemophilia.

All royalty all over the world until the very recent time has had to prove its prowess on the battlefield and, if there were no wars to be fought, on the field of sport. With his deformities, the young Pharoah had a lot more to prove than anyone else, hence the broken leg.

It's hard not to feel sorry for the poor kid. At least they were kind to him when they made his death mask in gold for his sarcophagus.

[LibertyLover]

7. Actually the death mask bears only a passing resemblance

to the reconstructed facial features of Tutankhamon. It was probably made for his elder brother Smenkhare and, um, "borrowed" for Tutankhamon. In truth, much of what was buried in KV62 (Tutankhamon's tomb) was actually made for other family members and reused in his burial. Some of the personal stuff was his, like the walking sticks and some clothing (one box as I remember was actually labeled 'clothing of his majesty as a child') but much of the larger things, like the shrines and canopic coffrets, were originally made for other people like Smenkhare. The use of gold may be related to religious beliefs. The Gods were supposed to have golden skin and while alive Tutankhamon was Horus and in death became Osiris. So putting a gold death mask on his mummy may have been a way to strengthen that aspect. It is beautiful work however.

[No Elephants]

8. Or, he could have tripped.

When I was in the Valley of the Kings, King Tut was on tour in America. All I saw were the interior of his tomb and a replica of his death mask. Just my luck.

The museum in Cairo, on the other hand, had a ton of stuff from inside his tomb, from his gold sandals to the the gold place he rested his head (in the tomb, maybe?--didn't look comfy).

[LibertyLover]

3. I can't wait to read the full article - thank you!

I'm particularly interested in Tutankhamon's mother. For years we had assumed that his mother was Kiya, a secondary wife of Akhenaten. Amenhotep III had several daughters that we know of - Sitamun, Henuttaneb, Iset and Nebetah. There is another one, Beketaten whose name is attested, as well as having the epithet - S't n3st n ht f - king's daughter of his body - attached to her name. There is some speculation that Nebetah and Beketaten are one in the same,but no one is sure. I wonder what tomb (i.e. was it from the Valley of the Kings or the Valley of the Queens) the unidentified female mummy that is supposedly Tutankhamon's mother came from.

[Kingofalldems]

5. It must have sucked living back then--even for a boy king

[dugaresa]

9. it is amazing he lived to see his teens with these problems

nursing babies is hard when they they suffer from cleft palate and he was lucky that he was royal born because poorer families may have left him to die.

[Mari333]

11. sorry HAD to post this in his memory

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=28386077

[Mz Pip]

13. He gave his life for tourism...

:rofl:

Thanks for posting this. It's been a long time since I've seen it. ;-)

[RedCloud]

12. Talk about breaking, breaking news!

[Veruca Salt]

14. On first glance I read: 'Frat' boy-king Tut....

you know you've had a long day when... :rofl:

[bklyncowgirl]

15. Fascinating! For me the most interesting part was the identification of Akhenaton

Akhenaton, now positively identified at Tutankhamon's father, is known as the heretic pharoah.

He turned Egypt upside down by banning the worship of Egypt's traditional gods and insisting that everyone worship his personal deity, the Aton, represented by a solar disk with hands. He is often shown with a bizarrely elongated face, broad hips and what can only be described as man boobs. Some scholars have suggested that he suffered from Marfan's disease and that artists were rendering him as he actually looked.

This study shows that there was nothing in unusual in Akhenaton's physical appearance. The reason for the bizarre artistic depictions are most likely to be found in the king's theology and not his morphology.

After his death, Tutankhamon--or the regents who ruled for the boy king (age 9 at accession)--returned the country to religious orthodoxy and within a few years began a campaign to remove both the memory of Akhenaton and his religion. Akhenaton's mummy was dumped, names scraped off the coffins and burial equipment in a small tomb in the Valley of the Kings. The bodies of his mother and the mother of Tutankhamon, were found in the tomb of Amonhotep II.

More questions remain. They now know which mummy his mommy was (couldn't resist) but are not sure which of Akhenaton's known sisters bore the eventual heir. If this all sounds bizarre, royal brother-sister marriage was very common in 18th Dynasty Egypt. It was of identifying with the gods plus it had the practical effect of cutting down on outside claims to the throne.

You have to feel a certain amount of sympathy for Tutankhamon. Here he was a sickly kid but he seems to have done his best to live up to the macho expectations of an 18th Dynasty Pharoah and set his country back on the right track. He suffered serious injuries, probably from a fall from a chariot and there are recent articles indicating that contrary to earlier beliefs that Tut (who was 19 when he died) may have actually personally led his armies in battle.

That may have been too much for his body to take.

[kestrel91316]

16. I read your headline as "Frat boy-king Tut........." and wondered why

Science forum had a GWB post.