Kmt 50 s The Strange Case of TUTANKHAMEN’S MISSING RIBS by Dennis Forbes Salima Ikram & Janice Kamrin O Detail of Tutankhamen’s thorax as the king’s mummy lies on the sand tray prepared by Howard Carter for its reinterment in the outer coffin & sarcophagus left in situ in the KV62 burial chamber. Photographer Harry Burton has “burned in” the area of the neck, apparently to disguise the fact that the mummy’s head is detached. Note the presence of the beaded collar & strand of gold beads, which Carter elected to leave in place, due to these being imbedded in dried resin which coated the mummy’s chest. The frontal ribcage would seem to be still present (visible through the carbonized bandages), as clearly are the clavicles. Photo: Griffith Institute n January 5, 2005, the mummified remains of Nebkheperre Tutankhamen, last king of the Eighteenth Dynasty’s Thutmosid line, were officially disturbed for the third time since their 1926 “reburial” by Howard Carter. Carter and his forensic team, headed by Dr. Douglas Derry and Saleh Bey Handi, had left them resting reassembled1 — and “rewrapped” in cotton batting2 — on a “sand tray” placed within the massive outer gilded coffin, which had been left by the excavator inside the basin of the quartzite sarcophagus still in situ in the burial chamber of KV62. The first post-Carter disinterment, directed by British anatomist Dr. R.G. Harrison of Liverpool University, had been undertaken with permission of Egyptian Antiquities authorities in 1968, for the purpose of reassessing the royal mummy and the making of radiographic (x-ray) images of the skull and thorax (that technology not being available to Carter and Derry in the mid-1920s). The second official disinterment took place a decade later, in 1978, conducted by American orthodontist James E. Harris, in order to obtain a better x-ray of the boy-king’s skull, the earlier one by Harrison being deemed inadequate to accurately assess the royal dentition.3 The recent third disinterment — orchestrated by Dr. Zahi Hawass on behalf of the Egyptian Supreme Council for Antiquities — was for the purpose of performing a CT-scan on the remains, with the stated objective of determining once and for all the cause of the young ruler’s premature death. In addition to gathering raw data about the mummy, Hawass hoped to prove or disprove the controversial theory that Tutankhamen had been murdered by a blow to the back of the head.4 Harrison’s x-ray record exposed, most importantly, that the thorax of the Tutankhamen mummy was radically damaged: it revealed that the frontal ribcage and sternum were absent, together wirh the clavicles. These anomalies were noted by the anatomist. Even so, nothing was said at the time regarding the absence of a 51 Kmt Stills from the film footage made of the official 1968 first disinterment of the mummy of Tutankhamen, under the direction of University of Liverpool anatomy professor R.G. Harrison. Left, from the top: The sand tray just removed from the coffin/sarcophagus with jumbled cotton batting covering the upper part of the mummy (Harrison is in the red sweater); The upper part of the mummy after the cotton batting has been removed (note head turned to one side, the condition of the chest & absence of the bead collar); The king’s detached head being lifted from the sand tray; Close-up of the head after it has been x-rayed, the white band being a tape measure (note the empty eye sockets). Above, Reassembled mummy on the sand tray, prior to reinterment. 1992 A&E Documentary, “The Face of Tutankhamun” Kmt 52 Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art resin-imbedded bead collar with falcon clasps, and a bead girdle — both very clearly evident in the 1926 photos and supposedly left in place by Carter and his team. Also not noted was the absence of the young king’s mummified penis, which was still present in 1926. The unpublished Harris 1978 disinterment apparently did not yield further information regarding the condition of the king’s mummy, although still photos taken at the time confirmed the realities of the 1968 Harrison film-footage: the royal remains were in a far-worse state than Carter had left them, judging from the 1926 sand-tray photos. Hawass’s 2005 disinterment and CT-scan examination of the Tutankhamen mummy apparently did resolve at least one heated question regarding the young king’s premature death.5 A careful study of the CT-scans by an international team of forensic experts concluded that the problematical area of seeming damage to the base of the Tutankhamen skull was not the result of a deadly blow there, thus ruling out a murderous blunt-weapon assault as the cause of death. The damage was probably post-mortem, perhaps even an artifact of mummification. The 2005 CT-scan did, however, reveal that the young king had suffered a major fracture to his lower left femur (also noted by Carter and Derry), which would appear to have occurred shortly before his demise — judging from the fact that the bone-break contained resinous material asssociated with mummification — and that this quite possibly resulted in subsequent infection and blood poisoning and, consequentially, the king’s demise. Thus, the previously proposed theories of an accidental cause of death (such as a chariot accident) regained validity. Exactly why eighteen-year-old Tutankhamen went into his makeshift tomb well in advance of his likely life span will almost certainly never be known. Eyelids still intact. Beaded skullcap still present. Detail of Harry Burton’s 1926 portrait of the Tutanhkamen mummy on the sand tray, prior to reinterment in KV62. Clavicles still present. Beaded collar & strand of gold beads still present. Frontal ribcage evident. Forearms crossed over the abdomen, as found. No evidence of the beaded skullcap Detail of 2005 CT-scan of the Tutankhamen mummy Photo: SCA/NGM Art Clavicles & sternum missing. Irregularly sawed-off ribs of frontal ribcage. R.G. Harrison’s 1968 x-ray of the thorax of the Tutankhamen mummy, showing the absence of clavicles, sternum & frontal ribcage. Evident spinal curvature is probably situational rather than congenital Chest cavity filled with packing Case closed. Except for one nagging set of facts regarding the mummy. What about the blatantly missing clavicles, sternum and frontal ribcage, documented initially by Harrison in his 1960 x-ray, and fully confirmed by Hawass’s 2005 CT-scan? In filmed commentary on his examination of the king’s mummy, Harrison avoided remarking on this highly unusual situation, opting instead to point out the normality of the unions of the king’s vertebrae (if obliquely allowing for some apparent abnormal curvature of the spinal column). Harris — being really only interested in the boy-king’s skull and dentition — had nothing to say in print about the rest of the mummy. Hawass addressed the problem of the missing ribs, etc., citing the largely Egyptian opinion that Carter, in fact — despite his diary statements to the contrary — decided after all, at the last minute, to remove the bead collar (Carter Catalogue 256 ttt) and associated gold-bead girdle (Carter 256 sss), following Burton’s “final” portrait(s) of the mummy on the sand tray — made (it must be presumed) only just prior to the king’s reinterment in 1926. Penis? Empty eye sockets Left, The Tutankhamen mummy seen at the time of its 1978 disinterment by J.E. Harris. Note the black mass of the thorax area & absence of the penis. Above,The decapitated head of the Tutankhamen mummy in 1978. Note the hollow eye sockets, missing beaded skullcap. Photos courtesy of David Moyer 55 Kmt While Carter and his team are indeed guilty of having taken Tutankhamen’s mummy quite literally apart in order to remove it from its coffin and mask — for the purpose of recovering the extensive quantity of amulets and jewelry — they were very thorough in their description of the remains and surely would have noted the absence of the ribs and sternum. In fact Derry’s anatomical report on the mummy specifically mentions that: “The left forearm lay above it [right forearm] over the lower ribs....” 6 It seems hardly likely (not impossible, but highly unlikely) that — having the reassembled mummy photographed by Burton as it lay on the sand tray — Carter would have changed his mind before the remains were placed in the coffin and sawed off 7 the frontal ribcage (taking with it the sternum to which the ribs were attached, and the clavicles, as well) — in order to recover the bead collar — which earlier he had deemed to be of insufficient intrinsic value to go to the bother of extracting it from the resin carapace covering the mummy’s chest. The same can be said for the bead-decorated linen skullcap (Carter 256 q,r.t), which is present in Burton’s sand-tray photo 8 but gone in the Harrison disinterment film-footage and subsequently. Additionally, the head of the mummy clearly suffered physical damaged between the time of its 1926 formal portrait and its appearance in 1968, when removed from the sand tray by the Harrison team for x-raying. The head is held up for the movie camera (with a tape measure around the cranium) and very clearly the eye sockets (intact in 1926) are empty holes. The ears also were mostly missing in 1968, although present in the Burton shots of the mummy’s head.9 Then there is the matter of the king’s mummified penis. It is indisputably there in the sand-tray photo and definitely gone in the 1978 photo of the mummy (it is impossible to say whether it was still present in the 1968 film footage; and Harrison does not comment on its presence or absence). Interestingly, the 2005 CT-scan purportedly shows an independent object in the sand tray which is the right size and shape to be the detached penis. But the question remains, how did it become detached in the first place? A ll of this negative evidence — the missing bead collar and associated bead girdle; the sawed off and absent frontal ribcage, sternum and clavicles; the missing beaded skullcap; damage to the mummy’s head (especially the gaping eye sockets); the missing (or perhaps just detached) mummified penis — all point circumstantially to the almost certainty that the remains of Tutankhamen were unofficially and clandestinely disinterred between 1926 and 1968, with the theft of the bead collar, bead girdle and skullcap, and the physical damage to the mummy taking place then. It has been suggested in a private communication with a mostsenior British Egyptologist that the likely time frame for this to have occurred was during the period of World War II (1939-1945), when security in the Valley of the Kings may have been understandably lax (inasmuch as tourism would have been nil). Such a disinterment would have been done in all likelihood for the sole purpose of stealing the “jewelry” Carter intentionally had left on the boy-king when the mummy was reinterred in 1926. Since the bead collar could not simply be lifted off the torso, this must have been known by the Kmt 56 culprits and a hack saw brought along to accomplish the deed. The mummy’s eyes inadvertently may have been punched in10 and the ears further broken during the process of removing the beadwork of the skullcap, which, being fiber-thin, would have disintegrated consequently. The fragile penis might well have snapped off while the mummy was being manhandled during removal of the frontal ribcage. If this theft scenario is correct, then the mystery of Tutankhamen’s missing ribs is in no way connected to the cause of his premature death. Notes 1. Although carefully disguised in Harry Burton’s full-length photographic “portrait” of the king’s mummy partially submerged in the wood tray of white sand, it was subsequently determined and revealed that the royal cadaver had been thoroughly dismantled (separated) into fifteen pieces by Howard Carter and Dr. Douglas E. Derry, during their extraction of the mummy from the innermost solid-gold coffin and funerary mask, and then its unwrapping to remove the many amuletic objects and jewelry placed on the body by the ancient embalmers. See D. Forbes, Tombs. Treasures.Mummies. Seven Great Discoveries of Egyptian Archaeology (1998, Sebastopol, CA), Appendix Four, “Abusing Pharaoh: Mistreatment of the Mummy of Tutankhamen in Antiquity & Modern Times,” 702-713. 2. In his diary entry for October 23, 1926, Howard Carter indicated that the Tutankhamen mummy “...finally rewrapped, was lowered into the sarcophagus this morning.” In an earlier entry for November 18, 1925, the excavator had written that “...the King’s remains...will be reverently re-wrapped and returned to the sarcophagus.” Considering the dismembered condition of the mummy, it would seem that Carter finally settled for covering the remains with cotton batting; which was present at the 1968 disinterment. 3. University of Michigan orthodontist Harris was at the time undertaking a detailed study of the craniofacial morphology of the Royal Mummies, the results of which were subsequently published in An X-Ray Atlas of the Royal Mummies (Chicago, 1980), co-authored with Edward F. Wente. 4. See Bob Brier, The Murder of Tutankhamen: A True Story (New York, 1998); also, Michael R. King and Gregory M. Cooper, Who Killed King Tut? Using Modern Forensics to Solve a 3,300-Year-Old Mystery (New York, 2004). 5. See Zahi Hawass, Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs (Washington, DC, 2005), 263-272. 6. See F. Filce Leek, The Human Remains from the Tomb of Tut’ankhamun (Oxford, 1972), p. 12. 7. The CT-scans reveal that the remaining frontal ribs were sawed through rather irregularly (literally a “hack job”). 8. This beaded skullcap is also present in the several photos Burton took of the mummy’s decapitated head. 9. The king’s left ear apparently suffered damage on Carter’s watch, as it is fully intact in the Burton profile photo with the gold temple-band still in place, but the upper one-quarter or so is gone in the photos with the temple band removed. Thus it is likely that the ear was damaged when the latter was taken away (or in other handling of the decapitated head). 10. Or, if the thieves were a superstitious lot, perhaps intentionally punched in to “blind” Tutankhamen to the theft about to occur. About the Authors Dennis Forbes is the editorial director of this journal. Dr. Salima Ikram reaches Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, is the author of numerous books and articles, and writes “Nile Currents.” Dr. Janice Kamrin is director of the American Research Center in Egypt’s Registrar Training and Database Project at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo; she also edits some of Zahi Hawass’s many publications.