(IOIS insert:  Read the questions and answers King and Cooper came up with at Discovery.) 

Unfortunately, nobody left a death certificate, but they did leave a well-preserved mummy. Today’s advanced forensic technology may be able to solve this ancient riddle. The evidence was most recently examined by two policemen, Chief Greg Cooper and Lieutenant Mike King (click here for their Discovery Channel bios), in their television documentary “The Assassination of King Tut” from the Discovery Channel. This article will present their new evidence and offer another conclusion as to who killed the boy king.

Expert witness Richard Boyer, a pediatric radiologist, re-examined the x-rays that were previously taken of Tutankhamen’s mummy and found a piece of vital evidence (note: authorities will not allow another physical examination of the mummy for fear of damaging it even more).  Upon examining the cervical spine of Tut, Boyer concluded that the boy suffered from Klippel Feil syndrome. Klippel-Feil is a rare disorder defined as the congenital fusion of any 2 of the 7 cervical (neck) vertebrae (information source).

It would have been painful to walk seeing that he could not bend his back or neck like normal people. This seems to be reflected by the fact that in Tutankhamen’s tomb was found several used walking canes and many images present him as walking with canes (image) and with twisted feet (image). The condition would have made any back or neck injury, however slight to a normal person, fatal to him because his spine could not shift or adjust, it would simply break. 

Dr. Todd Grey, Chief Medical Examiner of Salt Lake City, examined the x-ray of Tutankhamen’s skull (image right).  It was long believed that a hemorrhaged looking area at the base of the skull came from a blow to the back of the head. In the x-ray a piece of broken bone can be seen which many say is more proof of a fatal blow. But with Tut suffering from Klippel Feil, any blow could have been fatal.  Grey believes that the mysterious, and infamous, broken bone does not come from the back of his head, but from the front.

Grey believes the bone could be the result of what is known as a contra-coup injury. A specific area of brain injury located directly opposite to the site of impact to the head that results from linear violent collisions of the brain with the skull (source). The scenario, as Grey sees it, is that Tutankhamen fell back and hit the back of his head making his brain mass fly forward, cracking the bone above the eye sockets. Fatal injury of the neck occurs and Tut dies. Then, when he is mummified, the infamous bone broke off as his brain was removed and settled in the back, or laying down the bottom, of the skull.

Now, where did Tutankhamen fall? The documentary points out that Tut’s body shows signs of already being in a state of decomposition when it was mummified. Douglas Derry, who conducted an autopsy of Tut in 1925, was the first to notice. Dr. Ernst Rodin, who puts forth the theory of Tut dieing from an insect bite in the documentary, notes that two buckets full of scented resins were poured over Tut’s mummy and another two over his coffin. This was probably done to mask the odor of decomposition. Grey also agreed that the body was in a state of decomposition.

Tutankhamen must have been away from the city, indeed, away from any place with mummification facilities, when he died. More then likely he was out hunting. It is obvious that the king loved the hunt because many images represent him with bow and arrow at the ready in a chariot (image left) and six chariots where found in his tomb (image right). Some of them were ceremonial and others were for practical usage. A misstep backwards off of a chariot, or if the hunt got out of hand, could have easily made the king fall back before anyone could do anything to save him.

So why couldn’t it have been an accident? If this was all there was to this mystery, then perhaps that was the case.  But this is where things start to get interesting.

If Tutankhamen were out hunting, then his military commander and master charioteer Horemheb would have been with him. Cooper and King finger Horemheb as a viable suspect in the investigation. Horemheb was a devoutly religious man and historians know this because when Horemheb became Pharaoh around 1321 BC, he did his best to destroy the heretic king Akhenaten, aka, Tutankhamen’s father.

Akhenaten believed in the worship of one god, or monotheism. He worshiped the sun god Aten, and built a new capital at Amarna. This was a heresy that severally offended many, especially the powerful priesthood of Amun. When Horemheb became pharaoh he dismantled the capital and tried to destroy all mention of Akhenaten, including striking his name from statues that were reused and renamed. The great list of pharaohs at Abydos, created by Ramses II (1279 – 1213BC) does not include Akhenaten’s name, and so he remained unknown and a mystery for years (more information on Akhenaten).

Since Tutankhamen most likely died away from home then Horemheb had the best opportunity to murder the king. Tut was the son of the great heretic king whom Horemheb despised. Could Tut, now reaching manhood, have been too greatly influenced by his father and turn once again to Aten? Religion and faith are a very powerful motive. Also, while Tut was a boy, Horemheb surely was able to enjoy a greater measure of power and a grown up king could be a threat to that (more on Horemheb).

Horemheb had powerful motives and would become pharaoh, but not after Tutankhamen’s death. Tut’s high adviser, Ay, was the next pharaoh of Egypt.

Ay, although an Amun priest, was not a stickler for faith. He was the adviser to Akhenaten and had a tomb built for himself at Amarna that praised Aten. But when Akhenaten died, he went back to Thebes with Tutankhamen where Tut reinstated the traditional, and more popular, gods.  It is doubtful that Tut, a mere child, made the decision to reinstate the gods.  As Tut’s advisor, Ay was likely the one to make the politically convenient decision. Ay more than likely ruled the country as a king, just without the title. After Tut’s death, Ay married Tut’s widow, Ankhesenamun, and assumed the throne.

This makes Ay the most likely villain in Cooper and King’s view. (IOIS insert... Ay, pictured right is shown performing the "Opening of the Mouth" ceremony in Tut's tomb.)  Power is something men do not easily give up. Was the king getting too commanding and independent? Did Tutankhamen figure out Ay’s duplicity?  Was Ay fed up with being the power behind the throne and killed the king to take the crown? These are all very strong motives for murder (more on Ay).

But, if Tutankhamen was far from home when he died, then how did Ay do it? Did he go with Tut on some errand or the hunt? It’s possible.  But there are a few more clues that Copper and King presented that might point to a royal conspiracy between both Ay and Horemheb to murder their king.

Copper and King do not suggest a conspiracy theory in their program, but they do present a piece of evidence vital to the theory. To prove how Ay became pharaoh they show evidence of his marriage to Ankhesenamun. They mention two letters that she wrote to the King of the Hittites after Tutankhamen’s death. In the letters she states, "My husband has died, a son I have not. But to thee, they say, the sons are many. If thou wouldst give me one son of thine, he would become my husband. Never shall I pick out a servant of mine and make him my husband. I am afraid (source)!"

Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities and Director of the Giza Pyramids Excavation, states in the documentary that this is highly unorthodox. An Egyptian lady would never marry a foreign man, especially not a prince of the Hittites. The Hittites were Egypt’s greatest enemy. It would be like President Bush dieing and his widow asking Saddam Hussein to send over a son for her to marry. Why did Ankhesenamun feel the need to ask the Hittites for help (more on the Hittites)?  

(IOIS insert: in the picture to the left, Mike King and Greg Cooper pose with Dr. Hawass  for  a  picture while investigating Horemheb at his tomb.)

Ankhesenamun obviously knew that something was up.  Why not go to Horemheb or the guards and have Ay arrested for murder? She might have only suspected Ay, but female rulers were not uncommon in Egypt. If she could not find someone else to marry, then she could have ruled as Queen. But every ruler needs the backing of the either the religious leaders or the military. She turned to Horemheb’s military enemy. Why would she do that? Maybe because she knew that she would find no aid from her husband’s killer.

This is a piece of evidence for the theory that I present to you today. Ay, lusting for power or afraid of loosing it, uses Horemheb’s devout religiousness to convince or trick him into doing the dirty work of murdered the boy king. Ay then forces the scared Ankhesenamun, who has no one to turn for help, into marrying him.  Then something happened, and Ay died.  Horemheb took the throne, destroyed the heretic king for good, and usurped all that was done in the time of Tutankhamen and Ay’s rule and made it his own. The three pharaohs are then forgotten until unearthed in the sands of Egypt.

There is one more piece of evidence not directly mentioned by Cooper and King that sheds the last bit of light on the mystery and lends credence to this theory. Tutankhamen’s tomb was robbed during Horemheb’s reign. Horemheb allowed the chief treasurer, Maya, to restock it with goods.  As a deeply religious man, Horemheb would believe whole-heartedly that Tut would need these things in the after life. As for Ay, his tomb was wrecked, more than likely by Horemheb (source). This insured Ay a very unpleasant afterlife.

Was it an attack of conscious? Was Horemheb trying to gain forgiveness from Tutankhamen who could hinder his passage into the afterlife?  Was Horemheb getting revenge on Ay who he realized had tricked him?   Or was it all just an unfortunate accident?

It is a question that will probably never be truly answered. But if the death of Tutankhamen were ever solved then it would take all the fun out of it, wouldn’t it?

From Jessica:  "My thanks to all the sources linked to above. Information mentioned above was taken from the documentary “The Assassination of King Tut” unless otherwise stated.  For more information I highly recommend watching the documentary and taking a trip to the local library to check out the many reference books on the subject of Tutankhamen, Akhenaten, Horemheb, Ay, Egyptian History and Religious Mythology.  I encourage all those who every wondered about a mystery to research it, think about it, and maybe even change history."

IOIS Comment:  Our thanks to Jessica for taking the time to explore this issue even further and for granting us permission to put her remarks on the webpage... We also appreciate Discovery Channel, Britain's Channel 5 and Atlantic Productions for enlisting Dr. Robin Richards to build the reconstruction of Tutankhamun's head which gave us our first look at the face of our victim, King Tut.  m/g

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