Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries (40 page)

Another interesting detail is the
unusual proportion of bog bodies with
physical defects of some kind. One of
the bodies from Lindow Moss had six
fingers, others had spinal problems or
foreshortened limbs, and such people
may have been chosen for sacrifice because they were seen as being physically set apart by the gods. We must
also remember that bogs are treacherous places, and we cannot rule out
the possibility that some of the socalled bog burials are the result of misadventure. People may simply have
fallen in and drowned. Others could
be the remains of paupers or women
who died in childbirth and were buried in unconsecrated ground. This could
be the explanation for the careful
burial of the girl from Meenybradden
in Ireland. Nevertheless, considering
the vast array of possible scenarios,
it is obvious that there can never be
one single explanation for the gruesome but compelling mystery of the
bog bodies.

Photograph by Michael Reeve. (GNU Free Documentation License).

The gold funerary mask of Tutankhamun, in the Egyptian Museum of Cairo.

Howard Carter's spectacular discovery in 1922 of the almost intact tomb
of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun, in
the Valley of the Kings, inspired an
interest in ancient Egypt that endures
to this day. Indeed, the fabulous gold
mask of Tutankhamun has become the
popular image of Egyptian civilization. But these dazzling treasures
have put the actual person behind the
golden mask in the shade. The real life
of the boy king of Egypt was short and

somewhat mysterious; his parentage
remains uncertain as does the date of
his accession to the throne. Until recently, the cause of Tutankhamun's
death was also completely unknownwas it a hunting accident, or did he die
from a disease? Or could he have been
murdered?

Tutankhamun remains a mystery
despite Carter's discovery. The tomb
was full of riches, more than 2000 objects in all, and the mummy of the boy pharaoh was found contained within
three golden coffins. But there was
practically no documentation recovered from within the tomb, which
makes it very difficult to put together
an accurate story of Tutankhamun's
life. It is believed that his parents may
have been the heretic 18th Dynasty
pharaoh Akhenaten, who ruled Egypt
from 1367 B.C. to 1350 B.C. (or 1350 B.C.
to 1334 B.C.) and his mysterious second
wife, Kiya. Akhenaten had taken the
unprecedented and revolutionary step
of replacing the traditional old gods
of Egypt with a single sun god called
the Aten. Thus, Tutankhamun's name
at birth was actually Tutankhaten (Living Image of the Aten) and was only
changed to Tutankhamun (Living Image of Amun) a year or two into his
reign, when polytheism was restored
to Egypt. Tutankhamun seems to have
come to the throne at the age of nine,
perhaps around 1334 B.C., and ruled for
about 10 years. Because the new pharaoh was so young and had no living
female relatives old enough, much of
the considerable responsibility of his
kingships (and his personal upbringing) must have been in the care of Ay,
his chief minister, and Horemheb, commander-in-chief of the army.

Shortly after becoming king,
Tutankhamun married his half-sister
Ankhesenamun, a daughter of
Akhenaten and his first wife, Nefertiti,
and granddaughter of the chief advisor to the king, Ay. There is very little
information about the reign of
Tutankhamun, who ruled first from
Akhenaten's city of Amarna, on the
east bank of the Nile about 250 miles
north of Luxor, before moving to his
new capital at Memphis, 12 miles south
of modern Cairo on the west bank of
the Nile. It was Horemheb and Ay who

were probably responsible for persuading the new pharaoah to relinquish the
religion of Aten, and start to return to
the old ways. Preserved on his restoration stelae-at the Temple of
Karnak at Thebes-are descriptions of
the steps taken by Tutankhamun to
bring back the old gods and traditions,
which included founding a new priesthood and embarking on building and
restoration programs at the temples
of the ancient gods.

The pharaoh and his wife did have
two known children, both stillborn
girls, whose mummies were discovered in his tomb. The only other fact
that is known is that when he was
about 19 years old, Tutankhamun's life
was mysteriously cut short. Many have
viewed it as suspicious that as soon as
Tutankhamun was old enough to make
his own decisions and take on the role
of leader of his people-rather than
share it with Ay and Horemheb-he
was dead. After Tutankhamun's death,
his widow Ankhesenamun married Ay,
her own grandfather. A signet ring
bearing the names of Ay and
Ankhesenamun (and seemingly representing this union) has been found.
This marriage enabled Ay, who had no
royal blood, to inherit the throne.
Ankhesenamun disappears from the
records soon after the marriage, suggesting that she was murdered, possibly at the instigation of Ay. Shortly
after the death of her husband and just
before she vanished forever from history, she wrote one of the most startling letters ever recovered from the
ancient world.

The letter, sent by an Egyptian
"royal widow" has been dated to the
end of the 18th Dynasty, and was found
in the archives of the Hittite capital of Hattusa (modern Bogazkale) in Turkey. The document had been sent to
King Suppiluliumas I of the Hittites,
an emerging power in the Near East
at the time and an obvious danger to
Egypt. Part of the document states,
"My husband has died and I have no
son. They say about you that you have
many sons. You might give me one of
your sons to become my husband.
Never shall I pick out a servant of mine
and make him my husband! I am
afraid!" The Hittite king at first expressed suspicion at the motives of
Ankhesenamun, but after sending a
messenger to Egypt to investigate the
situation, who brought back a second
letter from the Egyptian queen, he
agreed to the marriage and sent his
son, the Prince Zannanza, to Egypt.
However, the prince only got as far as
the Egyptian border before he met his
death, probably murdered by an Egyptian faction who did not want a foreign king occupying the throne of
Egypt. This murder ultimately led to
war between the Egyptians and the
Hittites, and ended in defeat for Egypt
at Amqa, near Kadesh in western
Syria. Some have suggested that this
incredible letter was not written by
Ankhesenamun at all, but by her
mother Nefertiti, but this is unlikely
as Nefertiti's husband Akhenaten had
a successor, thus there would be no
need for a letter to a foreign king.

So what possible reason could
Ankhesenamun have had for instigating this treasonous correspondence,
which effectively amounts to her begging an enemy king to take over her
country? Tutankhamun's death (without leaving an heir) may have been at
the heart of the problem. One theory
is that the letters were written be

cause the Egyptians were wary of the
threat posed by the advancing Hittite
Empire, and believed that an alliance
with the Hittites by marriage would
preserve Egypt from conquest. The
queen may have planned to rule with
a Hittite king supported by the military might of the Hittite Empire, but
her plan was thwarted with the murder of Prince Zannanza. This brings us
to the fate of Tutankhamun himself.

Ever since Tutankhamun's body
was first unwrapped and examined by
Howard Carter's team in the 1920s,
there has been intense speculation as
to how and why the king died. X-ray
examinations of the skull, first in 1968
by a team from the University of
Liverpool, then in 1978 by researchers from the University of Michigan,
revealed a shard of bone in the skull
and evidence of hemorrhage at the
back of the head, possibly caused by a
deliberate blow to the skull. The evidence from the x-rays, taken together
with the suspicious circumstances surrounding King Tut's death, have
prompted many to conclude that the
boy pharaoh must have been murdered. But by whom?

The person most frequently put forward as being behind Tutankhamun's
possible murder is the man who had
most to gain by his death, the elderly
royal servant Ay. Ay reigned for a little
more than four years as pharaoh after
the demise of Tutankhamun, and
would seem to have had motive for
murder, though there is at present no
evidence that he had anything to do
with the death of the king. Other researchers believe a much younger
man, Horemheb, who succeeded Ay
around 1321 B.C., to become the last
pharaoh of ancient Egypt's 18th Dynasty, was responsible. Horemheb reigned for 27 years as pharaoh, during which time he brought about a
major reorganization of the country,
resulting in a much stronger and more
stable Egypt than had been seen for
many years. He was also determined
to completely return Egypt to its traditional religious beliefs, and he therefore set about obliterating all traces
of the Aten cult. It is thought that one
reason why Tutankhamun was omitted from the classical king lists of
Egypt is that Horemheb usurped most
of the boy pharaoh's work, including
monuments at Karnak and Luxor.
Could either of these two shadowy figures, or perhaps both, have plotted the
death of the boy pharaoh?

In January 2005, the first CAT
scans (a CAT scan is an x-ray technique
that produces a film representing a
detailed cross section of tissue structure) ever performed on an Egyptian
mummy were carried out on the 3,300
old skeleton of Tutankhamun. Surprisingly, the team of Egyptian researchers found no evidence at all of a blow
to the back of the boy's head, and no
other evidence of violence on the body.
The report stated that the fragment
of bone identified from previous skull
x-rays had probably become dislodged
during the embalming process. When
Tutankhamun was being mummified
his brain was removed and the skull
filled with large amounts of resin,
which has hardened over time. If the
sliver of bone had been the result of
an injury before death, it would not
still be loose in the skull. The dark
area shown at the back of the skull on
earlier x-rays, thought by many to indicate some kind of trauma, was explained by the scientists as the result
of the body being dismembered for

photographing after its initial discovery by Howard Carter. During this
process a rod had been inserted into
the back of the skull to prop it up. The
general conclusion of the researchers
was that Tutankhamun had been a
slightly built, but relatively healthy
young man standing roughly 5-feet 6inches tall. Using high-resolution photos of the CAT scans, three teams of
forensic artists from France, Egypt,
and the United States constructed
separate but similar models of the
king's face. The result not only bears a
striking resemblance to the famous
gold mask which covered the mummified face of Tutankhamun, but also to
a well-known image of the pharaoh as
a child where he was depicted as the
Sun God rising at dawn from a lotus
blossom. But how did the king die?

When examining Tutankhamun's
body the team found a fracture in the
thighbone of his left leg, previously
assumed by Howard Carter to have
been sustained during the embalming
process or as a result of damage to the
body after mummification. On reexamination, the scientists found that
this badly broken leg had occurred
only days before the death of
Tutankhamun and had probably led to
an attack of gangrene, which swiftly
brought about the king's death. At
present then, the evidence does not
support a murderous conspiracy by
Tutankhamun's close advisors Ay and
Horemheb, but more likely a broken
leg, perhaps sustained during a hunting accident, and not treated quickly
enough to prevent infection. The question of whether Ay or Horemheb could
have actively prevented the death of
the boy pharaoh from this injury is
another matter.