(dramatic music)
- Tonight an investigation into the death
of one of history's most enigmatic rulers.
- King Tut might be
the most famous ancient Egyptian Pharaoh.
- And around 1324 BC, at about 19 years old,
he suddenly dies.
- Even after 3,300 years,
no one knows for certain
what ended the young pharaoh's life,
- Who are the potential suspects if it was a homicide,
which always takes us back to the crime book theory
of means, motive and opportunity.
- His name is wiped out from monuments
and temples across Egypt.
Someone wants him erased from history.
- Now we'll explore the top theories behind the demise
of Egypt's legendary boy king.
- The bone fragments that show up on the X-ray are
at the base of the skull in a position
that suggests one blow in the back of the head.
And could he have been murdered?
- DNA could really make or break the case.
- King Tut's death. What a mystery.
- Who or what killed King Tut?
(dramatic suspenseful music)
(mysterious music)
(dramatic suspenseful music)
It's November 4th, 1922 near Luxor, Egypt
in the ancient burial grounds known
as the Valley of the Kings.
British archaeologist Howard
Carter is searching for the tomb
of a long forgotten Pharaoh named Tutankhamun.
- He had a a great deal of support.
He had a very wealthy lord, Lord Carnarvon,
who backed him for a number of years.
- Both were working so hard
to specifically find King Tut's tomb.
On the list of kings they had,
every other tomb was found in the Valley of the Kings
except for King Tut's tomb.
- He's been looking for five years for Tut
and he has failed
over and over again.
- By the end of this five year period,
Lord Carnarvon was ready to give up
and you know Howard Carter essentially begged him
for one more season, said, look, I've got this feeling.
There's this one area
of the valley that we haven't looked at.
Let me dig there and let me see what I can find.
- And he'd managed to
persuade Lord Carnarvon
to pay for one more season.
The area which hadn't been touched was right
in the center of the valley.
He dug through, he found some huts which had been used
by the builders of another royal tomb nearby.
Under those, they found a stone cut step.
- [Laurence] It's here that Carter and his team make
an extraordinary discovery.
- The staircase that leads them all the way down
to a door with a seal on it.
And that seal said on it,
the coronation name of King Tut.
- Carter was able to read it immediately
and know which pharaoh it was.
- And you can imagine the feeling that Howard Carter had.
All his life he's been waiting for that moment,
and it happened just when he was about to give up.
- Carter decided to tear down the sealed doorway
and continue his excavation into this tomb.
They arrived yet again at another sealed doorway
and Carter recounts this in his publications
that they made a small hole
within this second sealed doorway.
- And Howard Carter shined his little light
and looked into the hall and said, "I see wonderful things."
- [Laurence] What Carter sees becomes
the most famous archaeological discovery of the 20th century.
- What they had found was this nearly intact tomb
of a royal burial from the 18th dynasty.
- Over 5,000 objects were found in the tomb
and at the core of it all the mummy of the king,
surrounded by coffins of solid gold and gilded wood.
(dramatic music)
- The king's mummy was surrounded
by four different golden shrines.
And those golden shrines contained
a quartzite sarcophagus
and within that quartzite sarcophagus was a series
of nested coffins, almost like these Russian dolls, right?
One within the other.
- It must have been utterly amazing to go through each
of the three coffins, one inside the other,
to then finally confirm that. yes, this is the body
of Tutankhamun and it has been perfectly preserved
for 3,000 years.
- [Laurence] But more than three millennia
after his mummified body was so lavishly entombed,
little is known about the brief reign of King Tut
or the cause of his death.
- There's this incredible irony
that we learned so much
about Ancient Egypt
through Tutankhamun,
but we really know so little about him individually,
how he died, and that's the mystery.
- All we know is that King Tut was alive
and at the age of 19 he was being mummified.
- It's very likely that King Tutankhamun came to the throne
around 1330-1332 BC having come after his father Akhenaten,
when he was only about nine years old.
So this was the child that we're talking about
who essentially had to become a living god on earth
and rule the land of Egypt.
- [Laurence] But such a young child
could not rule Egypt on his own.
- He needed to surround himself with close advisors,
essentially, to help him rule as king.
- Rule would've been in the hands of adults,
but what they were doing would be
in the name of the young king.
(dramatic music)
- About the time
that King Tutankhamun becomes Pharaoh of Egypt
part of his role as king is he has to take a wife.
He ultimately ends up
marrying his half-sister,
Ankhesenamun, who was also a daughter
of his father King Akhenaten.
- She was the royal heiress. They were both quite young.
Ankhesenamun must must have been about 13 years
of age by that time.
- King Tutankhamun, he has a short reign.
It's roughly probably about 10 years
that he's actually King of Egypt
and around 1324 BC he suddenly dies.
- [Laurence] 70 years after Tut's tomb was found,
one researcher thinks he may have found the reason
for the young pharaoh's sudden death.
- In the 1990s, Egyptology professor Bob Brier gets a hold
of x-rays taken in the 1960s of Tutankhamun's mummy.
- And he recognizes, specifically, a head injury
in the back of his head
and he can tell that the skull fragments
are inside the skull.
- Professor Brier shows them to Dr. Gerald Irwin,
who has experience reading the x-rays
of head trauma patients.
- And that colleague believed the x-rays showed evidence
for a blow to the back of the head.
- Bob Brier starts to suspect that it was a deliberate blow
to the back of the head intended to kill him.
- [Laurence] But who would want
to kill the 19-year-old king?
- In any murder mystery you're looking
for means, motive and opportunity.
Professor Brier speculates that if Tutankhamun was murdered,
the most likely suspect would be someone in the Royal Court.
(dramatic music)
- The first culprit
in our story is Ay,
the vizier of King Tut and the grandfather of his wife.
Ay was one of the people that Tut completely leaned on.
- The vizier is one
of the most powerful officials in Ancient Egypt,
analogous to something like the Prime Minister today.
He's in charge of administration,
diplomacy, trade,
all sorts of functions of the state.
- [Laurence] It's a job Ay likely knew well,
given his long service as a member of the Royal Court.
- Ay has been in the royal family and the royal blood
for three generations now.
- He actually started his career
during the reign of King Tut's father Akhenaten,
and so Ay was the second most powerful man in Egypt,
right after the king himself.
- Ay's power would've been huge.
He would've answered, essentially only to Tutankhamun.
- [Laurence] Since King Tut is just a child
when he becomes pharaoh,
many historians believe that Ay is the real power in Egypt.
And Ay's first priority is to undo the damage caused
by Tut's father.
- King Tut's father was King Akhenaten,
he was the king that decided all the gods
of Ancient Egypt didn't matter anymore
and only one God matters.
- Egyptian religion had been based
around dozens of gods going back to the earliest times.
- Akhenaten destroyed all that, went on his own.
- He ultimately moves the capital
to a different part of Egypt
to pursue a certain
religious agenda
and alienates the priesthood.
- So the reign of King Tutankhamun's father left Egypt
more or less in a crisis.
- [Laurence] Weakened by internal dissent,
Egypt was increasingly vulnerable to outside attack.
- Egypt has its own enemies.
Any enemy is ready for a moment of weakness
to come attack the country and take it over.
- Egypt's crisis eases with the death of Akhenaten.
- Tutankhamun reverses all the policies of his father
under the advice of his counselors.
The capital is brought back to its original site.
The temples are restored
and the ancient religion is also restored with it.
- The decisions to make moves like that
couldn't have been made by a nine to 12-year-old boy.
- [Laurence] But as King Tut grows up,
Brier believes there may have been a struggle for power.
- Under Ay, Egypt gets its mojo back.
What he says, as the king's chief advisor, is law.
Brier thinks that perhaps Ay saw himself as the person
who brought Egypt back on its feet
and sees himself then also as the right man to be pharaoh.
- But now King Tut's also starting to mature
as a young king
and perhaps, even making some decisions
that go against the puppet master
who had been controlling him for years.
- History tends to show
that when a young king starts thinking about stuff,
the people who've been his regents start getting nervous.
- Ay had just seen Tutankhamun's father destroy
so many institutions that were so necessary for Egypt,
and he's really possibly seeing this boy king going
to repeat all of those mistakes.
- [Laurence] Ay may have also sensed
that this could be his last chance to take the throne.
- The king and queen were trying to have children.
- If Tutankhamun has an heir,
it would absolutely end any chance
that Ay has of becoming pharaoh because the child would
now be the next in line for the throne.
- If you're going to plan a murder, this is the time.
- Brier speculates that Ay could have dispatched one
of Tutankhamun's own attendants,
the only persons with access
to his private chambers or bedroom,
to slip in there and possibly assassinate the king.
He picks up a heavy weapon
and he strikes a fatal blow at the back
of the king's skull, killing him.
- After Tutankhamun's death,
Ay becomes king of Egypt and takes over the throne.
One of the ways that he would've legitimized that claim
to the throne was by marrying King Tutankhamun's half-sister
who was his widow.
- [Laurence] So is it possible
that Ay actually had the young pharaoh killed
to maintain his own power and control of Egypt?
- We know that Tut died
and that he died under mysterious circumstances.
Is it natural causes? Was it an accident?
And if none of those are working very well,
we have to consider homicide.
(dramatic music)
- [Laurence] By 1324 BCE,
19-year-old King Tut has been married for 10 years,
but he remains childless and therefore vulnerable.
- Tutankhamun has no
living children in line
to assume the throne if
he were to suddenly die.
That creates an opportunity for anyone in his inner circle
to potentially murder him
and assume the throne for himself.
- [Laurence] Many speculate
that Tut's alleged killer is Ay, his vizier and successor,
but Ay is not the only suspect.
- It's very common in history
when there is any political turmoil, a coup takes place
and the head of the military ends up being the king.
During the last years of King Tut's reign,
there's one person around the royal kingdom
that actually has the strength, physically and mentally,
and has the army in their hand.
- That man is one of Tut's closest advisors.
His commander in chief.
- Horemheb is an army general
and he first appears in history
when he's appointed as regent for King Tut.
Clearly he must have been
somebody important prior to that
to be given the job
of running Egypt.
- General Horemheb was not of royal blood.
He's a normal citizen of Egypt that had become a soldier
and had raised all the way to the protector of the king
and proved himself.
So he was nearly operating everything
from behind the scenes.
He was there for Ay.
Ay was always calling him
his right hand man,
but in all truth,
it seems like he was the one in charge all along.
- [Laurence] Despite having two
of the most powerful jobs in Egypt,
some allege that Tut's regent and top general is worried
about losing his grip
on the teenage pharaoh and his kingdom.
- As King Tutankhamun started to grow up
and become a man himself,
it's possible that Horemheb sensed
that perhaps Tutankhamun was ready
to start making his own decisions.
- There's no point of having a regent
when the king's an adult.
So Horemheb might resent that.
- And this perhaps was a motive for Horemheb
to seize power for himself.
- [Laurence] Horemheb may have concerns
about Tut's physical weaknesses.
Ancient Egyptians see their pharaohs as the embodiment
of the gods on earth, strong and powerful rulers.
Based on his mummified remains,
Tut does not live up to that image.
- There are a lot of indications
that Tutankhamun was frail,
that he was weak and that he was sick.
- Medical examination of the body of King Tut has shown
that he was quite infirm,
probably since birth.
- The scans of his bones show evidence of a clubbed foot.
He had a lot of walking canes in his tomb.
Even though walking canes were
also a sign of elevation and distinction,
there were so many that it's hard to imagine
that he didn't also need them for mobility.
- But the king of Egypt
at this point, leads his troops into battle,
fights in the front lines on his chariot.
- I don't believe for a moment that this kid
that had a clubfoot and physical ailments
could be out there racing
across the desert on a chariot,
flinging arrows from his bow.
It's important to let your potential enemies know
that this guy that's leading us is ready for battle
and he'll make sure Egypt remains in charge.
Knowing that other governments would look
at a leader who's frail
as potentially an example that the country is frail,
Horemheb potentially could be responsible for murder.
- It wouldn't have just been his ill will
towards Tutankhamun himself,
but a belief and a fear
that this can really leave us vulnerable to our enemies.
- [Laurence] A clue found after Horemheb's death reveals
another possible motive.
- Horemheb's tomb contains inscriptions
that show in hieroglyphics
that he had been appointed by Tutankhamun as the iry-pat.
The iry-pat is a title of legal inheritance.
It's essentially an equivalent to our modern crown prince.
- King Tut, according to Horemheb,
adopts Horemheb the general,
and names him the hereditary prince,
the next in line for the throne.
- [Laurence] But there are no guarantees
that King Tut will make good on that line of succession.
- Horemheb's appointment
as crown prince is effectively going
to be null and void the moment that Tutankhamun has an heir.
And we know from the presence
of two stillborn mummies in King Tut's tomb
that he is trying to have children at this time.
- [Laurence] If Tut's general has designs on the throne,
he must act before Tut's heir is born.
- Horemheb would definitely have had guards in the palace.
- This would've allowed Horemheb to just give the order
to murder the king and send off some palace guard to go
and kill Tutankhamun in his sleep.
- [Laurence] But if Horemheb is the killer,
why did Ay succeed Tut on the throne?
- Because Ay is in his 60s and near the end of his life.
It's possible that they struck up a deal.
Essentially, Ay would take over the role of pharaoh
for a brief period of time
after which point Horemheb would become king,
and that is exactly what happened.
- To see both of them take power
after the demise of this
18th dynasty royal family,
it does put the spotlight on them.
- [Laurence] Ay dies after just four years in power
and Horemheb takes over as pharaoh.
- No one knows precisely how long Horemheb is pharaoh,
but some evidence suggests that he was pharaoh for 25 years.
- [Laurence] As Horemheb builds his own legacy,
he also tears down evidence of the past.
- Once he's pharaoh, Horemheb erases any record
of Akhenaten, Tutankhamun or Ay
from historical records, documents,
and inscriptions across Egypt.
He wants to make it as if they've never existed.
- Horemheb either wanted to make sure Egypt never looks weak
for the future generations,
or he wanted to make sure he erases all the evidence
that puts him in as the main suspect
of the death of King Tut.
(dramatic music)
- [Laurence] Without children to succeed him, King Tut
is vulnerable to enemies who want the throne for themselves.
But perhaps the motive
behind his alleged murder is less political
and more personal.
- In any homicide investigation,
one of the first persons
you're gonna look at
is the spouse of a victim.
You never know what happens behind closed doors
in a husband and wife's relationship,
and that would've been just as much true 3,000 years ago,
- [Laurence] Young King Tut and his royal wife
were both children of the previous pharaoh, Akhenaten.
- It was very common for the ancient Egyptians,
at least the royalty, to marry within the family
in order to kind of keep the bloodline pure
and keep things closer to home, let's say.
There's a number of depictions
from the tomb of Tutankhamun that suggest
that King Tutankhamun had a loving and devoted wife
in his half sister.
- There were these scenes
of romantic relationship
between Ankhesenamun and Tut
that suggested this is a couple
that truly loved each other.
- But things aren't often always as they seem.
(dramatic music)
- There are lots of engravings
and depictions of Tutankhamun
and Ankhesenamun together.
One in particular,
she's putting a very sacred collar around his neck.
He's pouring water into her cupped hands.
- Then they're in a hunting scene
where King Tut is sitting down discharging arrows
with Ankhesenamun kneeling beside him,
handing them the arrows.
- Which just seems to indicate
that they were fulfilling the roles
that they were expected to fill.
- [Laurence] But if the royal couple is happy,
why would the young queen have her husband killed?
The answer may lie in King Tut's tomb.
- The saddest discovery that was made
in Tutankhamun's tomb was the mummified remains
of two stillborn children.
- Two stillborn girls,
one is about seven months,
one is nearer nine months.
And there is no textual evidence for any other children.
- This would indicate that there was an attempt
to deliver an heir, but that it had not yet happened.
- Tutankhamun could have kids with all kinds of other women.
He's got a harem. This is not a problem.
It's Ankhesenamun who needs the baby to come from her womb
such that she can maneuver a path to power.
- Trying multiple times to produce an heir to the throne
and being unsuccessful in that could have potentially led
to some resentment or some concern, perhaps,
on part of the young queen.
- [Laurence] If true, some suggest the queen's resentment
may have led her to homicide.
- Ankhesenamun was royal herself
and would've had a lot of reason
to want to preserve her royal line,
and if she is looking at the possibility
that this king is not going to do that for her,
it could have been a devastating prospect for her.
- Perhaps this young queen realized
that once her husband was no longer in the picture,
this could allow her to have the chance
to successfully produce an heir
to take over the throne of Egypt.
- To achieve that the young queen plots
to avoid a likely next step,
marriage to her own grandfather, Ay.
- We found letters that were sent from the Egyptian queen
to the king of the Hittites right after King Tut's death.
- And she tells him that, "My husband has died.
A son I have not, but you have many sons.
Give me one of your sons.
To me he will be husband. In Egypt, he shall be king."
- She's trying to control the narrative
by choosing who is going to be her husband,
a foreigner who doesn't speak a word of Egyptian
and therefore she will be the person in power.
If she marries anybody else,
she's not gonna be in that position.
- The king sent his prince son,
but someone found those letters.
- Some scholars believe that Ay learns of the queen's plan
and has the Hittite prince killed.
- And then Ay married the queen himself,
her own grandfather, probably by force,
and he legitimized himself
to become the next king of Egypt.
- [Laurence] But while a killer queen
is a compelling scenario,
some historians question whether Tut's wife had the motive
to murder her husband.
- It serves her to have Tutankhamun there on the throne,
for her to rule through.
- Ankhesenamun's desperate letter to the Hittites suggested
that everything that happened
after Tutankhamun's death was bad for her.
- By writing to the king of the Hittites,
she chooses what, probably, Egyptians regard as treason,
and I suspect that may have ended
either her freedom or her life.
- Ay is now king and we hear no more of Ankhesenamun.
- Her name and images from history were erased.
After that, we never saw her again.
- X-rays of King Tut skull taken in 1968
lead some researchers to suspect that a murderous blow
to the back of his head ended the life
of the 19-year-old pharaoh.
More than three decades later, new technology seems
to suggest another cause of King Tut's death.
In 2005, King Tut's mummy is removed from his tomb
for a CAT scan.
- Zahi Hawass and his Egyptian team removed the king's body
from his tomb in the Valley of the Kings
where it had been resting since Carter's discovery in 1922
and they decide to CT scan the king's body to see
what more information can they learn
about the young king's health
and potentially how he even died.
- A CT scan is much more detailed than an x-ray.
An x-ray really does just show you the bones,
but a CT scan gives you
a much greater granularity of detail.
It shows you other tissues, organs,
and sometimes blood vessels.
- [Laurence] Hawass's team scans 1,700 images,
leading to a brand new theory on the death of King Tut.
- They find two skull fragments,
and these are the same skull fragments that they found
when the initial x-rays were done of King Tut's skull.
- The early examination opened a Pandora's box
about the king being hit over the head and being murdered.
- But aside from these two bone fragments,
they can't see evidence of a fracture of his skull,
and so ultimately they conclude that King Tut
probably didn't die from a blow to the head,
but that the two skull fractures
are probably from something else.
- They specifically pointed
that this was more likely
an injury to the skull after death.
- During the mummification process,
they're trying to remove the brain
from the person being embalmed,
so, some skull fragments easily could have been dislocated
in that sort of a procedure.
- There's also always the possibility too,
that in the rough handling of the king's mummy
by Howard Carter and his team in the 1920s,
that some of these bone fragments could have
also been dislodged from the skull at that time.
- [Laurence] But the CT scan reveals
that Tut did sustain a major injury before he died.
- King Tut has a femoral fracture,
which is essentially a break in your thigh bone,
and it suggested
that he might have had this fracture right
before the time of his death.
- The leg fracture that we see in the CT scan
did not heal before he died.
- A femur fracture,
especially one that might have broken through the skin,
places someone at risk for an infection, sepsis.
Even in modern day society,
when someone develops sepsis and septic shock,
that is a really big deal.
- [Laurence] Sepsis is a toxic
and overwhelming immune system response to infection
that can cause profound tissue and organ damage.
- Back in the time of King Tut sepsis is a death sentence.
- One of the ways
that Tutankhamun could have fractured his leg was
in one of the high- risk activities
that we know all pharaohs participated in,
which was hunting.
As a king, Tutankhamun would have participated in a lot
of big game hunting expeditions,
which are inherently dangerous.
- Another thing that's found in the tomb is a sculpture
of the king mounted on a reed boat holding a spear,
in a marsh, hunting an animal that might be a hippo.
- [Laurence] Egyptians hunted hippos
for thousands of years before and after Tut's time.
For the pharaoh himself to hunt such a large wild animal
was a ritual display of strength and courage.
- Hippos are actually an incredibly territorial,
very aggressive, deadly land animal.
They still kill over 500 people a year in Africa.
And it would've been a huge accomplishment to kill one.
It was why they were such a valued thing to have as a trophy
and why hunting hippos in Egypt was such a ceremonial event.
If Tutankhamun fractured his leg
as the result of a hippo attack,
it is very likely that that could have gotten infected
and ultimately led to his death.
- [Laurence] But is it possible a different kind
of accident ended young Tut's life?
In 2013, a group of forensic scientists,
led by Dr. Chris Naunton,
examined the CT scans originally done by Zahi Hawass.
- They perform, essentially, a virtual autopsy.
Dr. Naunton and his team find not only
that Tut just had that fractured femur,
but that he had a smashed rib cage.
His pelvis was shattered,
and he probably also endured
some internal bleeding and damage.
- The interesting part about all his findings is
that the rib damage and the pelvis damage,
including the internal organs,
all were on one side of the body.
- He came to the conclusion
that these injuries weren't the result
of an attack by a hippo, but of some other kind of accident
from a different kind of pastime
that the king would've done.
- Which he theorized and said,
"If this was an autopsy of a dead person today,
I would say this is an obvious car crash."
And he theorized it could have been a chariot crash.
(dramatic music)
- Dr. Naunton and his team run a simulation.
They take all the injuries that King Tut has,
and they compare it to what happens
to individuals in car crashes
to try to figure out what might have happened.
- [Laurence] But when the analysis comes back,
Dr. Naunton and his team are in for a surprise.
- The recreations revealed that it was highly unlikely
that Tutankhamun fell out of his chariot.
Chariots were actually very stable.
So the theory is that instead
of being thrown from the chariot,
he may have been kneeling down, fixing something,
doing something else,
and then was struck by another chariot.
- Dr. Naunton's theory is that
because of how the injuries were
on just one side of the body,
the only explanation he could come up with is
that King Tut would've been kneeling on the ground
while at the same time getting hit by a chariot
to one side of his body.
- [Laurence] But some scholars question this scenario.
- There's no reason King Tut would be kneeling
on the ground.
He is the king. People kneel to the king.
(mysterious music)
- [Laurence] In 2010, researchers launched a new study
into the life and death of King Tut,
hoping answers might lie within Tut's genetic code.
- Five years after the CT scans are performed,
Dr. Hawass teams up with paleo geneticist Carsten Pusch
to examine the DNA, both of King Tut and 10 other mummies.
- They specifically focused on the family
of the 18th dynasty where King Tut was,
Akhenaten was, Akhenaten's father was, the whole lineage.
- It was the first time that there had ever been a DNA test
done on mummies and historians and scientists were shocked
to find how well preserved the DNA was.
- The reason they look at this DNA is they want to see
what relationship King Tut had to these other members
of the royal family, but also to delineate the diseases
that they suffered from
and also whether these diseases
could have caused their deaths.
- [Laurence] The DNA study reveals stunning new information
about King Tut.
- We knew that Tutankhamun's father was Akhenaten,
but nobody knew who his mother was.
It had been believed
that King Tut's mother had been Nefertiti.
That was the consort of his father,
but the DNA test proved that it wasn't her,
it was someone else.
- His mother was actually the
full sister of his father.
(dramatic suspenseful music)
- Incest and intermarrying ends up resulting
in many gene problems and birth defects.
Some scholars believe that the cause of death
to King Tut was actually inbreeding.
- We all have recessive genes.
We all have expressions of disease
that are in our bodies.
If we marry somebody who has different recessive genes
and different disease possibilities in their bodies,
we have less likelihood of producing offspring
with those medical issues.
This is why you don't have children with a cousin.
There are all kinds of congenital birth defects
that will occur in the offspring of parents
who are too closely related.
The fact that Tutankhamun has two stillborn children
in his tomb suggests that the more you continue
this kind of inbreeding,
the problems are only going to get worse.
- Is it possible that the sharing of these recessive genes
through close sibling marriage led
to these children not being able to survive to term,
and was it also a ticking time bomb for the pharaoh himself?
- We know from the different CT scans and x-rays
of the king's mummy that he had a cleft palate,
a curved spine, different ailments
that would've caused him a lot of pain during his life.
- People have concluded that his upper vertebrae were fused
and that he had a club foot.
- [Laurence] Some researchers suggested many
of these ailments could be symptoms
of a condition called Marfan syndrome.
- Marfan syndrome is a genetic disorder
that affects connective tissues
and the organs which support the body.
- Some of the features of Marfan syndrome can be lethal.
Specifically, if you develop what's called an
aortic aneurysm, you could die from that.
(dramatic music)
- [Laurence] But the 2010 DNA tests
conclusively rule out Marfan syndrome.
Instead, researchers find evidence
that suggests King Tut suffered from a condition known
as Freiberg's disease, which causes blood loss to the feet.
- A temporary or a permanent blockage of the blood flow
to the bones of the foot is possibly what led
to his club foot and the loss of his toes.
- It's gonna make it very difficult
to walk and to have mobility.
That's probably why they found a number of canes
and staffs in King Tut's tomb.
Having Freiberg's disease isn't fatal,
but it could predispose him
to other complications like developing an infection
in the joints in his foot,
something called septic arthritis.
In Tut's time, there were no ventilators.
There were no antibiotics.
- If King Tut got this condition over 3,000 years ago,
it would be deadly.
- [Laurence] In 2010, two German scientists,
Doctors Timmann and Meyer,
suggest a different cause of Tut's bone damage.
(dramatic music)
- Dr. Timmann and Dr. Meyer believed that the cause
of all this bone damage
could have been sickle cell disease.
In a situation like King Tut's family
and the multiple inbreeding,
if the sickle cell gene was in any part of that family,
then it's very likely that would transfer
to King Tut himself.
- The sickle-shaped cells essentially block capillaries,
preventing blood flow to the damaged bones
and can lead to fatal results
in childhood and throughout life.
- [Laurence] Timmann and Meyer believed
that sickle cell disease could cause an infection
to spiral out of control.
- We know from the CT scans that Tut had a leg fracture
that did not heal before he died.
So if that had become a point of infection,
it is possible that he had a sickle cell crisis as a result.
- Which would've ultimately led
to oxygen not being delivered to the king's vital organs.
And this could have led to the king's death.
- [Laurence] It's a promising theory, but yet unproven.
- That's not entirely surprising.
It's 3,000 year old DNA and might've degraded,
and so it might've made that diagnosis really difficult.
- Hopefully, the future will provide us
with even greater technology
that will give us an even better insight
into the DNA of these mummies.
(dramatic music)
- [Laurence] After decades
of investigating the death of King Tut,
a research team led by Egyptologist
Dr. Zahi Hawass believes
they've finally found the answer.
- It's clear that King Tut had a whole host of ailments,
but unfortunately, none of the genetic tests really tell us
that he was suffering from a particular disease,
a particular condition that could have caused his demise.
Then in 2010, Dr. Hawass and his team re-look
at the genetic code.
- In his analysis of the DNA of Tutankhamun,
Zahi Hawass and his team found a clue
that could perhaps be the smoking gun.
The ironic thing is that this young king
who was meant to be a living god on earth and was supposed
to be Egypt's most powerful influential figure
could have died from one
of the world's most common diseases.
(dramatic music)
- Malaria is an infectious disease.
It's a parasite that's transmitted by a mosquito,
and these mosquitoes do not care if you're a pharaoh
or if you're a commoner.
If you're bitten by a mosquito that's carrying the parasite,
then you ultimately will develop malaria.
- It causes periodic fevers
and extreme it can kill you.
- [Laurence] Even today, more than 400,000 people die
from malaria each year.
- Malaria was prevalent throughout Ancient Egypt.
It's easy to imagine that along the banks of the Nile,
malaria would've been quite common for ancient Egyptians,
whether they were commoners or the king in his palace,
- The DNA analysis of Tut's mummy
identifies a strain called plasmodium falciparum,
which is one of the deadliest strains of malaria.
- [Laurence] Zahi Hawass contends that
in Tut's final days,
malaria exacerbated a serious injury
which may have sent Tut to an early grave.
- The CT scan in 2005 by Dr. Hawass and his team show
that femoral fracture, a leg fracture.
- Now, you don't die of a broken leg.
However, in ancient times with no penicillin
or other sorts of drugs,
you can get a very nasty infection and die of that.
- [Laurence] A serious infection
would've left the young king especially vulnerable
to the deadly effects of malaria.
- Malaria instantly goes into your body
and attacks your liver,
which makes you completely immunocompromised.
With a big injury on your femur,
that is just a recipe for disaster.
Getting exposed to malaria could do nothing,
but wreak havoc and speed up his death.
(dramatic music)
- [Laurence] It may be the most plausible theory yet,
but scholars agree,
we'll likely never know for sure what killed King Tut
- When studying a mummy like the mummy of Tutankhamun's,
you know, physical remains that have been preserved
for over 3,300 years, nothing's gonna be perfect.
- The level of precision that you're going to be able
to bring to ancient genomic studies are really limited.
So, even though we have a body
and we have genetic tests,
that's not going to produce a smoking gun.
- Unfortunately, this mystery will not be solved today.
He could have been murdered.
He could have died of an accident.
Theories will keep coming out,
but all we know is that King Tut died,
the 19-year-old boy who ruled all of Egypt.
(dramatic music)
- Perhaps in the future,
more advanced technology will allow science
to determine conclusively
whether it was natural causes, an accident,
or even murder that caused the death of King Tut.
Or perhaps it will simply raise more questions.
Either way, every investigation
into Tut's final days tells us more
about the fascinating life
of the once-forgotten boy pharaoh.
I'm Lawrence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching
"History's Greatest Mysteries."
(dramatic music)