The Story of King Tut

I read a story today - a story far more enthralling than medical or forensic mysteries on TV.  It's a true story - one based on real science! The protagonist was no other than the archeological marvel the great King Tut. King Tut or Tutankhamun is a familiar name to most of us. You may remember him from the story of Howard Carter's discovery his intact tomb in 1922, from the media-instigated folk-lores about the curse of his mummy, or from your middle school textbooks, where his name would have appeared alongside those of Akhenatun and Nefertiti.

Pharaoh Tutankhamun

Tut became king at the age of 9 and mysteriously died when he was 19. Our middle school history books tell us that he was somehow vaguely related to Amenhotep III,  Akhenatun (Amenhotep IV), and Nefertiti (the beautiful wife of Akhenatun). Yet, from a variety of different sources I stumbled upon over the years, it appeared that Akhenatun could have been Tut's uncle, dad, or brother! A hailed pharaoh in his lifetime, King Tut was denounced as a heretic after his death and heir-less as he was, his legend was lost for millenia after his death in the obscurity of a shabby tomb. 

King Tut's mummy being prepared for a CT scan

Thanks to the great leaps in medical imaging, a CT scan in 2005 revealed that a leg fracture could have been responsible for King Tut's death and, contrary to longheld belief, not a head blow. The story I read today is based on a follow-up study in February, 2010, by Egyptologist Zahi Hawass and others where they used DNA fingerprinting to reveal information about the lineage of the pharaoh and drew some exciting further conclusions about  the cause of his premature death. Without further ado, I present to you the  National Geographic article by Dr. Hawass, which reads like a splendidly written story:

King Tut’s Family Secrets

The study establishes that King Tut was the grandson of Amenhotep III. His father (identified as mummy KV55) was "almost certainly" identified as Akhenatun. It also showed (rather alarmingly) that Tut's mother (mummy KV35YL) was in fact the sister of KV55! In other words, the hailed pharaoh was a product of royal incest.  Here's the full family tree:

King Tut's family tree

Further analysis of the 2005 CT data revealed a crippling bone disease in the pharaoh's foot, that may not on its own been fatal. King Tut has always been depicted as a pharaoh who remains seated or holds a cane. We now know that this "was not a king who held a staff just as a symbol of power. This was a young man who needed a cane to walk." Additionally, genetic evidence acquired in this study seemed to indicate that King Tut was infected with a malarial parasite, which could have been partially responsible for his death.

The king resting on a cane while attended by his wife Ankhensenamun

It is possible that royal culture of incest and inbreeding would have been responsible for a highly diminished gene pool, making the royal lineage vulnerable to a variety of genetic defects. King Tut himself married his half sister and it is likely that the mummified fetuses found in his tomb are their children who were possibly stillborn due to congenital diseases.
Dr. Hawass' narrative ends here. King Tut's story, however, doesn't. But we can hope that some day science will take us to the point where his story will indeed be complete! For now, having read this, I feel thrilled to get reminded that real science can indeed be much more thrilling than TV science!