Translated material
Hunting is bigger than history
A new version of Tutankhamun's death should ensure the success of the London exhibition of Egyptian antiquities
The pharaoh of the 19th dynasty, Tutankhamun, lived a little over 18 years, but for almost a century he continues to be a winning advertising symbol of Egyptian antiquities. It is not surprising that the next exhibition of relics taken from the Valley of the Kings in Luxor to London is named after him. Trying to attract residents of the British capital to this exhibition in the “Dome of the Millennium”, where even his famous golden mask will not be presented, its organizers published supposedly sensational material that sheds light on the circumstances of the death of the young ruler 3,300 years ago. Combining modern technologies with deductive methods (and where would London be without them!), the researchers came to the conclusion that the pharaoh died from blood poisoning due to the suppuration of a wound received during a hunt, writes Lenta.ru.The conspiracy theory surrounding the young pharaoh and his murder, which prevailed for many decades, literally from the moment the archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun in 1922, looked much more romantic and was quite consistent with the morals that reigned in the cradle of civilization more than three millennia ago. However, the evidence base for supporters of this version turned out to be rather weak. Their key evidence was X-rays taken of the mummy in 1968, one of which revealed a dark spot at the base of the skull, which was thought to be a bone fragment. However, recent CT scans involving specialists from several countries found no evidence of a blow to the head or other violence.
But two years ago it was discovered that before his death, the pharaoh broke his left leg just above the knee. And even the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, who very zealously monitors both the safety of the relics from the Valley of the Kings themselves and the correct interpretation of old and new legends about the rulers from the banks of the Nile, was forced to admit that the new version has a right to exist. And the version about gangrene or sepsis that developed after an open fracture of the leg gradually became one of the main ones.
However, in parallel, Egyptologists needed to refute another persistent prejudice that reigned in the circles of historians - the pharaoh of the 19th dynasty was considered a fragile and very sickly youth, who, because of this, could hardly access the joys of hunting from chariots, during which, as is now believed, and suffered a leg injury. It was for this purpose that, with the meticulousness of Sherlock Holmes, the researchers studied the list of objects found in the tomb next to the mummy of Tutankhamun, and looked at them in a new way. So it turned out that the pharaoh’s chariot was not a combat chariot, but a hunting chariot, and, moreover, it was fairly used. The arrows also turned out to be anything but ceremonial. The apotheosis of the deductive method was the comparison of the dates of flowering in Egypt of cornflowers and daisies, the garland of which adorned the mummy, with the duration of the work on embalming the body and the hunting season traditional for those times. According to the British The Independent, everything came together: cornflowers on the banks of the Nile bloom in March - early April, they were used to decorate the mummy, the embalming of which, according to ancient Egyptian methods, required more than two months, therefore, the pharaoh died in January or late December, at the height of the hunting season. Therefore, the researchers believe, the cause of death could indeed have been an injury received in pursuit of a hunting trophy.