By Andrea Byrnes. Published on Egyptological, In Brief. 10th November 2013
Secret History: Tutankhamun. The Mystery of the Burnt Mummy
10th November 2013, Channel 4, 20:00
Presenter: Chris Naunton
Director: Sean Smith
Executive Producer: Justine Kershaw
When I saw all the newspaper reports about this show, my heart sank. You can have enough of Tutankhamun, you really can. This was, however, a very competent and appealing piece of work. It was put together in a nice tidy package, credible specialists were used from a vast spectrum of backgrounds to lend their expertise to the speculative theories, and the emphasis was on researchers and their material and 1920s footage rather than on dramatised scenes depicting an imagined past (although there were some bits of those – documentary makers cannot seem to resist them these days, however redundant). These shows always present the conclusions as a done deal, and it was incredibly tempting to accept all the proposals as facts even though no counter-arguments were presented. That does not, however, undermine how persuasive the arguments were. It was very well done.
The following is a short write-up of an hour-long show about unanswered questions surrounding Tutankhamun. The show’s title refers to the main focus of the show – why the mummy was burned on the inside whilst the surrounding layers were unharmed? However other questions are tackled too – how Tutankhamun died, why was his mummification so crude and his tomb so small, and why was his tomb not robbed in antiquity?
Introduction
Apart from Egypt’s most recognizable Pharaoh, the main character is Egypt Exploration Society Director Dr Chris Naunton. Naunton is used as the focal point, and the cameras follow him as he engages in discussions with various experts about the different aspects of Tutankhamun’s last moments and the fate of his mummy and tomb.
In 1922 Howard Carter found the undisturbed tomb of Tutankhamun. He spent a decade excavating over 5000 objects from the tomb, including the king’s mummy. Dr Chris Naunton has been looking at Carter’s notes and using technologies that Carter never dreamed of to find out more about why the mummy is in such poor condition and how Tutankhamun may have died.
Carter’s excavations in the early 1900s were funded by the Earl of Carnarvon. On the 4th November 1922 Carter uncovered a staircase, and was soon in a position to send a cable to Carnarvon to say that he had discovered a doorway with intact seals. When Carnarvon arrived from England, rubble was cleared and Carter, looking into the tomb’s chamber, was able to report that he could see “wonderful things.” Over the ten years that it took to clear the tomb and examine objects, Carter kept records in the form of documents, diaries, sketches and notes. He died without publishing the tomb. His notes were boxed up and stored away and much of the material has not been looked at, leaving many questions unanswered.
Was the mummy burnt?
When Carter started looking at the mummy, his notes suggested mummy was partially burned. Naunton quotes various phrases from his documentation: “linen being reduced to consistency of soot,” “near the flesh of the king the wrappings were nothing more than charred powder” and “brittle and carbonized condition”. Mummies do go black as a result of the mummification process and over time, but if the mummy was charred that would put it into a different category. Today the mummy is preserved behind glass in the tomb of Tutankhamun and is no longer available for tests as it is too fragile to handle. However, in 1968 Dr Robert Connolly was a member of the team that first x-rayed the mummy and is looking at this and other evidence. Remarkably, he still has a piece of Tutankhamun’s flesh, the only known sample outside Egypt, consisting of small fragments given for blood grouping purposes. Shown to the cameras, it is very black.
Carter and Derry carried out a public autopsy of Tutankhamun’s mummy and expressed disappointment that the mummy had been burned. They did not suggest how or why the mummy was burned but Connolly has recently carried out tests to see if the mummy really was burned. To set up a suitable test environment he compared the sample with that of another mummy, thought to have also dated to the 18th Dynasty and therefore probably the same sort of age as Tutankhamun. Like the Tutankhamun samples, the skin looks black. Analysis using a Scanning Electron Microscope by forensic archaeologist Dr Matthew Ponting identified a vital difference in the chemistry between the two samples. The Tutankhamun sample’s chemistry exhibited free carbon consistent with charring during or immediately after the mummification process, with temperatures reaching over 200 degrees centigrade.
Carter noted that only body and inner layers were burned. The outer layers were intact and the sarcophagus was sealed and intact for over 3000 years. So why do only the inner layers show signs of burning?
Is it possible that the body set itself alight?
Chris Nauntan was next filmed talking to Salima Ikram, who believes that embalming process botched. Mummification was a ritual that took place over a 70 day period. For 30 days he body was dried, and then it was covered with oils over another 40 days. The New Kingdom produced some of the most exceptionally preserved mummies ever produced. But Tutankamun was apparently poorly prepared. An embalming incision was in an unusual place and very large. The arms were crossed in an unusual location, over the lower ribs instead of crossed over the chest. The mummy itself has deteriorated considerably and it is very peculiar for a king to have been mummified so inefficiently, so hastily and with such little attention to detail. It is this haste that may explain, according to Ikram how the inner mummy became burned.
The first clue that Ikram points to is that resin was probably still wet when the mummy was wrapped because it was effectively glued to the bottom of the coffin with dried resin, which must have been wet when the mummy was inserted into the coffin. It seems likely, therefore, that oils had not dried out by the time Tutankhamun’s body was wrapped.
Just outside London, Naunton visited one of the country’s leading fire test laboratories. Senior Fire Analyst David Crowder says that linseed oil and other vegetable oils on natural fabrics may react with the air and warm up. The effect is strongest when oil is spread over a large area. In the mummification process oils usually dried slowly, and dry oils do not generate heat, but if the ritual was rushed there is still potential for heat to be generated. A test was set up to see what would happen with linseed oil spread onto the sort of linen that mummies were wrapped in. Within 30 minutes, in an atmosphere full of oxygen, the temperature in the linen soared. When retrieved, a considerable amount of smoke had been generated and the linen was thoroughly charred. In Tutankhamun’s coffin the charring would have taken place over days or weeks, due to the comparative lack of available oxygen, but it is still very likely that this process of wet resins on mummy wrappings accounts for the burned appearance of the mummy.
How did Tutankhamun die?
The original x-rays of Tutankhamun from 1968 indicate that the much-debated damage to the king’s skull happened after his death. Instead, the most promising clues to how the king died appear to lie in his chest area. One of the surprising aspects of Tutankhamun’s mummy is that the heart is missing, something that is almost unique in royal burials. One possibility is that it was so badly crushed that it could not be salvaged.
Naunton next visits Cranfield Forensic Institute where older and newer CT Scans are compared on the remarkable Anatomage table, where scans are shown in detailed graphic form. Forensic anthropologists pointed out to the considerable rib cage damage above the heart, damage to left ilium, the missing left part of the pelvis missing and damage to the left knee. It seems clear that the damage was concentrated over the heart, and would have been extensive and in a narrow strip down the left side of the body.
One of the many theories for how Tutankhamun died is that he perished in a chariot accident. Horse-drawn chariots were used both for hunting and in war. Naunton next visits a company called Advanced Simtech that specializes in CGI crash simulations. Mike Brown, Accident Reconstruction Expert, had never reconstructed a chariot crash before so he met up with stunt drivers who had a replica Egyptian chariot. He took 360 degree images with a charioteer in place and used them to simulate various scenarios for the accident that could have killed Tutankhamun. Mike Brown concluded that falling from the chariot could not have produced the injuries, because falling from a chariot would always produce a head trauma. Next, he simulated what would have happened if Tutankhamun had been lying on ground and was run over, but this also failed to produce the distinctive pattern of injury along the left hand side of the body. But if Tutankhamun had been on his knees facing an oncoming chariot when he had been hit he would have been struck in the left hand site of his pelvis and chest. In each simulation of this scenario a very similar set of injuries occurs each time – the wheel collides with the body in a perfect straight line, and these simulated injuries match those on the body of the king.
To assess how bad the injuries of such a collision might be, Dr Peter Zioupos tested how the impact would have damaged body, using estimates of speed and load (80 kilos) on a rack of pig ribs. The ribs broke cleanly. Trauma expert Dr Ian Horsfall judged that the tissues behind the ribs would have been severely damaged, potentially damaging the heart and almost certainly piercing the lungs. He considers that there was a fair chance that someone would die from this sort of trauma.
Back in Egypt Naunton investigated why Tutankhamun might have been struck by a chariot. Professor Melinda Hartwig showed Naunton the jumbled fragments of carved reliefs from the Temple of Luxor. Using computer graphics a huge battle scene has been recreated, showing Tutankhamun at its centre. It apparently shows details of Tutankhamun at war and may be a real historical account. During his reign Egypt was at war with Hittites and Nubians. Perhaps during one of these battles he was injured and and was struck by a chariot as he climbed to his feet.
Why was the mummification botched and the tomb so small?
If the Pharaoh did indeed die on the battle field, his body would have been returned to Luxor for a magnificent royal burial, but the mummification was hurried and botched, which begs the question why? Normally the king’s heir would take the throne but Tutankhamun’s children had all been still-born so General Horemheb had been selected as his successor. Horemheb, however, was away fighting in Syria and with no king and no heir there was a power vacuum. Looking at the tomb where Tutankhamun was buried, the scenes suggest that he may have been buried and succeeded by the official Ay, who is shown performing the Opening of the Mouth ceremony that is usually performed by a son on his deceased father. It is possible that Ay took responsibility for the royal burial to legitimize his claim to the throne after being a close aide to three generations of Pharaohs. Melinda Hartwig believes that Ay not only stole the reign but Tutankhamun’s tomb as well – Ay’s tomb is much larger and has much more decoration. So perhaps there was a switch with Ay burying Tutankhamun in his own tomb and usurping the king’s.
Carter found evidence that Naunton believes supports this view. Tutankhamun’s was a very small tomb, barely big enough for his tomb goods. His afterlife possessions were jumbled and stacked chaotically. As Naunton says, there is “something of a mismatch” between the quantity of the items and the size of the tomb. In addition, the toes of the coffin chopped off to fit in sarcophagus, suggesting that the two had never been intended for each other, and there was a chunk hacked out of the wall in order to fit the vast shrines in the tomb.
Why was Tutankhamun’s tomb the only one to be found intact?
63 royal tombs have been found to date. Of these, 62 were looted in antiquity, but Tutankhamun’s tomb was untouched for 3500 years. Why? Geologist Stephen Cross has been asking and attempting to answer this question for many years. Today, landscaping to make the Valley of the Kings tourist-friendly has masked some of the original geology of the area but photographs from the time of Howard Carter show a layer of mixed rock that once covered Tutankhamun’s tomb, consisting of boulders in a limestone matrix. Just above Tutankhamun’s tomb the remains of a dam still exist, which would have been used to divert flash floods. Flash floods are incredibly powerful and can move literally 1000s of tons of detritus. Cross has identified three streams that collided in the centre of the valley and dumped 1000s tons of sediment over Tutankhamun’s tomb. At Hull University hydrologist Tom Coulthard has studied the problem and simulated the stream flow and their probably impact on the Valley. After the water flow was modelled Coulthard was able to simulate sediment deposition, which is probably up to a metre deep in places. It left a valley floor left that looks like a river bed and would have been the perfect camouflage for the tomb sealed beneath. The flood layer would be baked as hard as concrete in the sun.
Conclusion
Overall, this was a very well presented show. It provided a nice balance between Chris Naunton travelling around meeting specialists and the specialists themselves. There was some great original footage from Howard Carter’s time, and some excellent demonstrations of how modern technology can help with archaeological problems. Whether or not the conclusions of the show are accepted will be interesting to see. These shows do tend to gloss over the kinks in research, and usually neglect to mention alternative ideas and interpretations.
It seems extraordinary that since 1922 no-one has published the tomb of Tutankhamun. The Griffiths Institute have been doing a great job of publishing Carter’s original notes online, but analysis could take decades. Apart from anything, in purely cynical terms, one would think that there would be a couple of PhDs in it, with all the publication opportunities afterwards that that would offer!
Hopefully, as reported in Geoffrey Martin’s Petrie Museum lecture in January 2012, Geoffrey Martin will publish the first ever complete publication of a Valley of the Kings tomb with the results of his work on the tomb of Horemheb.