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Tutankhamen was the most famous of all the Egyptian Pharaohs, but it's always been a bit of a mystery how he died. He passed at only 19, and he seemed to have pretty bad injuries at his death, but there was no record of an assassination. Thanks to Science, we now know it was probably due to a chariot accident. King Tut is best known because when his tomb was found in 1922, it was in relatively good condition compared to other, more ransacked pharaonic resting places. The sarcophagus and mummy were still there, which is always a good sign,...

The mummified body of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun burst into flames inside his sarcophagus after a botched attempt to embalm him, according to scientists in a new documentary. After his death in 1323 BC, Tutankhamun was rapidly embalmed and buried, but fire investigators believe a chemical reaction caused by embalming oils used on his mummy sparked the blaze. A fragment of flesh from the boy pharaoh, whose tomb was discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter and the Earl of Carnarvon, was tested by researchers who confirmed his body was burnt while sealed in his coffin. Tut has long fired the public imagination....

A committee administering Egypt's antiquities decided Tuesday to re-erect a dismantled replica tomb of King Tutankhamun, placing it beside the former residence of discoverer Howard Carter on Luxor's west bank. Secretary-general of the Ministry of the State of Antiquities (MSA), Mostafa Amin, told Ahram Online that the replica tomb will provide tourists with a better picture of how Carter lived during his excavation work at the Valley of the Kings in the early 1920s. Tourists can already visit the Carter Rest-House in Luxor, which has been restored and developed into a museum displaying the tools and instruments he used during...

Up to 70 percent of British men and half of all Western European men are related to the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun, geneticists in Switzerland said. Scientists at Zurich-based DNA genealogy centre, iGENEA, reconstructed the DNA profile of the boy Pharaoh, who ascended the throne at the age of nine, his father Akhenaten and grandfather Amenhotep III, based on a film that was made for the Discovery Channel. The results showed that King Tut belonged to a genetic profile group, known as haplogroup R1b1a2, to which more than 50 percent of all men in Western Europe belong, indicating that they share...

BREAKING - Looters who raided Egypt's famed museum during the unrest that toppled Hosni Mubarak have hauled off a trove of ancient treasures, including a statue of King Tutankhamun, officials said. The plundered artefacts include a gilded wooden statue showing the boy pharaoh being carried by a goddess, and parts of another statue of him harpooning fish, the minister of state for antiquities, Zahi Hawass, said. Looters broke into the museum in Cairo's Tahrir Square on January 28 when anti-Mubarak protesters drove his despised police from the streets in a series of clashes and torched the adjacent ruling party headquarters....

One possibility that Dr. Harer ruled out is that of a chariot accident. "If he fell from a speeding chariot going at top speed you would have what we call a tumbling injury -- he'd go head over heels. He would break his neck. His back. His arms, legs. It wouldn't gouge a chunk out of his chest." Instead, at his Toronto lecture, Harer brought up another, more exotic possibility -- that Tut was killed by a hippo. It's not as far out an idea as it sounds, hippos are aggressive, quick and territorial animals, and there is an artefact...

King Tutankhamun, the pharaoh who ruled Egypt more than 3,300 years ago, rode full speed over the desert dunes on a Formula One-like chariot, according to new investigations into the technical features of the boy king's vehicle collection. Discovered in pieces by British archaeologist Howard Carter when he entered King Tut's treasure-packed tomb in 1922, the collection consisted of two large ceremonial chariots, a smaller highly decorated one, and three others that were lighter and made for daily use. "They were the Ferrari of antiquity. They boasted an elegant design and an extremely sophisticated and astonishingly modern technology," Alberto Rovetta,...

King Tutankhamun's mummy was wrapped in custom-made bandages similar to modern first aid gauzes, an exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art reveals. Running in length from 4.70 meters to 39 cm (15.4 feet to 15.3 inches), the narrow bandages consist of 50 linen pieces especially woven for the boy king. For a century, the narrow linen bandages were contained in a rather overlooked cache of large ceramic jars at the museum's Department of Egyptian Art. The collection was recovered from the Valley of the Kings between 1907-08, more than a decade before Howard Carter discovered King Tut's treasure-packed...

Dr. Zahi Hawass, the secretary general for Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities told a press conference Wednesday that hosting the Tutankhamun's tomb at the Discover Time Square Exposition cheapened the exhibition. "This priceless artifact should be at the Met, not at this hole," Hawass said. In an embarassing preview for the exhibition, Hawass called Arts and Exhibitions International President John Norman to the stage and demanded he "answer the question. Why is King Tut not at the Met?" Norman responded by saying then when plans to bring Tut back to New York began over five years ago, he met with...

Howard Carter, the British explorer who opened the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922, will forever be associated with the greatest trove of artifacts from ancient Egypt. But was he also a thief? Dawn was breaking as Howard Carter took up a crowbar to pry open the sealed tomb door in Egypt's Valley of the Kings. With shaking hands, he held a candle to the fissure, now wafting out 3,300-year-old air. What did he see, those behind him wanted to know. The archaeologist could do no more than stammer, "Wonderful things!" This scene from Thebes in November, 1922, is considered archaeology's...

Lord Carnarvon, the man who funded the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun and died five months later in mysterious circumstances before he could actually see the mummy's face, was a superstitious man who wore the same lucky bow tie all his life. > The end of the exhibition also represents the end of the story for Lord Carnarvon: on display the razor which he used in 1923. He cut a mosquito bite while shaving and the wound turned septic. He died of pneumonia brought on by blood poisoning on April 5, 1923, in the "hour of his triumph," as...

Archaeologists have discovered a small ancient statue of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen in Kurdish Northern Iraq. The discovery was made by a team led by noted Iraqi archaeologist Mr Hassan Ahmad in an area known as Dohuq Valley in a place referred to by locals as 'Pharaoh's Palace'. Experts have estimated the age of the statue at around 3500 years old, dating from around 1400 BC. The statue confirms historical data that the ancient Egyptians, during the 'New Kingdom' period, enjoyed warm relations with the Hittite Mitanni Kingdom and often travelled into their territory many hundreds of miles from the...

LUXOR, Egypt - The face of King Tut was unshrouded in public for the first time on Sunday — 85 years after the 3,000-year-old boy pharaoh's golden enshrined tomb and mummy were discovered in Luxor's famed Valley of the Kings. Archeologists removed the mummy from his stone sarcophagus in his underground tomb, momentarily pulling aside a white linen covering to reveal a shriveled leathery black face and body. The mummy of the 19-year-old pharaoh, whose life and death has captivated people for nearly a century, was placed in a climate-controlled glass box in the tomb, with only the face and...

Tutankhamun's true face to be revealed By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent Last Updated: 2:55am BST 22/10/2007 The true face of Tutankhamun, the boy king who ruled Egypt 3,500 years ago, is to be revealed to the public for the first time. Only a handful of experts have ever seen Tutankhamun's true likeness To coincide with the opening of the exhibition of the treasures of Tutankhamun in London next month, Egyptian archaeologists are to put his mummified body on display in Luxor. Only a handful of experts have ever seen the 19-year-old pharaoh's true likeness. Though not the most important of...

Egyptian antiquities supremo Zahi Hawass insisted Tuesday that Tutankhamun was not black despite calls by US black activists to recognise the boy king's dark skin colour. "Tutankhamun was not black, and the portrayal of ancient Egyptian civilisation as black has no element of truth to it," Hawass told reporters. "Egyptians are not Arabs and are not Africans despite the fact that Egypt is in Africa," he said, quoted by the official MENA news agency. Hawass said he was responding to several demonstrations in Philadelphia after a lecture he gave there on September 6 where he defended his theory. Protestors also...

Researchers studying Tut hit by huge storm, CT malfunction Scientists who recently conducted a high-tech examination of King Tut's mummy insist they don't believe in the "Curse of the Pharaohs." Still, some awfully strange things happened when the team X-rayed the boy king's body with a medical CT scanning machine. On the way to the Egyptian site, one researcher's vehicle nearly hit a child. Then a huge storm hit. The CT machine, usually reliable, wouldn't work at first. And when researchers finally began the CT scan, one scientist came down with such a violent coughing attack he had to leave....

CHICAGO - You can kick back with a King Tuttini cocktail, learn to decipher hieroglyphs or indulge in an "Egyptian Golden Body Wrap" complete with exfoliating Dead Sea salts and a dusting of golden powder. Yes, King Tut is back, and Chicago is fired up for the pharaoh. The traveling exhibit "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" has opened at The Field Museum, attracting a line of ticket buyers. Organizers believe the show, which opened Friday, could draw 1 million visitors before it closes here on Jan. 1, 2007, and businesses, restaurants and universities are lining up special...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - A "King Tut is back and he's still black" placard drew the gaze of visitors making their way to view the acclaimed exhibit at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale Saturday. Across from the entrance, about 25 demonstrators donning T-shirts marked with various pro-black slogans held up the placards. Waving the red, black and green African flag, at times moving to the beat of djembe drums on the sidewalk, they asked drivers in passing cars to honk in support of their goal: reminding people not to take the lighter-skinned portrait of King Tutankhamun on display...

LONDON -- A University of Barcelona research team has discovered Egypt's King Tutankhamen was partial to wine, preferring red over white. The mystery of exactly what was kept inside jars found in the tomb of the Egyptian king (1336-1327 BC) was solved by the Spanish scientists who analyzed scrapings from eight jars found in Tutankhamen's tomb. They presented their findings on Wednesday at the British Museum in London, The Times of London reported. "Wine jars were placed in tombs as funerary meals," Maria Rosa Guasch-Jane, a master in Egyptology at the university, told The Independent. "The ... wine jars were...

LONDON - King Tutankhamen was a red wine drinker, according to a researcher who analyzed traces of the vintage found in his tomb. Maria Rosa Guasch-Jane told reporters Wednesday at the British Museum that she made her discovery after inventing a process that gave archaeologists a tool to discover the color of ancient wine. "This is the first time someone has found an ancient red wine," she said. Wine bottles from King Tut's time were labeled with the name of the product, the year of harvest, the source and the vine grower, Guasch-Jane said, but did not include the color...