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Dead men don't tell tales, but dead pharaohs might. CT scans of King Tutankhamun's mummy may put the world's oldest "cold case" to rest, refuting the notion that the ruler's enemies bludgeoned him to death. Instead, a festering leg wound may have led to the boy-king's early demise at 19, more than 3,300 years ago, researchers say. The scans, the first ever performed on an identified royal Egyptian mummy, "finally lay to rest this rather loosely based conjecture about a murder plot. I don't think that anyone who reads the findings as they are written can believe that any longer,"...

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....

The British Egyptologist Howard Carter (employed by Lord Carnarvon) discovered Tutankhamun's tomb (since designated KV62) in The Valley of The Kings on November 4, 1922 near the entrance to the tomb of Ramses VI, thereby setting off a renewed interest in all things Egyptian in the modern world. Carter contacted his patron, and on November 26 that year both men became the first people to enter Tutankhamun's tomb in over 3000 years. After many weeks of careful excavation, on February 16, 1923 Carter opened the inner chamber and first saw the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun. Lord Carnarvon financed Carter's search...

Hundreds of people with Marfan syndrome came from around the country to the University of Pennsylvania over the weekend to hear good news. Years of genetic research may have yielded a "cure" for the most dangerous complications of this disorder. 13-year-old Westin Corbin from Arkansas has many of the hallmark signs of Marfan Syndrome - a disorder affecting the body's connective tissues. He is tall with unusually long arms, thin legs and flat feet, and a chest wall that seems to cave in. His joints are loose and hyper-flexible, but the real danger of Marfan's lies inside because it also...

LONDON: It has been 84 years since Egypt's famed Valley of the Kings revealed its last great riches – the fabulous gold of Tutankhamen's tomb. Now archaeologists believe they have stumbled across one final secret: The mummified remains of the boy king's widow buried 3000 years ago. In a mysterious shaft less than 15m from Tutankhamen's burial ground, US archaeologists found seven coffins. They believe one they have not yet been able to open may contain the remains of Queen Ankhesenpaaten. The tomb – found by accident by Memphis University team leader Dr Otto Schaden – contained seven coffins stacked...

Two men have been bailed by police investigating the alleged forgery of a valuable Egyptian statue. The 3,300-year-old Amarna Princess was bought by Bolton Museum nearly three years ago for £440,000 to add to its existing Egyptology collection. The 52cm-high sculpture is believed to be one of the daughters of the Pharaoh Akhenaten and his queen, Nefertiti. Metropolitan Police Art & Antiques Unit arrested two Bolton men aged 83 and 46 on suspicion of forgery last week. They have been bailed until May pending further inquiries. The statue, which was acquired in September 2003, has been removed from public view....

Tutankhamen liked his wine white 16 February 2006 From New Scientist Print Edition IT SEEMS that Tutankhamen, the teenage king of ancient Egypt, sloped off to the afterlife with a good supply of fine white wine. It's a surprising discovery, considering there is no record of white wine in Egypt until the 3rd century AD, 1600 years after the young pharaoh died. Rosa Lamuela-Raventós and her colleagues from the University of Barcelona, Spain, used liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry to analyse the residue from six of the jars in Tutankhamen's tomb. All contained tartaric acid, a chemical characteristic of grapes,...

LUXOR, Egypt — Through a partially opened underground door, Egyptian authorities gave a peek Friday into the first new tomb uncovered in the Valley of the Kings since that of King Tutankhamun in 1922. U.S. archaeologists said they discovered the tomb by accident while working on a nearby site. The tomb, which has five wooden sarcophagi with painted funeral masks, probably contains members of an 18th Dynasty pharaoh's court, Edwin Brock, co-director of the University of Memphis excavating team, told The Associated Press. So far, archaeologists have not entered the tomb, having only opened part of its four-foot-high door last...

CAIRO (Reuters) - An American team has found what appears to be an intact tomb in the Valley of the Kings, the first found in the valley since that of Tutankhamun in 1922, one of the archaeologists said on Thursday. ADVERTISEMENT The tomb contains five or six mummies in intact sarcophagi from the late 18th dynasty, about the same period as Tutankhamun, but the archaeologists have not yet had the time or the access to identify them, the archaeologist added. The 18th dynasty ruled Egypt from 1567 BC to 1320 BC, a period during which the country's power reached a...

AN American archaeological mission discovered a tomb in Luxor's Valley of the Kings next to the burial place of King Tut, Egyptian antiquities authorities have announced. An excavation team from the University of Memphis made the find five metres from Tutankhamun's tomb, while the mission was doing routine excavation work, said Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. Some three metres beneath the ground, the tomb contained five human mummies with coloured funerary masks enclosed in sarcophagi and several large storage jars. The mummies date to the 18th dynasty (circa 1539-1292 BC).

The group found traces of gold leaf bearing animal symbols in the late pharaoah's right kneecap, leading them to surmise that it had fallen off Tutankhamun's raiments and lodged in a hole during mummification. The hole in question appears to have been caused by a sword, they say.

SAQQARA, Egypt (AP) _ Archaeologists have unearthed six 3,500-year-old tombs they believe reveal important details about the structure of government in a period considered Egypt's golden age, the nation's top archaeologist said Thursday. Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's Supreme Council of the Antiquities, also discussed an exhibit of Egyptian treasures to tour the United States beginning June 30 at Washington's National Gallery of Art. The exhibit is bigger than the blockbuster King Tut show of the 1970s. Earlier this week, archaeologists working on a dig supervised by Hawass just outside Cairo, found the six tombs at the foot of the...

The gilded treasures of Tutankhamun have returned to the United States more than 25 years after the sensational success of their first visit, and this time Egypt intends to cash in on the enduring popularity of the boy king. The comeback museum tour has all of the trappings of a Hollywood blockbuster sequel: a "gold carpet" opening in Los Angeles, a high-powered marketing effort and the potential for a massive box office with tickets as high as $30 each. "I am not going to send any exhibit for free anymore. We took you for a free lunch and dinner a...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The gilded treasures of King Tutankhamun are on their way back to the United States in what could prove a gold rush for Egypt and big business. "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" starts a 27-month tour of the United States in June 2005 that will mark the first return here in more than two decades of the precious artifacts buried with the mysterious boy king. The exhibit is twice the size of the late-1970s King Tut global tour which launched an era of "blockbuster" museum exhibitions. This year's version will charge up to...

The exhibit is twice the size of the late-1970s King Tut global tour which launched an era of "blockbuster" museum exhibitions. This year's version will charge up to $30 per ticket and give corporate backers a share in the profits, heralding a new trend in partnerships between private companies, museums and the antiquities' home countries.

King Tut Exhibit Outrages Activists. Critics Want Busts Depicting Tut As White Removed. LOS ANGELES -- African-American activists criticized the Board of Supervisors Tuesday for allowing a King Tut exhibition at the county Museum of Art, saying that renderings of the boy king as white are inaccurate. The "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharoahs" exhibit opens a four-city, nationwide tour at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on June 16. Among the installations are three busts of Tut II reconstructed from the boy king's mummified corpse. All of the busts, fashioned by three groups of researchers, show...

King Tut's skin color a topic of controversy By Evan Henerson Staff Writer Wednesday, June 15, 2005 - Nobody can be sure exactly what the boy king Tutankhamun looked like. But a group of African-American activists charting the "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" exhibition are certain of one thing: He didn't look white. Following an appearance before the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, activists from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Committee for the Elimination of Media Offensive to African People, and the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations plan...

LONDON (AP)--A fiberglass bust that purportedly shows the true face of ancient Egyptian King Tutankhamun went on display Monday at London's Science Museum. The likeness was crafted as part of an investigation into how the teenage pharaoh died more than 3,000 years ago. The fiberglass cast of Tut's head, based on computer models generated from 1969 X-rays of his mummified corpse, shows an attractive round-headed youth with full lips. But it bears little resemblance to the golden funeral mask found in the pharaoh's tomb. The opulent tomb of Tut, who died around 1350 B.C., was found almost intact by British...

Just came back from the King Tut exhibit in LA. I saw the exhibit in '76, and have seen the Tut exhibit in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and have been to the Luxor Museum / Valley of Kings / Valley of Queens / Abu Simbel / etc. My girlfriend never saw any of the Tut exhibits before, so together we represent a wide range of pre-existing knowledge about Tut and about ancient Egypt. We both thought the LA exhibit, soon touring the USA, was a waste of time. The exhibit included no closely Tut-related paraphernalia bigger than a breadbox....

The boy King died young and was buried in haste. Now a pair of U.S. gumshoes, armed with modern forensics, is trying to crack an ancient case The tomb of the boy King Tutankhamen created a sensation from the moment it was uncovered in 1922. One of the few royal burial chambers that survived the centuries relatively intact, it was by far the richest — filled with gold, ivory and carved wooden treasures, including what may be the world's most famous funerary mask. But there was also something troubling about the way King Tut was buried — hints and omissions...