Three thousand years after being immortalised behind an exquisite golden funerary mask, Tutankhamun's genuine facial features have been revealed. Nevine El-Aref sees the Pharaoh's face Since Howard Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922, mention of the pharaoh's name conjures up a single, abiding image -- that of his golden funeral mask, one of the great icons of stasis. But what did Tutankhamun really look like? Long a mystery, the boy-king's death, health and original facial features are at last beginning to be unraveled by scientists, artists and archaeologists. Using 1,700 high-resolution CT-scan images, an Egyptian scientific team has concluded that Tutankhamun died of natural causes at the age of 19. They discovered no indication of violence, discounting theories that he had received a blow to the head. They did, however, note a bad fracture above the left knee that may have occurred a day or two before his death, and which possibly became fatally infected. In three independent attempts to reconstruct the Pharaoh's facial features using the latest forensic techniques French, American and Egyptian teams, each working independently, reached surprisingly similar conclusions. The results reveal a face markedly different from the image on the golden mask, as well as from many of his statues on show in the Egyptian Museum. Thrilled to see Tutankhamun brought back to life, Zahi Hawass, secretary- general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), told Al-Ahram Weekly that scholars had believed for some time that the ancient images of the Pharaohs were idealised representations rather than exact portraits. "In my opinion the shape of the face and skull are remarkably similar to the famous Nefertum statue of Tutankhamun as a child, where he is shown as the sun god at dawn rising from a lotus blossom," says Hawass, "The project confirms that the science and techniques of forensic reconstruction can be a useful tool in reconstructing the likenesses of people who lived long ago." To avoid being influenced by the famous features of Tutankhamun's golden mask, while the French and Egyptian teams were told that the subject was Tutankhamun, the American team was not. Based on results from the CT-scans the French and American teams were given plastic models of Tutankhamun's skull, produced in Paris, while the Egyptian team generated their own model directly from data obtained from the scan. Both the French and Egyptian teams classified the skull as Caucasoid, which describes the type of humans found in North Africa, Europe, the Middle East, parts of the Indian sub-continent and parts of Central Asia. The Americans, who had no idea who the subject was, identified the skull as being of North African origin. After determining its racial type the three teams covered the model with clay of an appropriate thickness, using it as a guide to sculpt the features. French sculptor Elizabeth Daynes made a silicone cast and added glass eyes, hair and colour to the skin and lips while American sculptor Michael Anderson cast his model in plaster, preparing a reconstruction in which one half showed the bone, fatty tissue and cartilage under the skin and the other a fully fleshed-out head. Egyptian bio-medical engineer Khaled El-Said's model was made along the same lines as the French head. All three exhibited remarkable similarities in the basic shape of the face, the size and setting of the eyes, as well as the proportions of the skull. The only differences appeared in the shape of the end of the nose and the ears as well as the colour of the hair and eyes. The exercise, said Culture Minister Farouk Hosni, is part of the five-year Egyptian Mummies Project that aims to study all available Ancient Egyptian mummies. The Egyptian radiology team, headed by Cairo University's Professor Mervat Shafiq, will continue attempts to identify another five mummies scanned last January in the Valley of the Kings: these include a child from the tomb of Tuthmosis IV; an unidentified mummy from the tomb of Seti II and three others found in a side chamber of the tomb of Amenhotep II. The latter comprise an older woman, a youth and a third mummy recently speculated to be that of Queen Nefertiti. The project will also catalogue non- royal mummies. Scattered at sites and in museums and storage rooms across the country, no one knows exactly how many of these there are though they include the recently discovered cache from the Valley of the Golden Mummies in Bahariya Oasis. The final stage of the project will involve scanning the royal mummies currently exhibited in the Egyptian and Luxor museums. Facial reconstructions will be carried out for each. The mummies, along with their reconstructed likenesses and displays about their lives and times will eventually be showcased in a new exhibition in the planned National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation in Fustat. "This exhibition will bring the pharaohs back to life and will allow people to go inside them and learn about their health, and reconstruct their lives," says Hawass. Tutankhamun's CT-scan was carried out in the Valley of the Kings by an all- Egyptian team led by Hawass, using a portable CT-scanner provided by the National Geographic Society and Siemens AG. The fragile body of the Pharaoh, which except for X-rays in 1978 and 1988 has lain undisturbed since it was last examined by Carter, was carried to the scanner on the wooden tray filled with sand where Carter had left it in 1926. The CT-scan was able, with minimum disturbance, to distinguish different densities of soft tissue and bone.
