Eighty-three after its discovery Tutankhamun's mummy may at last be revealing its secrets, writes Nevine El-Aref from Luxor Sunset in the Valley of the Kings. All is well on the west bank. It is, as usual, silent, a haven of peace and quiet. And then, last Wednesday, the silence was broken by the arrival of a van equipped with a CT-scanning machine. Its purpose was to find out exactly why Tutankhamun, that most celebrated of pharaohs, died. The area was crowded with dozens of workers, scientists, technicians, archaeologists and restorers. And they were all waiting for one thing. Would the CT scan finally resolve the mystery surrounding Tutankhamun's death? As workers stepped out of the tomb carrying the blackened mummy on a wooden box a ferocious wind began to blow, delaying the procession towards the van. And when the mummy finally reached the van, and the linen wrappings had been removed, the CT scan inexplicably stopped working for more than two hours. "It seems the ancient Egyptian gods are very angry. They are sending their curse from eternity," said Am Mohamed, one of the workers. Even Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), seemed perturbed by events, jocularly invoking the legendary curse of the pharaohs to explain the many glitches. "And," he told Al-Ahram Weekly, "we almost had a car accident while driving towards Luxor's west bank." The mummy was examined by a team of archaeologists who found the body in poor condition while the head, which is cut off at the neck, was well preserved. "I was upset by what I saw," said Hawass, who believes that Howard Carter, who discovered the tomb in 1922, was responsible for the deterioration. It was his heavy handed attempts to remove the Pharaoh's celebrated golden mask that led to the decapitation. Removing other jewellery and funeral adornments led to the breaking of the pelvis and the separation of the arms and legs from the young king's torso. Carter and his team then reconstructed the dismembered body in a sand tray, arranging it carefully and rejoining the hands and feet to the limbs with resin. When the CT scan was finally working 1,700 images were taken over 15- minutes in the hope that they might shed light on why Tutankhamun died at such an early age? Radiologist Hani Abdel-Rahman, who supervised the scan, said that the skull showed no signs of having been hit with a heavy object, a thesis first proposed following the study of x- rays at Liverpool University in 1968. According to Hawass the scan revealed no more than fragments of bone inside the skull and an area that appeared slightly thicker than the rest, neither of which constitutes conclusive evidence that the pharaoh died because of a blow to the head. "The CT scan -- which marks the opening of a five year project planned by the ministry of culture to examine and study mummies -- will provide a detailed three dimensional view of the mummy in order that it might be accurately restored," said Hawass, who revealed that, should all go as planned, the results will be announced in three weeks. After scanning the 3,000 year old mummy Egyptian scientists were able to produce, for the first time, a digital image of the face of Tutankhamun. "These images reveal just what Tutankhamun looked like," said Sabri Abdel-Aziz, head of the Ancient Egyptian Department at the SCA. He also told the Weekly that while the electronic device is in the Valley of the Kings scans of other mummies -- including that found in Amenhotep II's tomb which British archaeologist Joan Fletcher has argued may be Nefertiti -- will be made in an attempt to identify them. The mummy of an unknown child found in king Tutmosis IV's tomb and a second mummy from King Seti I's tomb, are among those that will be scanned. But, said Abdel-Aziz, the mummy thought by many Egyptologists to be that of Queen Hatshepsut, buried in tomb number 60 in the valley, would be excluded from the project owing to its poor state of preservation.
