ONE of the chariots found in the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun travelled to New York last week to meet up with other relics of the golden boy king at the Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs exhibition, Nevine El-Aref reports. The gilded chariot arrived to be part of the blockbuster exhibition at the Discovery Times Square Exposition. "This is the first time that the chariot has travelled outside Egypt," Zahi Hawass, secretary- general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), told Al-Ahram Weekly. "This is a once-in- a-lifetime opportunity for the people of New York to see something of such great significance from the boy king's life." The chariot is unique and stands out among the five other chariots found among what Howard Carter called the "wonderful things" that made up Tutankhamun's burial equipment. Carter found the chariot in the south-east corner of the antechamber, along with three others. It is completely lacking in decoration and has a very light, open sided construction. The wheels are extremely worn, which suggests that the chariot was "used frequently in hunting expeditions by the young king. Carter described the chariot as "of more open, lighter construction, probably for hunting or exercising purposes". A recent medical report detailing tests carried out on Tutankhamun's mummy, as well as those belonging to members of his family, was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The article, entitled, "Ancestry and Pathology in King Tutankhamun's Family", describes how Hawass and his team uncovered the long-debated members of Tutankhamun's family tree, as well as the cause of his death. Members of a research team from Hamburg's Bernhard Noct Institute for Tropical Medicine, however, have disputed the claims that Tutankhamun died of malaria, and instead believe that sickle-cell disease was to blame for his death. While some of the symptoms of malaria and sickle-cell disease are similar, Hawass and his team stand behind their findings and reaffirm that Tutankhamun died of complications from malaria and Kohler's disease, an ailment that affects blood supply to the bones. During recent CT scans and DNA tests, the medical team discovered that Tutankhamun had suffered an accident a few hours before his death which caused a fracture in his left leg. This makes the inclusion of Tutankhamun's chariot to the New York exhibition even more interesting, as it might have been this chariot that the young king was using. "As we discover more about Tutankhamun's death, we may find that this very chariot is an important piece of the puzzle that we've been trying for decades to solve," Hawass pointed out.
