Google commemorated his 138th birthday with a special doodle on 9 May 2012. The 'boy-king' is believed to have died between the ages of 17 and 19 – but the cause of his death is currently unknown. Howard Carter… In 2014, producers of a BBC television documentary postulated that Tut died in chariot crash that broke his legs and pelvis, and resulted in an infection and perhaps death by blood poisoning. King Tut had died young. In fact, one of the Egyptologists involved in that British television program still has his doubts about what happened. While records of his life were erased, in death, King Tut became ancient Egypt’s most famous pharaoh. He was buried in Putney Vale cemetery, London. © 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Bryan says she believes that new forensic technologies will ultimately improve enough to determine what happened. After cataloguing the extensive finds, which was completed in 1932 due to the cornucopia of treasures and artifacts excavated Carter retired from archaeology and became a collector. See Stunning Photos of King Tut’s Tomb After a Major Restoration. On 16 February 1923, Carter opened the burial chamber and first saw the sarcophagus of Tutankhamen. Soon, Carter was supervising all of Lord Carnarvon's excavations. The chest radiographs would also have looked similar with signs of consolidation. By continuing you agree to the use of cookies. The reason of his death remains a mystery even today. However, the circumstances surrounding his sudden death at the age of nineteen remain a matter of conjecture. Lord Carnarvon's death: the curse of aspergillosis? “We cannot at present know how Tutankhamun died,” says Christopher Naunton, an Egyptologist and former head of the Egypt Exploration Society. Side of the painted casket from the tomb of Tutankhamun, depiciting the King in battle in a chariot. The filmmakers commissioned research that showed that this kind of injury could have been caused by the impact of a chariot wheel, but not by a fall from a chariot. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. Indeed, this increased susceptibility could explain why so many others did not succumb to the same infection upon entry. On his gravestone, it states: " May your spirit live, May you spend millions of years, You who love Thebes, Sitting with your face to the north wind, Your eyes beholding happiness" and "O night, spread thy wings over me as the imperishable stars.". In 1922, Carter had cut the mummy into pieces to remove it from its coffins. Was he murdered? Politically, Egypt grew weak during Akhenaten’s 13-year reign, according to David P. Silverman, professor of Egyptology at the University of Pennsylvania, who was curator of the first King Tut exhibit in 1978 at the Field Museum of Chicago. “They specifically tried to take memory of the entire family away by not including them in later lists of kings. He had an artistic streak from an early age and when his father painted a well-known Egyptologist, his life-long interest in the field was ignited.