posted 02 February 2004 01:59 PM            

First of all, the actors who played Tut, Horemheb, Aye, Ankhesenamon, and Akhenaton... where were they from?

Did any of you agree with the documentary's conclusions regarding the death of King Tut? It all seemed a little far-fetched to me, especially that Aye must have been the one that killed him. Also, I thought that their portrayal of Akhenaton was rather one-dimensional.

Any thoughts?

posted 02 February 2004 02:12 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Marcus:
I know I'm late, but I have some questions regardless...

First of all, the actors who played Tut, Horemheb, Aye, Ankhesenamon, and Akhenaton... where were they from?

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They all looked American(White American, Black American, etc.). I have no idea who the actors were. It was most likely filmed in the US.

quote:

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Originally posted by Marcus:

Did any of you agree with the documentary's conclusions regarding the death of King Tut? It all seemed a little far-fetched to me, especially that Aye must have been the one that killed him. Also, I thought that their portrayal of Akhenaton was rather one-dimensional.

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posted 02 February 2004 03:34 PM            

Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Tut, Ankhesunamun, the son of the Hittite king. This is too much to be a coincidence. Also, Ay had a tomb prepared in the Amarna style while Akhenaten was alive. Then when Akhenaten dies, Ay abandons the new style for the traditional style. Smenkhare comes and goes, then Tut dies abruptly.

An AE queen (though I doubt it's ever mention exactly who) appeals to the Hittites to send a prince to marry her, so he can become king. This prince is killed on the way.

posted 02 February 2004 04:54 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Horemheb:
I agree Kem...there is just too much smoke not to be some fire someplace. Like Bob Brier said, "too many things had to happen for Ay to become King and they ALL happened." What would be interesting to know, and we probably never will, is the relationship between ay and horemheb while all this was going on. I often wonder about all that great information we lost when the library at Alexandria was destroyed.

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There definately may have been some kind of conspiracy but I think the High Priests of Amun were the only group with the brains and muscle to successfully conspire against the Pharoah and not Ay.

posted 02 February 2004 06:32 PM            

It seems as like Tut was dislike and murdered.

posted 02 February 2004 07:13 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Kem-Au:
[B]There is too much evidence against Ay, and there's no reason to believe that he couldn't conspire with the help of Amun priests against Tut.

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What evidence is there that Tut was even murdered? I heard about the blow to the head but it's still inconclusive. Secondly, what evidence is there of a conspiracy? We barely have circumstantial evidence.

It's worth noting that, Ay was most likely Ankhesenamun's grandfather as he was most likely Nefertiti's father. Why did Ankhesenamun disappear? Well her dealings with the Hittites may have amounted to treason.

If anyone conspired with the Amun Priests, it had to be Horemheb.

quote:

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"It was probably Horemheb who succeeded Ay and who wrecked havoc in Ay's tomb in the Valley of the Kings. When Belzoni found the tomb, the sarcophagus was in fragments and his figure was hacked out and his name excised in the wall paintings and text. Likewise, little of Ay's building projects can be identified probably because Horemheb probably usurped these as well."

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Why did Horemheb try to erase Ay from history?

quote:

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"Ay had nominally carried on the heretic religious practices of Akhenaten, and it would be Horemheb who would put an end to this."

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So as you can see, it was Horemheb and not Ay who wanted to return to tradition.

posted 02 February 2004 07:42 PM            

------------------
Nesu.t-bi.t neb-taui Neb-Maa't-Re sa-Re Amen-hotep

[This message has been edited by Neb-Ma'at-Re (edited 02 February 2004).]

[This message has been edited by Neb-Ma'at-Re (edited 02 February 2004).]

posted 02 February 2004 07:56 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Neb-Ma'at-Re:
One piece of evidence that might suggest that Aye was the cultprit is found right on the wall of Tut's tomb. It is the image of Aye dressed as the Sem priest performing the opening of the mouth cerimony on Tut. What is interesting about this image is that right next to this image of Aye is his name enclosed in a cartouche, suggesting that he was the new Pharaoh. A new Pharaoh could not have taken the throne until the previous King was entombed. However, Aye already had it had it all planned out and even had the balls to have it painted in Tut's tomb!

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posted 02 February 2004 08:02 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Neb-Ma'at-Re:
One piece of evidence that might suggest that Aye was the cultprit is found right on the wall of Tut's tomb. It is the image of Aye dressed as the Sem priest performing the opening of the mouth cerimony on Tut. What is interesting about this image is that right next to this image of Aye is his name enclosed in a cartouche, suggesting that he was the new Pharaoh. A new Pharaoh could not have taken the throne until the previous King was entombed. However, Aye already had it had it all planned out and even had the balls to have it painted in Tut's tomb!

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Everyone is making too much of Ay's succession to the throne. Ay had been Tut's vizier, that's the highest position under the Pharoah. With no heirs to the throne and Ay being the highest official in the Kingdom at the time of Tut's death, who else could have assumed power. BTW, he was around 70 at the time of his death and only ruled for about 5 years.

posted 02 February 2004 08:36 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Kem-Au:
Good catch. I believe it was him. And yes neo, my theory assumes that Tut was murdered. I'm not sure of the evidence suggesting that Ay was Nef's father, I've only heard about it.

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Assuming Tut was murdered, here's my theory. In an effort to restore the old order, the High Priests of Amun crown Tut King and try to brainwash him of everything he might have learned in his early childhood years growing up in Amarna. When Tut is crowned King, Ay was made his vizier and co-regent. Ay was very much involved in the cult of Aten as was his sister, Queen Tiye and daughter, Nefertiti. It is believed that Ay continued to practice Atenism in secret until he died. With Ay being the bridge between Amarna and Tut, he might have secretly taught him about Atenism in the hopes that Tut would restore the cult once he was old enough to rule on his own.

The High Priests of Amun, had another thing in mind, so they had him killed before he could get a chance to rule on his own and challenge them as his father did. Ay, concerned only with his own survival, rightly assumed the role of Pharoah and Horemheb, who wanted things to return to normal, closed the book on Atenism after Ay's death.

As of now, it's a pretty mainstream belief that Ay was Nefertiti's father. The question is whether or not Ay's Palestinian wife was Nefertiti's mother.

quote:

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Originally posted by Kem-Au:

And I don't know if Horemheb was an accessory. But even if he was, he could have erased Ay's name to clear his own. Just a thought.

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He didn't erase Ay's name so much as he tried to erase any trace of Atenism from history. Let's not forget that the Pharoah Akhenaten wasn't discovered until the late 19th century. Hormeheb tried to erase the madness of the Amarna period from Egyptian history.

Could he have been trying to cover up evidence of Tut's murder? Doubtful. Successful conspiracies don't get recorded into history. Unless someone got caught and tried for killing Tut, why would anything about his murder be recorded on the walls of the tombs?

posted 02 February 2004 09:28 PM            

quote:

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With no heirs to the throne and Ay being the highest official in the Kingdom at the time of Tut's death, who else could have assumed power.

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And there lies the motive!

posted 03 February 2004 04:11 AM            

American cops’ shocking claims that the King at the centre of the biggest archaeological discovery of all time was murdered have been dismissed by Egyptological writers Andrew Collins and Chris Ogilvie-Herald.

The Channel Five Documentary broadcast last night - Who Killed Tutankhamun? . . . Revealed claimed to prove categorically that the Egyptian boy King was murdered by his prime minister. But recent research on the life and times of Tutankhamun, by Andrew Collins and co-author Chris Ogilvie-Herald clearly indicates these findings are deeply flawed.

The programme was based on the premise that two Utah policemen - Chief Greg Cooper and Lieutenant Mike King - could use modern day profiling techniques to determine Tutankhamun’s cause of death.

The forensics’ examination of Professor Ronald Harrison’s 1969 x-ray of the body led them to believe that the deceased suffered a fatal blow to the back of the head. But Collins and Ogilvie-Herald are sure that nothing new has been discovered here as Harrison himself explained this dark patch (over 30 years ago) as simply a swelling caused by a blood clot following a possible 'blow to the head', although one which could have resulted from a number of different scenarios.

What did differ however, was the rather bizarre conclusion the programme drew regarding the cause of this head injury. Cooper and King’s proposed theory of an assassin attacking him from behind seems unlikely considering the King would need to have been lying on his side or stomach - why would the killer only hit him once (surely risking detection?) leaving the King to die slowly over many months, instead of finishing off the job.

Egyptological writers Andrew Collins and Chris Ogilvie-Herald suggest in their book Tutankhamun: The Exodus Conspiracy that it is far more likely that the King suffered the fatal blow as the result of an awkward accident - for example falling backwards out of a chariot, a solution also considered by Cooper and King. In the opinion of the two police officers, it was the king's prime minister, Aye, the next king, who had the greatest motive to kill the young pharaoh. Yet this theory is untenable, since evidence from the tomb of Tutankhamun shows that Aye was completely in sympathy with Tutankhamun's religious convictions and only became king in a rash attempt to block Horemheb, Egypt's military general, from seizing control of the throne, most probably at the request of the young widow, Ankhesenamun.

Further claims in the programme that the floating bone fragment found inside the skull of Tutankhamun was the result of a fracture caused by the blow to the head is also dismissed by Collins and Ogilvie-Herald, based on the work of American paleopathologist Bob Brier who concluded in his book The Murder of Tutankhamun (1998) that this cranial damage was the result of Howard Carter and Douglas Derry's man-handling of the remains during their examination in 1925, a conclusion supported by the authors.

To back up their claims of Tutankhamun's murder, Cooper and King cited new evidence that the boy-king suffered from a crippling bone disorder called Klippel Feil Syndrome (KFS). This is a rare disorder caused by the congenital fusion of two or more of the seven cervical (neck) vertebrae, resulting in a number of possible symptoms including restricted mobility of the upper spine and cranium. It occurs with the failure in the division of upper vertebrae during the first few weeks of foetal development. However, it is not considered a hereditary disease. Richard Boyer, a pathologist, claims to have identified evidence of KFS in the x-rays of Tutankhamun's remains taken by R. G. Harrison in 1969, the last time that permission was given for their examination. He also believes that he has identified the same congenital fusion of vertebrae in the pictures of one of the two unborn foetuses found by Howard Carter in the tomb of Tutankhamun, and thus believes that this new pathological evidence suggests that the foetuses are definitely those of Tutankhamun and his royal wife Ankhesenamun.

This is a bold new theory, and Collins and Ogilvie-Herald look forward to reading the published report of these new findings. However, the manner in which this apparent evidence of KFS was used on the documentary must be called into question. For instance, the discovery of as many as 30 walking sticks, some used, inside the tomb of Tutankhamun was cited as evidence that the boy-king was a virtual invalid. Yet hunting scenes of him show that he was able to ride chariots on his own, while at the same time firing a bow; surely not the actions of an invalid. Furthermore, no image of the king found in the tomb even hints at the possibility that he suffered from some disabilitating disease. In addition to this, a painted relief showing a king leaning on a walking stick in the presence of his queen, who offers him a lotus flower, was identified in the programme as Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun, and thus was used to ramify the idea that the boy-king suffered from KFS. However, the relief, which was found at the site of Akhenaten's city at Tell el-Amarna in Middle Egypt, is usually considered by Egyptologists to represent either Smenkhkare and his royal wife Meritaten, or Akhenaten and his queen Nefertiti. Never is it identified as Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun, for if it was found at Amarna then it would mean that it had to have been fashioned before the abandonment of the city during the reign of Smenkhkare, when Tutankhamun was no more than eight or nine years old. The relief in no way shows a child of just eight or nine years old. Thus in the knowledge that a number of the objects found in the tomb of Tutankhamun bear a throne name used by the former king Smenkhkare, including one of the gold mummiform coffins, while even the quartzite sarcophagus would seem to have been originally intended for Smenkhkare, then the presence in the tomb of the walking sticks suddenly becomes ambiguous. Moreover, how it can be proposed that one of the unborn corpses suffered from KPS simply by the examination of a single photograph taken of the mummified remains in the 1920s is difficult to understand.

The most telling part of the documentary was the consideration that Tutankhamun did indeed fall backwards out of his chariot and knock his head on a rock, perhaps due to instability caused by KPS. This could, as we have seen, have produced an injury to the back of the head consistent with the abnormal density resulting from a blood clot in the brain, and would eventually have resulted in a slow, painful death. Whereas Collins and Ogilvie-Herald feel this is the most likely scenario, particularly in view of the boy-king's apparent love of hunting, they do not accept Cooper and King's suggestion that if the king did fall from a chariot, then the boy-king was left to die in the desert heat at the orders of Aye, who somehow engineered the 'accident'. This is especially so as Collins and Ogilvie-Herald have found evidence from the Jewish Talmud that the Pharaoh of the Exodus, which they see in terms of Tutankhamun, died in bed following a fall from his chariot.

In the opinion of Collins and Ogilvie-Herald, the two US policemen have wrongly assumed that Tutankhamun was murdered, simply by going along with Bob Brier's conclusions in The Murder of Tutankhamun, which likewise points the accusing finger at Aye. Yet this can be shown not to have been the case, and thus there never was a murder to solve, or an assassin to find. Unfortunately, the most obvious solutions are all too often ignored in the light of wild ideas and theories.

For the full facts behind the death of Tutankhamun and earlier claims by American paleopathologist Bob Brier that the boy-king was murdered by Aye, see Appendix I of Collins and Ogilvie-Herald's book TUTANKHAMUN: The Exodus Conspiracy, by clicking here. Click here for further details of how to obtain the book, which has been No 1 on the Amazon Ancient Egypt booklist for the past five weeks."

posted 03 February 2004 04:26 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Cobe:
I didnt get round to seeing that documentary..if anyone knows where i can get it on DVD/VHS i would be very greatful

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posted 03 February 2004 04:37 AM            

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They all looked American(White American, Black American, etc.). I have no idea who the actors were.

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I was surprised they used black actors, but are you sure they were African American?

It's a British documentary by the way (not available at Amazon.com)

[This message has been edited by Marcus (edited 03 February 2004).]

posted 03 February 2004 04:43 AM            

Monday, Sep. 09, 2002
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 that suggested foul play.

Tut was barely 18 when he died — young for Pharaohs, who always enjoyed the best nutrition and medical care in what was one of the ancient world's most civilized kingdoms. What's more, he is thought to have been the son of a controversial — in some quarters, hated — leader, which would have made Tut controversial too. But more than anything it was the state of the boy's tomb — its diminutive size, its unfinished condition — that suggested he had died unexpectedly. All of this raised suspicions that his demise may have been an unnatural, even violent one. And now a new case is being made that supports those who have long surmised that he was, in fact, murdered

More than 3,300 years after Tutankhamen was entombed, Greg Cooper, a former FBI profiler and chief of police in Provo, Utah, and Mike King, director of the Ogden, Utah, police department's crime-analysis unit, have tackled the case at the request of British film producer Anthony Geffen. Working with Geffen's London-based company, Atlantic Productions, the two investigators have used a wealth of sources — including books, scholarly papers, photographs of Tut's tomb, X rays of the mummy itself and interviews with contemporary experts — to apply modern forensic science to the ancient case. So well did the techniques work that the two sleuths believe they have proof of a murder as well as a pretty good idea who did it. The Discovery Channel will air a two-hour documentary on their investigation Oct. 6.

Prominent Egyptologists, however, say the conclusions are nonsense. Cooper and King's work, they argue, is merely warmed-over theories with a dash of forensic science thrown in. This field has been plowed before, they note, and has yielded nothing conclusive. "People love to speculate," says Marianne Eaton-Krauss, a Tutankhamen expert at the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. "But there isn't any evidence."

Whoever is right, it's clear that when British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the tomb 80 years ago, he found a grave like no other. As Pharaonic burial sites go, Tut's was slapdash. Not only did its modest size suggest it had been intended for a nonroyal, but it was also hastily decorated, with wall paintings marred by splashes of paint nobody ever cleaned up. Some of the elaborate artifacts that so captivated the world appear to have been obtained from a funerary warehouse, since close examination reveals that other people's names were erased from them and Tut's name was applied. And the embalming was marred by buckets of unguents dumped over the mummy at the end. Was that part of the ritual or a crude attempt at a cover-up?

To try to solve the mystery, Carter commissioned an anatomical study of the corpse in 1925 that turned out to be less autopsy than butchery. The unguents that saturated the mummy's bandages glued them in place, which meant the body was damaged as it was removed from the sarcophagus. Studying the corpse literally limb by limb, the first anatomist found nothing suspicious. More than 40 years later, however, in 1968, a University of Liverpool researcher received permission to X-ray the mummy and discovered some intriguing clues: there was a sliver of bone floating in the brain cavity and a dense area at the base of the skull that may have been a blood clot, suggesting a severe — perhaps deliberately lethal — blow to the back of the head.

To shed sharper light on the problem, Cooper and King obtained the original X rays and took them to a medical examiner, a radiologist and a neurologist. The experts quickly spotted more clues. Abnormalities in the thin bones above Tut's eye sockets may be the kind of fractures that can occur when the head strikes the ground during a backward fall and the brain snaps forward. What's more, the vertebrae in Tut's neck were fused — a sign of a musculoskeletal malformation called Klippel-Feil syndrome. People with Klippel-Feil cannot turn their heads without moving the entire torso, an infirmity that's impossible to hide and makes the sufferer highly vulnerable to injury from a fall — or a push. "It was like having a bowling ball on top of a pool cue," says King.

posted 03 February 2004 04:45 AM            

Maya was soon ruled out. Although his work probably brought him into close contact with Tut, giving him means and opportunity, he lacked motive. A gift in Tut's tomb bears Maya's name, which could be a sign that he genuinely grieved for the youth. Additionally, when Tut's tomb was robbed shortly after his death, Maya saw to it that it was restored and resealed. Finally, Maya had the least to gain from murder, since he was not likely to move up in the next government. "In fact," says King, "he risked being demoted."

Horemheb was a harder nut to crack. Cooper and King speculate that the military commander spent much time with Tut, teaching him hunting and chariot driving — activities that offered plenty of opportunity for a contrived accident. If Tut did die while on the road, the body would have begun decomposing before Horemheb could take it home, which might explain the extra unguents on the mummy. Horemheb's likeliest motivation for regicide would have been to assume the throne himself, something that would have been easy with the army behind him. When Tut died, however, Horemheb stayed where he was. "If Horemheb wanted the Pharaohship, he could have taken it," Cooper says.

Ankhesenamen too was ruled out. It was not impossible for the Pharaoh's wife to ascend the throne after her husband's death, and she may have been motivated by a mere power grab. A likelier scenario was that she was thinking more about her heirs. Two mummified fetuses were found in Tut's tomb. Both are thought to have been the royal couple's premature or stillborn daughters. If Tut was unable to sire healthy children, Ankhesenamen may have wanted him out of the way so she could marry someone who could.

But Cooper and King are convinced that Ankhesenamen and Tut were a close couple. They were half-siblings and had known each other from childhood. The paintings in Tut's tomb portray them as a loving pair, and the fact that their unborn children were mummified is unusual. Says King: "These are signs of a close family unit."

This leaves Ay. The Prime Minister, who served in the same role under Tut's father, had been de facto King while advising the young Tut and had won the boy's trust. (Tut became Pharaoh when he was 9.) Ay may have coveted the throne himself — a position he in fact assumed after Tut's death. Wall paintings in Tut's tomb show Ay performing the Opening of the Mouth ceremony at Tut's funeral, which is reserved for the heir apparent.

Tut's widow may also provide evidence against Ay. A cuneiform document reports that a letter was sent from an unnamed widowed Egyptian Queen to the Hittite King in what is now Turkey, pleading that one of his sons be sent south to marry her. The writer's fear was that she would otherwise be forced to wed one of her "servants." Ankhesenamen, as onetime Queen, would surely have seen Ay as a servant. Some people, including Cooper and King, believe that an ancient ring bearing her and Ay's names indicates that the two were in fact married, a move that would have legitimized Ay's Pharaohship.

Other scholars are not persuaded. Relying on tomb paintings to determine the nature of relationships, for example, is naive, they say. "Tomb paintings were always happy," says Rita Freed, of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. "They were idealized depictions."

Additionally, it has never been proved that Ankhesenamen wrote the letter to the Hittite King; some scholars believe the author was not Tut's widow but his father's. Similarly, the ring bearing Ay's and Ankhesenamen's names may indicate little, since in ancient Egypt there were no such things as wedding rings. "The ring merely shows an affiliation," says Eaton-Krauss.

posted 03 February 2004 11:20 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Horemheb:
It is true that Ay was Tut's closest adviser but there were countless boys and girls who were the children of Amenhotep III and Ahkanaten.

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Not only was Ay the Prime Minister to Amenhotep III, Akhenaten, and Tut, he was also part of the royal family(brother of Queen Tiye). Tut had no heirs, and as far as we know, he had no brothers so Ay was the only one left to rule after his death.

My point is made stronger by the fact that Horemheb, a general with no royal blood, became Pharoah after Ay died. There was no one from the Theban family of the 18th dynasty left to rule after Ay. Therefore, Ay, and not Horemheb, was the last Pharoah of the 18th dynasty.

I don't believe Tut was murdered. I think he may have died in a Chariot accident.

posted 03 February 2004 10:05 PM            

remember, we don't know who tut's father is. some people just guess that akhenaten was his dad, but some think it was amenhotep III. For me, the bottom line is that too many people had to disappear for Ay to become king and they all did.

posted 04 February 2004 10:53 AM            

I saw a documentary exactly like the one you depict, but on National Geographic over Christmas.

The most critical evidence - as much as I remember - lied in the way Ay decorated his tomb - as if he was not entitled to high honors.

posted 04 February 2004 12:36 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Kem-Au:
neo,

remember, we don't know who tut's father is. some people just guess that akhenaten was his dad, but some think it was amenhotep III.

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Amenhotep III may have been too old to father Tutankamun. I've heard another wild theory that Akhenaten fathered Tut with his mother, Queen Tiye. I'd dismiss that one too.

The most logical and accepted theory is that Tut was born Tutankaten in Amarna and his mother was the minor wife of Akhenaten, Kia. His name was changed to Tutankamun later in his childhood.

quote:

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Originally posted by Kem-Au:

For me, the bottom line is that too many people had to disappear for Ay to become king and they all did.

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This is circumstantial evidence. The only question is how Ay survived the political and religious power struggle in the Amarna period. We do know that he was a follower of Atenism and managed to hold on to his position as Prime Minister even after Akhenaten was gone.

quote:

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Originally posted by Kem-Au:

i saw the documentary that said that tut could've died on his chariot. this seems doubtful as that same program mentioned that he could barely walk without his cane.

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That's just speculation. There was a broken Chariot in Tut's tomb. Who else could the Chariot have belonged to other than Tut? He could have suffered a blow to the head falling from his chariot. The head injury alone isn't enough to prove that it was murder.