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The Strange Case of

TUTANKHAMENS
MISSING RIBS

O
Detail of Tutankhamens thorax as the
kings mummy lies
on the sand tray prepared by Howard
Carter for its reinterment in the outer
coffin & sarcophagus left in situ in the
KV62 burial chamber. Photographer
Harry Burton has
burned in the area
of the neck, apparently to disguise the
fact that the mummys head is detached. Note the presence
of the beaded collar
& strand of gold
beads, which Carter
elected to leave in
place, due to these
being imbedded in
dried resin which
coated the mummys
chest. The frontal
ribcage would seem
to be still present
(visible through the
carbonized bandages), as clearly are
the clavicles.

Photo: Griffith Institute

by Dennis Forbes
Salima Ikram & Janice Kamrin

n January 5, 2005, the mummified remains of Nebkheperre Tutankhamen, last king of the Eighteenth Dynastys
Thutmosid line, were officially disturbed for the third
time since their 1926 reburial by Howard Carter. Carter and his forensic team, headed by Dr. Douglas Derry and Saleh
Bey Handi, had left them resting reassembled1 and rewrapped
in cotton batting2 on a sand tray placed within the massive
outer gilded coffin, which had been left by the excavator inside the
basin of the quartzite sarcophagus still in situ in the burial chamber
of KV62.
The first post-Carter disinterment, directed by British anatomist Dr. R.G. Harrison of Liverpool University, had been undertaken with permission of Egyptian Antiquities authorities in 1968,
for the purpose of reassessing the royal mummy and the making of
radiographic (x-ray) images of the skull and thorax (that technology not being available to Carter and Derry in the mid-1920s). The
second official disinterment took place a decade later, in 1978,
conducted by American orthodontist James E. Harris, in order to
obtain a better x-ray of the boy-kings skull, the earlier one by Harrison being deemed inadequate to accurately assess the royal dentition.3 The recent third disinterment orchestrated by Dr. Zahi
Hawass on behalf of the Egyptian Supreme Council for Antiquities was for the purpose of performing a CT-scan on the remains, with the stated objective of determining once and for all the
cause of the young rulers premature death. In addition to gathering raw data about the mummy, Hawass hoped to prove or disprove the controversial theory that Tutankhamen had been murdered by a blow to the back of the head.4
Harrisons x-ray record exposed, most importantly, that the
thorax of the Tutankhamen mummy was radically damaged: it revealed that the frontal ribcage and sternum were absent, together
wirh the clavicles. These anomalies were noted by the anatomist.
Even so, nothing was said at the time regarding the absence of a

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Kmt 52

Stills from the film footage made of the official 1968 first disinterment of the mummy of Tutankhamen, under the direction of University of Liverpool anatomy professor R.G. Harrison. Left, from the
top: The sand tray just removed from the coffin/sarcophagus with
jumbled cotton batting covering the upper part of the mummy (Harrison is in the red sweater); The upper part of the mummy after the
cotton batting has been removed (note head turned to one side, the
condition of the chest & absence of the bead collar); The kings detached head being lifted from the sand tray; Close-up of the head after it has been x-rayed, the white band being a tape measure (note
the empty eye sockets). Above, Reassembled mummy on the sand
tray, prior to reinterment. 1992 A&E Documentary, The Face of Tutankhamun

Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art

resin-imbedded bead collar with falcon clasps, and a bead

girdle both very clearly evident in the 1926 photos and
supposedly left in place by Carter and his team. Also not
noted was the absence of the young kings mummified
penis, which was still present in 1926.
The unpublished Harris 1978 disinterment apparently did not yield further information regarding the condition of the kings mummy, although still photos taken at the
time confirmed the realities of the 1968 Harrison film-footage: the royal remains were in a far-worse state than Carter
had left them, judging from the 1926 sand-tray photos.
Hawasss 2005 disinterment and CT-scan examination of the Tutankhamen mummy apparently did resolve at
least one heated question regarding the young kings premature death.5 A careful study of the CT-scans by an international team of forensic experts concluded that the problematical area of seeming damage to the base of the Tutankhamen
skull was not the result of a deadly blow there, thus ruling
out a murderous blunt-weapon assault as the cause of death.
The damage was probably post-mortem, perhaps even an artifact of mummification. The 2005 CT-scan did, however, reveal that the young king had suffered a major fracture to his
lower left femur (also noted by Carter and Derry), which
would appear to have occurred shortly before his demise
judging from the fact that the bone-break contained resinous
material asssociated with mummification and that this
quite possibly resulted in subsequent infection and blood
poisoning and, consequentially, the kings demise. Thus, the
previously proposed theories of an accidental cause of death
(such as a chariot accident) regained validity. Exactly why
eighteen-year-old Tutankhamen went into his makeshift tomb
well in advance of his likely life span will almost certainly
never be known.

Eyelids still intact.

Beaded
skullcap
still present.

Detail of
Harry Burtons
1926 portrait of the
Tutanhkamen mummy
on the sand tray,
prior to reinterment
in KV62.
Clavicles still present.
Beaded collar
& strand of
gold beads still
present.

Frontal
ribcage
evident.

Forearms crossed over

the abdomen, as found.

No evidence
of the beaded
skullcap

Detail of
2005 CT-scan
of the
Tutankhamen
mummy

Photo: SCA/NGM Art

Clavicles &
sternum
missing.

Irregularly
sawed-off
ribs of
frontal
ribcage.

R.G. Harrisons 1968 x-ray of the

thorax of the Tutankhamen
mummy, showing the absence
of clavicles, sternum & frontal
ribcage. Evident spinal curvature
is probably situational rather
than congenital

Chest cavity
filled with packing

Case closed. Except for one

nagging set of facts regarding the mummy. What about the blatantly missing
clavicles, sternum and frontal ribcage,
documented initially by Harrison in his
1960 x-ray, and fully confirmed by Hawasss 2005 CT-scan? In filmed commentary on his examination of the kings
mummy, Harrison avoided remarking
on this highly unusual situation, opting
instead to point out the normality of the
unions of the kings vertebrae (if obliquely allowing for some apparent abnormal curvature of the spinal column).
Harris being really only interested in
the boy-kings skull and dentition
had nothing to say in print about the
rest of the mummy. Hawass addressed
the problem of the missing ribs, etc.,
citing the largely Egyptian opinion that
Carter, in fact despite his diary statements to the contrary decided after
all, at the last minute, to remove the
bead collar (Carter Catalogue 256 ttt)
and associated gold-bead girdle (Carter
256 sss), following Burtons final portrait(s) of the mummy on the sand
tray made (it must be presumed)
only just prior to the kings reinterment
in 1926.

Penis?
Empty
eye
sockets

Left, The Tutankhamen mummy seen at the

time of its 1978 disinterment by J.E. Harris.
Note the black mass of the thorax area &
absence of the penis. Above,The decapitated
head of the Tutankhamen mummy in 1978.
Note the hollow eye sockets, missing beaded
skullcap. Photos courtesy of David Moyer

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While Carter and his team are indeed guilty of having taken Tutankhamens mummy quite literally apart in order to remove it from its coffin and mask for the purpose
of recovering the extensive quantity of amulets and jewelry they were very thorough in their description of the remains and surely would have noted the absence of the ribs
and sternum. In fact Derrys anatomical report on the mummy specifically mentions that: The left forearm lay above it
[right forearm] over the lower ribs.... 6 It seems hardly likely
(not impossible, but highly unlikely) that having the reassembled mummy photographed by Burton as it lay on the
sand tray Carter would have changed his mind before the
remains were placed in the coffin and sawed off 7 the frontal
ribcage (taking with it the sternum to which the ribs were attached, and the clavicles, as well) in order to recover the
bead collar which earlier he had deemed to be of insufficient intrinsic value to go to the bother of extracting it from
the resin carapace covering the mummys chest. The same
can be said for the bead-decorated linen skullcap (Carter 256
q,r.t), which is present in Burtons sand-tray photo 8 but gone
in the Harrison disinterment film-footage and subsequently.
Additionally, the head of the mummy clearly suffered physical damaged between the time of its 1926 formal
portrait and its appearance in 1968, when removed from the
sand tray by the Harrison team for x-raying. The head is held
up for the movie camera (with a tape measure around the
cranium) and very clearly the eye sockets (intact in 1926)
are empty holes. The ears also were mostly missing in 1968,
although present in the Burton shots of the mummys head.9
Then there is the matter of the kings mummified
penis. It is indisputably there in the sand-tray photo and definitely gone in the 1978 photo of the mummy (it is impossible to say whether it was still present in the 1968 film footage; and Harrison does not comment on its presence or absence). Interestingly, the 2005 CT-scan purportedly shows an
independent object in the sand tray which is the right size
and shape to be the detached penis. But the question remains,
how did it become detached in the first place?

ll of this negative evidence the missing bead collar

and associated bead girdle; the sawed off and absent
frontal ribcage, sternum and clavicles; the missing
beaded skullcap; damage to the mummys head (especially
the gaping eye sockets); the missing (or perhaps just detached) mummified penis all point circumstantially to the almost certainty that the remains of Tutankhamen were unofficially and clandestinely disinterred between 1926 and 1968,
with the theft of the bead collar, bead girdle and skullcap,
and the physical damage to the mummy taking place then. It
has been suggested in a private communication with a mostsenior British Egyptologist that the likely time frame for this
to have occurred was during the period of World War II
(1939-1945), when security in the Valley of the Kings may
have been understandably lax (inasmuch as tourism would
have been nil).
Such a disinterment would have been done in all
likelihood for the sole purpose of stealing the jewelry Carter intentionally had left on the boy-king when the mummy
was reinterred in 1926. Since the bead collar could not simply be lifted off the torso, this must have been known by the
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culprits and a hack saw brought along to accomplish the

deed. The mummys eyes inadvertently may have been
punched in10 and the ears further broken during the process
of removing the beadwork of the skullcap, which, being fiber-thin, would have disintegrated consequently. The fragile
penis might well have snapped off while the mummy was being manhandled during removal of the frontal ribcage.
If this theft scenario is correct, then the mystery of
Tutankhamens missing ribs is in no way connected to the
cause of his premature death.
Notes
1. Although carefully disguised in Harry Burtons full-length
photographic portrait of the kings mummy partially submerged in the wood tray of white sand, it was subsequently determined and revealed that the royal cadaver had been thoroughly
dismantled (separated) into fifteen pieces by Howard Carter and
Dr. Douglas E. Derry, during their extraction of the mummy
from the innermost solid-gold coffin and funerary mask, and
then its unwrapping to remove the many amuletic objects and
jewelry placed on the body by the ancient embalmers. See D.
Forbes, Tombs. Treasures.Mummies. Seven Great Discoveries of
Egyptian Archaeology (1998, Sebastopol, CA), Appendix Four,
Abusing Pharaoh: Mistreatment of the Mummy of Tutankhamen in Antiquity & Modern Times, 702-713.
2. In his diary entry for October 23, 1926, Howard Carter indicated that the Tutankhamen mummy ...finally rewrapped, was
lowered into the sarcophagus this morning. In an earlier entry for
November 18, 1925, the excavator had written that ...the Kings
remains...will be reverently re-wrapped and returned to the sarcophagus. Considering the dismembered condition of the mummy, it
would seem that Carter finally settled for covering the remains
with cotton batting; which was present at the 1968 disinterment.
3. University of Michigan orthodontist Harris was at the time undertaking a detailed study of the craniofacial morphology of the
Royal Mummies, the results of which were subsequently published in An X-Ray Atlas of the Royal Mummies (Chicago, 1980),
co-authored with Edward F. Wente.
4. See Bob Brier, The Murder of Tutankhamen: A True Story (New
York, 1998); also, Michael R. King and Gregory M. Cooper, Who
Killed King Tut? Using Modern Forensics to Solve a 3,300-Year-Old
Mystery (New York, 2004).
5. See Zahi Hawass, Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs (Washington, DC, 2005), 263-272.
6. See F. Filce Leek, The Human Remains from the Tomb of Tutankhamun (Oxford, 1972), p. 12.
7. The CT-scans reveal that the remaining frontal ribs were sawed through rather irregularly (literally a hack job).
8. This beaded skullcap is also present in the several photos Burton took of the mummys decapitated head.
9. The kings left ear apparently suffered damage on Carters
watch, as it is fully intact in the Burton profile photo with the
gold temple-band still in place, but the upper one-quarter or so
is gone in the photos with the temple band removed. Thus it is
likely that the ear was damaged when the latter was taken away
(or in other handling of the decapitated head).
10. Or, if the thieves were a superstitious lot, perhaps intentionally punched in to blind Tutankhamen to the theft about to
occur.
About the Authors Dennis Forbes is the editorial director of
this journal. Dr. Salima Ikram reaches Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, is the author of numerous books and
articles, and writes Nile Currents. Dr. Janice Kamrin is director of the American Research Center in Egypts Registrar Training and Database Project at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo; she
also edits some of Zahi Hawasss many publications.