ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, January 20, 1997 TAG: 9701200122
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PASADENA, CALIF.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
SOME SAY Egypt's boy king was rubbed out by Aye, the commoner who ruled Egypt as regent while Tutankhamen grew up, and wanted to keep ruling.
An overwhelming lust for power, a romantic triangle and a serial killer are the key ingredients in the 3,300-year-old King Tut murder mystery, whose details are just now becoming clear, an archaeologist said Friday.
The central figure in the sordid story is Tutankhamen, the boy-king whose buried treasures made him one of the most famous of ancient Egypt's rulers even though he died at age 20.
The villain of the piece is Aye (pronounced ``I''), the commoner who ruled Egypt as regent while Tutankhamen grew up, said Egyptologist Bob Brier of Long Island University.
Aye or one of his henchmen probably killed Tutankhamen by breaking his skull with a blow to the back of the head, Brier said. The lustful regent then killed a suitor from the neighboring kingdom of the Hittites summoned by Tut's widow, married the widow himself to become pharaoh and killed her as well.
``It's the old story of power, jealousy and greed,'' Brier said. ``The evidence that we have would probably not convict Aye in a modern court of law, but I think it is the best theory of what happened.''
Others are not so sure, however. ``It's a fairly imaginative theory,'' said Emily Teeter, assistant curator of the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago. ``It could be true but it's completely unprovable. It's no truer than any of the other [less dramatic] scenarios.''
``It's speculation,'' said Dorothea Arnold, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. ``The man died very young... but we have no other evidence in any literary source that points to this theory in any way.''
In contrast, Rita Freed, curator of the Egyptian and Nubian Department at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, conceded that Brier's ideas are ``speculative,'' but noted that ``it is absolutely possible that this was orchestrated by Aye. We have to have a theory out there to work with, and this is an interesting one. From that, we'll come closer to the truth, whatever it is.''
Tutankhamen was only 10 when his father Akhenaten died. Aye, Akhenaten's adviser, served as regent while Tut was growing up, effectively running the country. Tut, meanwhile, married his half-sister, Ankhesenamen.
Brier bases his scenario on several pieces of evidence. Many individual facts have been known for some time, but Brier may be the first to combine them in this fashion.
One undisputed fact is that Tut died at about age 20 in 1350 B.C. Last summer, Brier and Dr. Gerald Irwin, a radiologist at Long Island University, examined an X-ray of Tut's skull. Based on the presence of a bone sliver, they concluded that he had died from a blow to the back of the head.
The X-ray also revealed what appeared to be a clot at the site, suggesting that Tut had lived for at least a while after the blow, perhaps lingering in unconsciousness.
Ankhesenamen then wrote to the king of the neighboring Hittites, begging him to send one of his sons to be her husband - an unheard-of request from an Egyptian queen.
The letter, a cuneiform tablet now in a museum in Turkey, says, ``Never shall I pick out a servant of mine and make him my husband! I am very afraid,'' suggesting that she was being coerced into a marriage.
The Hittite king acquiesced and sent a son, but the prince was killed near the Egyptian border.
Meanwhile, Aye quickly succeeded Tut. A mural on the wall of Tut's tomb, painted shortly after Tut's death, shows Aye wearing the pharaoh's crown. But Aye was a commoner and could not become pharaoh without marrying into the royal family.
Apparently, he did. In 1931, archaeologist Percy Newberry discovered a ring in a Cairo antiquities shop bearing an inscription indicating that Aye and Ankhesenamen were married. That ring is now in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin.
Ankhesenamen was never heard from again. When Aye died and was buried three years later, the walls of his tomb showed another woman, Tiy, as his wife and the Queen of Egypt. Brier believes that Aye killed Ankhesenamen to consolidate his power and allow him to marry Tiy. ``That makes him a serial killer,'' Brier said.
Brier assembled the information while researching a forthcoming television program, ``The Mystery of Tutankhamen,'' which will be shown April6 on The Learning Channel. ``By the time we were done, we all really hated Aye,'' he said Friday at a preview of the series.
But others find holes in the theory. James Harris of the University of Michigan, a dentist who specializes in the forensics of mummies, has X-rayed the skull of Tutankhamen himself, although he did not share the films with Brier. He confirms that there is a bone sliver, but notes that it could have been produced during the mummification process or in an accident before death.
LENGTH: Medium: 90 linesby CNB