CUT THROAT
CT scan reveals ancient Egyptian Pharaoh was murdered – potentially by his wife
THE MYSTERY surrounding an ancient Egyptian pharaoh's death was solved thanks to a CT scan proving that his throat had been slit open.
The gruesome end of Usermaatre Ramses III has been brought to light again by the new Channel 5 show “Egypt’s Great Treasures”.
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Ramses III is thought to have reigned as the second Pharaoh of the 20th Dynasty of ancient Egypt from around 1186 to 1155 BC.
His death was often debated amongst experts because scriptures stated that one of his wives and high ranking officials had tried to assassinate him in a plot referred to as the Harem Conspiracy.
Ramses' wife Queen Tiye and her son Pentaweret were heavily implicated in the plot because Tiye is said to have wanted to put her son on the throne.
However, a confusion of accounts and no obvious wounds on the mummy of Ramses III meant that archaeologists could never confirm whether the murder plot had been foiled or not.
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This mystery was laid to rest when experts noticed that the mummy's neck was heavily bandaged and a CT scan soon revealed that Ramses III had a deep and wound across his throat.
The wound was so deep in fact that it cut right back to the neck vertebrae.
The narrator of the Channel 5 show, Dr Bettany Hughes, explained: "Ramses was a man with lots of enemies. He had to fight off invading armies from the Middle East to defend Egypt.
"But the real trouble came from within the kingdom, his wife, Queen Tiye, wanted her son on the throne, so she hatched a plot to assassinate her husband.
"Now, we know all about this because it’s recorded on a papyrus that’s now in Turin and this historical event is known as the Harem Conspiracy."
She went on to explain that some scriptures state that the plot was foiled, the culprits sentenced to death and Ramses III disappeared from the history books.
A disappearance like this is often linked to a death by natural causes so when experts discovered that the murder plot had been a success they were very surprised.
Ahmed Samir, a curator at the Egyptian Museum, explained in the documentary: "After we made the CT scan we found that he had been assassinated by cutting his throat.
“He could not survive it because it’s big enough to cut the neck and to make the King die within a few minutes."
A subsequent CT scan found that Ramses III's left big toe had also been chopped off by an axe shortly before he died.
This has left experts questioning whether this was the result of multiple people trying to kill him with different weapons.
No one knows what happened to Queen Tiye but scholars think that her son Pentaweret was forced to commit suicide along with many assailants.
A brief history of Ancient Egypt
Here's everything you need to know...
- The Ancient Egyptians were an advanced civilisation who at one point owned a huge portion of the globe
- The civilisation began about 5,000 years ago when ancient humans began building villages along the River Nile
- It lasted for about 3,000 years and saw the building of complex cities centuries ahead of their time – as well as the famous Great Pyramids
- The Ancient Egyptians were experts at farming and construction
- They invented a solar calendar, and one of the world's earliest writing systems: The hieroglyph
- The Egyptians were ruled by kings and queens called pharaohs
- Religion and the afterlife were a huge part of Ancient Egyptian culture. They had over 2,000 gods
- Pharaohs built huge elaborate tombs to be buried in, some of which were pyramids – at the time among the largest buildings in the world
- The Egyptians believed in life after death, and important people's corpses were mummified to preserve their bodies for the afterlife
- The Ancient Egytpian empire fell due to a mix of factors, including wars with other empires and a 100-year period of drought and starvation
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