He was a warrior pharaoh and his warlike condition took it to its last consequences.
Seqenenra Taa
, who ruled Egypt under external threat around 1553 BC, was executed on the battlefield.
It is the new information about his violent end that reveals a CT scan to which his mummy has been subjected and that has also discovered the wounds that were disguised "with a method similar to modern cosmetic surgery" by the embalmers.
The results, published this Wednesday in the scientific journal "Frontiers in Medicine", reveal that Seqenenra Taa (1560-1554 BC)
was the victim of a ruthless murder
.
The wounds that took his life are scattered throughout his skull: an open fracture in the frontal bone;
others above the right eyebrow, nose, or zygomatic bone.
"It suggests that Seqenenra was really at the front with his soldiers, risking his life to liberate Egypt," says
Sahar Saleem
, a professor of radiology at Cairo University and co-author of the study with Egyptologist Zahi Hawass.
Seqenenra Taa came to the throne in a troubled and delicate period in the history of Ancient Egypt, when the north of the country was occupied by the Hyksos, natives of Canaan (the territory now occupied by Palestine and Syria) who took control of the Lower Egypt in the mid-seventeenth century BC taking advantage of the internal crisis.
The pharaohs maintained power over the south and its capital, Thebes, but had to pay tribute to the invaders.
Seqenenra's rule was brief and strewn with legends.
According to the fragments of a recovered papyrus, the pharaoh led a rebellion against the occupiers after receiving a demand from the king of the Hyksos who, through an emissary,
asked him to sacrifice the sacred hippos of Thebes because they disturbed his sleep
.
The monarch resided in Avaris, more than 600 kilometers away.
Seqenenra considered the request a grave insult and declared a war that would end up costing him his life.
Death at 40
The investigation of his mummy - discovered in 1881 along with other members of the Egyptian royalty in a hideout in Deir al Bahari, on the western bank of present-day Luxor - now provides certainty to a death that for decades fed the cabals of experts,
divided between death in battle and a palace coup
.
The pharaoh died at the age of 40, as determined by the study of some remains that have survived badly over time.
"The head and many bones are loose and out of their original location. The head is separated from the body and most of the vertebrae and ribs are loose," the article details.
His corpse has a fatal cut about 7 centimeters long on the forehead, caused by an ax or a sword from above.
The other wound, 3.2 centimeters long, is located above the right eye and could also have been caused by an ax.
The rest of the cuts on the right nose, eye and cheek came from the right side and the upper part and could have been caused by an ax or a cane.
The pharaoh also received a frontal blow to the left cheek.
From his left, a weapon -probably a spear-
penetrated the base of his skull, opening a gash that was 3.5 centimeters long
.
"Because of the variety in attack angles as well as the wide range of weapons that caused his injuries, we believe that Seqenenra was killed on the battlefield by numerous enemy attackers. The coincidence between the weapons and the morphology of the wounds suggests with force Seqenenra died in a war between the Egyptians and the Hyksos, "the study slides.
They would be weapons similar to those on display in the Egyptian museum in Cairo
.
The location of the wounds on the skull also draws some final moments marked by the attempt to confront their attackers.
The scanner has also uncovered a series of fractures that were not identified in the
X-ray examination that was performed in the 1960s
and that were cleverly disguised in the embalming process through "an advanced method that hid the wounds. under a layer of embalming material that works similarly to the fillings used in modern plastic surgery. "
The wounds are located on the right side of the skull and could have been caused with a dagger and a heavy, blunt object, perhaps the handle of an ax.
The embalmers' attempt to heal the skull injuries suggests that it was not a rushed process.
His desiccated brain was attached to the left side of his skull, "suggesting that someone turned him on his side after his death, either where he fell or while his body was being transported for embalming."
Agony and passage to the Hereafter
A painful agony in which, however, the investigators do not find traces of fractures in the forearms.
"It is a natural reflex to raise the arms to protect the face. However, this study confirms that
Seqenenra's forearms were not fractured
and that there are no injuries in other parts of the body," underlines the research, which raises the possibility of that the pharaoh had been captured or at least immobilized, preventing him from taking refuge from the blows.
Seqenenra did not parade into the Hereafter holding the posture customary in Ancient Egyptian mummies, arms folded across his chest.
"The position of the hands suggests that the monarch's wrists were tied, probably behind the body, when he died. If the king died with his hands tied, the muscles that were in intense contraction just before death would have immediately become rigid then unable to relax,
this condition is known as cadaveric spasm
, "the study argues.
Seqenenra's belated autopsy has not allayed all doubts.
"The exact location of his death is unknown
and there is no definitive historical evidence on the location of a battle between the pharaoh and the Hyksos," the study authors acknowledge.
The only certainty is that the successors of the monarch executed in the heat of the battle ended up defeating the Hyksos and thus fulfilled the wish that Seqenenra took to the grave.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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