King Tutankhamen's rediscovered penis could make the pharaoh stand out in the shrunken world of male mummies, scientists say.
They've taken a close look at old pictures of the 3300-year-old mummified king.
His sexual organ has been just another puzzle in the story of the best-known pharaoh of ancient Egypt.
Harry Burton (1879-1940) photographed the royal penis intact during Howard Carter's excavation of King Tut's tomb in 1922.
But it was reported missing in 1968, when UK scientist Professor Ronald Harrison took a series of x-rays of the mummy.
There was speculation that the penis had been stolen and sold.
"Instead,
it has always been there. I found it during the CT scan last year, when
the mummy was lifted. It lay loose in the sand around the king's body.
It was mummified," says Professor Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme
Council of Antiquities.
At first look, Burton's pictures may seem to indicate that King Tut could have been a little better endowed.
But according to mummy expert Dr Eduard Egarter Vigl, the pharaoh was built normally.
Egarter
is caretaker of Ötzi the Iceman, the world's oldest and best-preserved
mummy, and was also a member of the Egyptian-led research team that
examined King Tut's CT scan images.
"The pharaoh's sex organ
is clearly visible in Burton's pictures. All was normal in King Tut.
The penis is a highly vascularised organ and shrinks when it is
mummified. Actually, King Tut has been flattered by the embalmers'
work. There is no comparison with Ötzi's penis," says Egarter.
Mummifying the penisÖtzi's
natural mummification and dehydration in an Alpine glacier produced a
"collapse of the genitalia", which left the Iceman with an almost
invisible member.
"He would not make a
bella figura today," Egarter says.
According to the mummy expert, it is not possible to see if King Tut was circumcised.
Eugene Cruz-Uribe, professor of history at
Northern Arizona University and an expert on Tutankhamen, says that some earlier documents mention circumcision at King Tut's time.
"It was probably done for hygienic reasons, but some ritual issues may have occurred as well," Cruz-Uribe says.
Boy as kingTut.ankh.Amun,
"the living image of Amun", ascended the throne in 1333 BC at the age
of nine, and reigned until his death in 1325 BC, aged 19.
He married 13-year-old Ankhesenpaaten, who was probably his stepsister, on his accession to the throne.
During their marriage, Ankhesenpaaten, who had changed her name to Ankhesenamun, gave birth to two stillborn girls.
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