This New Scientist article, usually accessible only to subscribers, is made available for free by the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences in Sydney, Australia
鈥淚T IS normal,鈥� exclaims, poring over the faded pages of an obscure, decades-old book. Connolly has found an image that appears to settle the controversy over whether the boy king Tutankhamun had a club foot. As with many mysteries related to the famous mummy, the truth is hard to pin down.
The argument started last year when a team led by Egypt鈥檚 then-chief of antiquities, , reported that 罢耻迟补苍办丑补尘耻苍鈥檚 left foot was severely deformed.
Advertisement
Hawass鈥檚 team CAT-scanned the mummy in January 2005. Their subsequent paper, published in 2009, noticed no foot-related problems. Then a reanalysis concluded that 罢耻迟补苍办丑补尘耻苍鈥檚 left foot was in a sorry state. The authors diagnosed club foot, two diseased metatarsals, and a missing toe bone ().
The finding that Tutankhamun was disabled made headlines around the world. But Connolly 鈥� a researcher at the University of Liverpool, UK, and part of a team that X-rayed the mummy in 1968 鈥� is convinced it is wrong.
The 1968 team was led by the late Ronald Harrison, also of Liverpool, UK. Most of his X-rays were never published, but Connolly says they show that both of 罢耻迟补苍办丑补尘耻苍鈥檚 feet were normal. If Connolly is right, the deformities in the scans are due to damage inflicted since 1968.
Connolly knew that the X-ray of the left foot appeared in a book Harrison had contributed to 鈥� Chronicle: Essays from ten years of television archaeology 鈥� written to accompany a TV documentary. New Scientist tracked down the book and the image shows a healthy foot.
Our excitement was short-lived, however. Though the photo (pictured) is labelled 鈥渓eft foot鈥�, it turned out to be a flipped image of the uncontroversial right foot.
Ashraf Selim, a radiologist at Cairo University in Egypt, who co-authored last year鈥檚 paper, says the mix-up vindicates his findings that 罢耻迟补苍办丑补尘耻苍鈥檚 foot was deformed in life.
Yet other experts share some of Connolly鈥檚 concerns. , an orthopaedic surgeon at Stanford School of Medicine, California, says the foot must have twisted after death because the shape of the bones is normal, an impossibility in a club foot.
And , at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and co-author of the Hawass team鈥檚 2009 paper, says the abnormal metatarsals and missing toe bone are located close to an open lesion, suggesting damage might be a possible cause. Selim counters that recent damage would have caused telltale breaks in the fragile bones.
The missing X-ray of the left foot would settle the matter. Connolly鈥檚 hunt continues.
