( m suggests the damage may have been cau...)Radiologists attempt to solve mystery of Tut's demise

"We believe that this broken piece from the first vertebra of the king's spine may have been fractured and dislodged when Carter, Derry, Hamdy and their team tried to remove and free the gold mask, which was tightly glued and quite adherent to the body, by using some metal instruments that broke the thin, fragile piece of bone that lies immediately underneath the bone defect in the skull base through which the spinal cord emerges," Dr. Selim said.

Dr. Selim's team did not escape the so-called curse that is said to plague anyone who disrupts the remains of the boy king.

"While performing the CT scan of King Tut, we had several strange occurrences," he said. "The electricity suddenly went out, the CT scanner could not be started and a team member became ill. If we weren't scientists, we might have become believers in the Curse of the Pharaohs."

The CT examination of King Tut is part of a five-year initiative called the Egyptian Mummy Project to image and preserve Egypt’s mummies and to solve various mysteries about the diseases and lifestyles of ancient Egyptians.

King Tutankhamun, who ascended to the throne when he was just eight years old, was mummified and buried with other ancient royals. His tomb, filled with 5,000 artifacts, was discovered near Luxor, Egypt in 1922. Artifacts from the tombs of King Tut and other royals buried in the Valley of the Kings are part of "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," an exhibition currently at Chicago's Field Museum.
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Source:Radiological Society of North America