According to the CT scan just completed, Tutankhamen had NO physical abornormalities at the time of his death. He seems to have been a healthy, normal eighteen-year-old, who just happened to die! As Hawass has said, there was undoubtily some plot to assiinate him (perhaps poison) but no tramatic injury that killed him has been discovered.

Just my personal opinion, but I don't believe that. But then again, maybe it's just the stubborness in me that refuses to belive Tut just. . .died. I mean. . the whole gangrene theory that they have now? He was the PHARAOH. Wouldn't they have caught an infection LONG before it turned into gangrene. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. Just seems rather. . .odd

It is also quite possible that his heart simply gave out. We're talking about generations of interbreeding and it is conjctured that Akenaten had Marfan's syndrome which he might (50/50) have passed on to Tut, one of the major symptoms of which is a very weak heart.

With the given knowledge, I find it difficult to support either Ay or Horemheb (or anyone else for that matter) as a suspected assasin. It could have beeen the priests of Amun, but Tut was restoring the ancient traditions of Egypt at the time so there's still too little motive for them.

I think he either died of a heart attack or a brain anurism or some other weak cellular condition associated with Marfan's (which is still hypothesis in itself) or there's something we don't know, nor will ever about what Tut was doing with the government of Egypt that enraged someone. Since both are supposed, that's 50/50 as near as I can tell.

I'm not sure I buy into the Marfans' angle. That theory has kind of fallen by the wayside, actually. There's little chance Akhenaten ever resembled the strange forms of the statuary and reliefs from the early Amarna Period--it was probably more of an artistic convention employed to established a physical sense of divinity among the Akhenaten family. And later on in the Amarna Period the statuary and reliefs of the royal family present them as much more conventional in appearance.

Also, the whole inbreeding issue tends to be overblown. No single royal family was ever in place long enough to produce severe conginetal defects from interbreeding. And even if the Tuthmosid line of rulers down to Akhenaten did inbreed more than was the norm for even the royals (and there's no evidence they did), Tut's mother, whether she was Nefertiti or Kiya or someone else altogether, likely had none of the genetic "contamination" that the father's side may have had.

Your weak heart argument is interesting, though. Of all the theories presented (and I used to be a proponent of the assassination theory), I think the gangrenous infection is at present the most plausible, based on the evidence presented by the CT scans. Such an infection could well have damaged cardiac tissues and led to heart failure.