Khazar-khum Wrote:
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> Didn't KMT have a recent article suggesting that
> the rib damage was done recently--sometime after
> Carter but before Hawass?

I've heard this, but I haven't read the article. I'll say that I'm not very convinced by this argument, however, as the chest still looked the same way in 2005 as it did in the Burton 1925 photo, IMO. The necklace beads around the neck and chest had been removed, but the CT shows still a solid mass at the chest in the scan (best image of the chest can be found in National Geographic, June 2005: 7-8).

<snip>
> However, in a chariot you have many ways of
> getting hurt. The obvious one--falling out--is
> probably the one where you're least likely to get
> hurt. But if the chariot drags you,

...which assumes you're somehow attached to it - such as holding the reins, lashed to it, etc. Tutankhamun while hunting would likely have not been lashed to his chariot.

> or you get
> pulled under wheels,

The classic Egyptian chartiot has an open back: logistically, I'm trying to think how, if, for example, the chariot is moving north and you go south as you fall/tumble/are knocked out of the chariot that you can be "pulled under the wheels." Elaborate on a scenario so I can see what you mean.

> or if the chariot
> overturns--you're in serious trouble. If the
> cahriot flips, you run the risk of being dragged
> & crushed.

In either case, using my "belly flop" scenario, you would likely be thrown clear. Recall that you aren't lashed to the chariot, if you are the "warrior." To be lashed to the chariot, which the king would not have been, hampers the ability to move and utilise one's weapons.

If anyone can recall the scene of Ramses II (Yul Brynner) in The Ten Commandments (1956), moving off with his charioteer (when they go off to pursue the Hebrews), you can see the actor is merely holding onto the railing as they take off. The fellow who was his charioteer was an expert from the Egyptian Army at the time, but I don't doubt Brynner held on for dear life. It's not a very stable platform, though it probably had the equivalent of a "spring suspension" from the way the floor platform is lashed to the chariot sides, usually with leather.

> If you aren't stable--and in
> Egyptian chariots, you really were'nt--you could
> fly over the front, land on the yoke & then
> get run over.

That assumes a sudden stop where the horses come to a sudden halt and the chariot rams into their haunches, right? I could see that happening, but I would think a charioteer would attempt to veer the chariot to either side of the horses to avoid such a collision. There could be too much damage to both horses and chariot to recover from such an event, so I'm sure they worked out methods to move to either side of the horses in such a situation.

The "heads over the top" of the chariot situation assumes, IMO, a motion of hitting something BIG - like a boulder in the pathway - and no one sees it coming (which would take some doing, IMO). I don't think a body (animal or human) would have had much effect on the chariot motion (the Egyptian chariot was light enough to glide over small bodies), but a big boulder, the equivalent of "hitting a wall," would be the only scenario of a "heads over the top" of the chariot to me.

> So I can certainly believe that he had nasty
> bumps, bruises, cuts--and a fatal fracture.

Alas, bruises and bumps rarely survive death and the mummification process. IOW, we'll never know.

Katherine Griffis-Greenberg

Doctoral Candidate
Oriental Institute
Doctoral Programme in Oriental Studies [Egyptology]
Oxford University
Oxford, United Kingdom