Khazar-khum Wrote:

> Now a question--was there a reason that amputation
> wasn't attempted?

I'm assuming you're talking about the fractured leg? My understanding of the original review when gangrene was found in the bone is that it's likely that the gangrene set in - fast.

The doctors viewing the bone in 2005 and 2006 said Tutankhamun would have had an open wound, possible a hanging patella (the left patella was found in loosely in place in 1925, resting on the surface of the knee, according to Derry; in 2005 it was found in the mummy's hand, likely placed there by Derry).

If we can take the pSmith treatment of open wounds as an indicator, the Egyptian doctors would have probably cleaned the wound and then treated the area with honey and hoped for the best that the wound would heal. Vigl and his team, however, found fabric embedded in the wound (which had a gold thread design)*: as such, dirt and foreign materials were embedded into the wound from the outset and no amount of surface cleaning could stop an infection once deeply embedded.

* Quote: Eduard Egarter Vigl, the caretaker of Ötzi the Iceman, and Paul Gostner, head of radiology at Bolzano General Hospital were both members of the Egyptian-led research team that last year begun examining King Tut's CT scan images.

"In the left knee we found traces of gold leaf decorations, probably depicting birds. They were deformed because they entered the knee violently," Egarter told Alto Adige.

(Originally Reported in"Infection Killed King Tut", By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News, Feb. 3, 2006. The URL for this report no longer works.)

In 2005, when making the gangrene discovery, the doctors and radiologists speculated that the gangrene would have probably killed the king within 3-5 days of his injury - probably far less time that an Egyptian physician would have waited to see if his natural antibiotic (honey) would have worked.

In most cases of fracture, according to Egyptian medicine texts, the first step was to realign the broken limb (hopefully under some form of anaesthesia). The limb would then be set in either a wooden splint wrapped in bandages, or encased in a plaster cast made from cows milk, mixed with barley or acacia leaves and bound together using gum and water (pHearst 219,223). In instances where the damage was so severe, amputation was an alternative course of action, of course, but usually after waiting for a period of time. This is important: almost all of the treatment options found in pSmith, pEbers, etc.,see the doctors erring on waiting before taking any additional drastic action.

The problems is, when you look at the actual fracture and loose kneecap on Tutankhamun, the wound does not look all that severe, in CT scans and upon visual examination. If the leg was wrapped, as described above, the physicians may have thought they were doing the best thing to "wait out" the immediate swelling, reddening, and other symptoms of incipient gangrene to see if their ministrations worked first. Apparently, they erred on the side of waiting for too long, or the infection was so rampant it caused the king to succumb quicker than medical treatment at the time would have normally waited.

Katherine Griffis-Greenberg

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