Tut'ankhamun was the son of Akhenaten, the heretic pharaoh who abandoned ancient Egypt’s traditional polytheist religion in favor of a new monotheistic cult centered around the sun god Aten. The shift wasn’t embraced by all, and the cult collapsed after his death, with Tutankhamun (or his Vizier) reverting to the old tradition as soon as he ascended the throne around the age of nine.
Tut'ankhamun was a sickly boy, suffering from scoliosis, a partially cleft palate, a flat right foot with a missing phalange, and a necrosis in the bones of his left foot, which must have been painful because he used a cane to walk – and there were 130 walking sticks in his tomb. He had also been repeatedly infected with the most severe strains of malaria, and must have suffered a hard fall, because one of his legs had an old compound fracture which had been tended to with balms. He died at 19, though we don’t quite know why. An initial theory was that he suffered a devastating injury – since his skull was crashed and some of his ribs were missing, but more recent testing showed that these injuries happened after his death, maybe caused by an unprofessional embalmer – or a professional one trying to make him look like Osiris, the god of the afterlife.
The last theory is supported by an unusual painting in Tut'ankhamun’s tomb depicting him as Osiris, plus a few embalming peculiarities like a dark liquid covering his body, which could have been an attempt to make him look completely black; an unusual arm posture which was often used to depict Osiris; a missing heart (and the scarab that would normally replace it), which recalls the story of Osiris being cut to pieces by his brother Seth who then buried his heart; a strange thoracic incision which could have been a honorary mark reinforcing the previous story; and, most peculiar of all, an erect member which stood upright at a 90-degree angle. No other mummies were embalmed with such an erection, and the most reasonable explanation seems to be that it was propped in that position as a way to evoke the fertility of Osiris.
Why were they trying to turn King Tut into Osiris? The leading theory is that it was symbolic of the country’s return to the pre-Akhenaten cults, which makes sense, considering that in ancient Egypt the king was believed to be the god Horus during his reign, and Osiris after his death.
In a delicate time of religious turmoil, the embalmers may have prepared the body in such a way so as to literally emphasize the divinity of the king and his identification with Osiris – hoping the transmutation would reclaim his family’s lost credentials.
The photo featured in this post was taken in 1922 by Howard Carter, the discoverer of the tomb and the man who first unraveled Tutankhamun’s mummy. The member is clearly visible, in fact looking bigger than expected since the embalming salts usually shrunk it, though it was missing when the re-wrapped mummy was x-rayed in 1968. Many suspected it had been stolen, but it was found again in 2005 when the mummy underwent a CT scan, buried in the sand surrounding it together with a few missing bone fragments and a couple of digits.
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