Watch this video about the mysterious death of Tutankhamun.
Video Transcript
Given that he's so globally famous now, we actually know remarkably little about Tut's life. And that's partly because his reign was cut short when he was around about the age of 19. But it's his cause of death that's become one of Egypt's most enduring mysteries. To see why his death is such a mystery, I'm heading for his tomb with Egyptologist Gail Gibson.
We would have had to dig all this out. Every bit of it. Wondering every minute, what was at the end?
From the moment Howard Carter entered this place, there were signs that there was something strange about Tut's death. Why give him this?
For a start, when compared to the other tombs in the valley, this one was a lot smaller. It is surprisingly small. It's not at all what you'd expect for royalty. No. It is very strange, this very bare and small tomb. This was the room with the chariots and beds and boxes and all kinds of stuff.
This modest tomb was jammed full of all the royal possessions that we usually buried with a king. It can't have been meant to be all jumbled up like that. People are just trying to cram as much stuff as possible into this small space.
Shall we go down? Yeah, let's I can't believe we're going to do this. Another unusual thing is the decoration, or rather lack of it.
Other royal tombs are adorned in hundreds of intricate portraits of the pharaohs and the gods.
By comparison, this one just doesn't look very royal. And the paintings here are interesting. Everything is on a very large scale. Very mysterious. These are odd paintings for a king.
And lastly, on top of the paintings, something that's only recently been identified.
3,000-year-old mould. It looks like these paintings were done on wet plaster, very fast, painted on, and then bang, bring in everything, close up the tomb very quickly. But this is still wet, and so the mould has a chance to grow, even though there's nobody here for the next 3,000 years. So it kind of does suggest a hurried burial perhaps, you know, caution, wet paint, never mind we'll just seal it up anyway.
Yeah, I think that's one of the best bits of evidence that it's a rushed burial.