Face-To-Face With King Tut

Forensic Reconstruction Shows How Boy Pharaoh Looked

(AP)  The models show a baby-faced young man with chubby cheeks and his family's characteristic overbite, a weak chin and a pronounced, sloping nose beneath an elongated scalp.

Three teams of scientists have created the first facial reconstructions of King Tutankhamun based on CT scans of his mummy. The images are strikingly similar both to each other and to ancient portraits of the boy pharaoh, including his depiction on the famed golden mask he wore into the crypt.

The teams - from France, the United States and Egypt - each built a model of the pharaoh's face based on some 1,700 high-resolution images from CT scans to reveal what he looked like the day he died nearly 3,300 years ago.

The models, photos of which were released Tuesday, bear a strong resemblance to the gold mask of King Tut found in his tomb in 1922 by the British excavation led by Howard Carter.

The beardless youth depicted in the model created by a French team has soft features, a sloping nose and a weak chin - and the overbite, which archaeologists have long believed was a trait shared by other kings in Tut's 18th dynasty. His eyes are highlighted by thick eyeliner.

"The shape of the face and skull are remarkably similar to a famous image of Tutankhamun as a child where he was shown as the sun god at dawn rising from a lotus blossom," said Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The CT scans - the first done on an Egyptian mummy - have suggested King Tut was a healthy, yet slightly built 19-year-old, standing 5-feet-6 at the time of his death.

The three teams created their reconstructions separately - the Americans and French working from a plastic skull, the Egyptians working directly from the CT scans, which could distinguish different densities of soft tissue and bone.

The French and Egyptians knew they were recreating King Tut, but the Americans were not even told where the skull was from, yet correctly identified it as a Caucasoid North African, the council said in a statement.

"The results of the three teams were identical or very similar in the basic shape of the face, the size, shape and setting of the eyes, and the proportion of the skull," Hawass said.