Scientists have reconstructed the face of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who was brutally murdered 3,500 years ago, revealing the painful fate of this king.
Seqenenre Tao was the last pharaoh to rule the local kingdom of Thebes in Egypt during the Seventeenth Dynasty in the Second Intermediate Period of Egypt. He is often referred to as the “brave one” because he was killed at the age of 40 while trying to liberate Egypt from the rule of the Hyksos around 1555 BC.
A team of archaeologists from Flinders University in Australia reconstructed his face using CT scans and X-rays of the remaining skull fragments. This revealed that the pharaoh was of Nubian origin, with small eyes, thin lips, and high cheekbones.
Successful reconstruction of Pharaoh Seqenenre Tao’s face.
The research team created a digital description of the king’s face and adjusted the skin tone to resemble that of ancient Egyptians. Additionally, the eyelashes and eyebrows of Tao were subjective elements, but researchers believed they closely matched the appearance of an ancient king.
Simultaneously, from the skull discovered by archaeologists at the Deir el-Bahri tomb in the Theban necropolis in 1886, it was revealed that many attackers struck Tao from different directions, leading to his death. They created illustrations that accurately depicted the weapons that caused his injuries. This indicated that an axe wound penetrating through the brain could have been the cause of the king’s death.
Gaston Maspero, a French Egyptologist who discovered the remains of this brave pharaoh among hundreds of coffins and mummies in 1886, noted that Tao had a slender body, a small and elongated head, with black, fine, and curly hair – based on the hair that remained on the mummy.
This pharaoh ruled southern Egypt, the Theban region, from around 1560–1555 BC, during the Seventeenth Dynasty. At that time, Lower and Middle Egypt were occupied by the Hyksos – a dynasty of Palestinian origin that ruled the city of Avaris in the Nile Delta.
The mummy of Pharaoh Seqenenre Tao unearthed.
Tao was the father of two pharaohs – Kamose, his direct successor, and Ahmose, who ruled under his mother’s regency.
Egyptologists James Harris and Kent Weeks, who conducted a forensic examination of Tao in the 1960s, stated that “a foul odor of oil filled the room when the display case of his body was opened.” This smell is believed to have resulted from bodily fluids remaining in the mummy at burial.
During the mummification process, those performing the rites would wrap the body with minerals to dry it out. However, experts believe that Tao’s mummification was rushed, as his body retained a lot of fluids. Nevertheless, the exact cause remains undetermined.
