Ancient Face of King Tut Unveiled After Over 3,300 Years

It only took 3,300 years or more, but we finally have an idea of what King Tut actually looked like.

The famed Egyptian King Tutankhamen is officially his name, and scientists have used digital imaging to show us his face. Like, it’s about time.

Anyway, scientists from Australia, Italy and Brazil were able to re-create the face of King Tut, who turned out to look incredibly young. That’s really no surprise, given that he ruled from the ages of 9 to 19.

“He looks like a young man with a delicate face,” Brazilian graphics expert and co-author Cicero Moraes said, via the Italian Journal of Anatomy and Embryology and New York Post. “Looking at him, we see more of a young student than a politician full of responsibilities, which makes the historical figure even more interesting.”

Egyptian King Tutankhamen

Tut’s reign took place 1332 to 1323 BC. Moraes added that scientists did not have direct access to the former pharaoh’s skull, complicating the modeling efforts.

“It was detective work, where traces of information were concatenated in order to provide us with a three-dimensional model of the skull,” he said. “With the proportion data and some important cephalometric measurements, it was possible to take the digital skull of a virtual donor and adjust it so that it became the skull of Tutankhamen.”

Tut’s new face was created via previous scans.

“All of these projections are based on statistical studies that were performed on CT scans of living individuals from several different ancestries,” Moraes said.

And the scientists are confident that this new digitally created face is as close to the real King Tut as you can imagine.

“Faced with the studies we have developed with data from living people, comparing projections with actual measurements, we are confident that there is good compatibility with the real face in the general structure,” Moraes said. “I entered as a person who appreciated ancient Egypt and left now as a true fan of this impressive culture, full of determination to study more and bring to light other pieces of its fantastic history.”

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