Tutankhamun 'brought back to life' as scientists rebuild king's face after 3,300 years

Tutankhamun's likeness has been recreated using skull measurements and previous images of his skeleton by scientists who found the Egyptian pharaoh looked more like a 'young student' than leader

Ewan Gleadow Social News Reporter

10:43, 31 May 2023Updated 22:45, 31 May 2023

Tutankhamun appeared more like a 'young student' to academics reconstructing his face(Image: Credit: Cicero Moraes via Pen News)

Tutankhamun, the former pharaoh of Egypt, has been rebuilt to look like a "young student" as scientists worked on bringing him "back to life".

Over 3,300 years on from his death, boffins building from his mummified skull have completed a digital model of what his face may have looked like during his time as ruler of Egypt.

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Academics from Brazil, Australia and Italy were able to construct the youthful pharaoh, with the study bringing about a "delicate face" to the man who lived a life "full of responsibilities".

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An especially challenging time was presented to academics working on the digital representation, as all they had were previously published bits of information.

The Egyptian pharaoh has been recreated over 3,300 years on from his death(Image: Getty Images)

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All they had as a vision of bringing Tutankhamun back to life was a list of measurements and images of the skull, although their work did not allow for access to the skull itself.

Brazilian graphics expert Cicero Moraes said: "It was a detective work, where traces of information were concatenated in order to provide us with a three-dimensional model of the skull.

"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 Tutankhamun.

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"Looking at him, we see more of a young student than a politician full of responsibilities, which makes the historical figure even more interesting."

Their work has since come to a close and Mr Moraes believes he and the team did a solid job of bringing the pharaoh back to life.

Their study and representation comes just under a decade after a French team rebuilt the pharaoh's face(Image: Credit: SCA via Pen News)

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He added: "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."

This is not the first attempt at bringing the likeness of Tutankhamun to the public eye, as Michael Habicht, an Egyptologist at Flinders University, Australia and co-author of this latest study, noted.

Mr Habicht said: "Our reconstruction is amazingly close to the one made by a French team a few years ago. It also corresponds with the ancient depictions of Tutankhamun, especially with the head on the lotus flower from his tomb treasure."

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The team added extra elements to their finished work including subjective elements to humanise the depiction, made through a series of "CT scans of living individuals from several different ancestries."

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