ABSTRACT
During the later years of his reign, Tutankhamun seems to have enjoyed generally good health. Today's medical technology reveals that he was well nourished and in reasonably good but frail health, except for his club foot and mild cleft palate, with him from birth. He had a shaved head, commonplace among Egyptian men of the day, partly to combat lice. Then Tutankhamun died, apparently suddenly, in 1323 BC, at about the age of eighteen. DNA typing of plasmodial DNA not only in Tutankhamun but also in the cavalryman Yuya and his wife, Tuya, whose daughter joined the royal line, shows that all of them had contracted Malaria tropica, the most severe form of the disease, at some point. We will never know the nature of the relationship between Tutankhamun and his queen, Ankhesenamun. That it was an arranged marriage is certain, for the perpetuation of the royal line transcended any thoughts of spontaneous romance.
