Feb. 16 (UPI) -- The Pharaoh Seqenenre-Taa-II, an ancient Theban ruler and one of the last kings of Egypt's Seventeenth Dynasty, was executed by a gang of attackers, according to a new study.
The full extent of the king's injuries were revealed by a series of newly analyzed CT scans. The research, published Wednesday in the journal Frontiers in Medicine, suggests Seqenenre Taa earned his nickname "the Brave."
Seqenenre Taa ruled much of Southern Egypt during the middle of the 16th century BC, but like the rest of Egypt, Seqenenre-Taa was forced pay tribute to the Hyksos dynasty, a foreign power that controlled Egypt between 1650 and 1550 BC.
Seqenenre Taa and his armed forces regularly engaged in skirmishes with Hyksos soldiers. His attempts to undermine Hyksos rule in the region ultimately proved deadly.
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The mummified body of Pharaoh Seqenenre-Taa-II was discovered and studied in the 1880s. Experts couldn't agree on how exactly Seqenenre Taa met his end.
After discovering a series of head wounds, researchers concluded Seqenenre Taa was captured on the battlefield and executed -- perhaps, by the Hyksos king.
Other researchers suggested Seqenenre Taa was actually the victim of internal turmoil, and killed by palace conspirators.
Both theories posited that Seqenenre Taa was crudely mummified before entombment -- the rushed burial necessitated by the politically complicated nature of the king's death.
For a clearer picture of Seqenenre Taa's demise, researchers in Egypt reexamined the king's mummified body using computed tomography.
The new CT scans showed the felled pharaoh suffered a range of different head wounds. The injuries, researchers concluded, were caused by several different weapons, suggesting the king was killed by several attackers.
The CT scans revealed head wounds not identified by the original analysis. Contrary to earlier suggestions of hastened burial, the images showed the previously undiscovered injuries had been well concealed by those responsible for Seqenenre Taa's mummification and entombment.
Researchers were also able to show that Seqenenre Taa's hands were bound during his attack, further proof that the king was indeed captured on the battlefield and led to his execution.
"This suggests that Seqenenre was really on the front line with his soldiers risking his life to liberate Egypt," lead author Sahar Saleem, a professor of radiology at Cairo University, said in a news release.
Saleem and her research partners were able to match several different Hyksos weapons to the wound shapes revealed by the CT scans.
"In a normal execution on a bound prisoner, it could be assumed that only one assailant strikes, possibly from different angles but not with different weapons," said Saleem, who specializes in paleoradiology. "Seqenenre's death was rather a ceremonial execution."
While Seqenenre's end was violent, it was not in vain. The independence movement spearheaded by the Theban king was ultimately successful.
"Seqenenre's death motivated his successors to continue the fight to unify Egypt and start the New Kingdom," Saleem said.
