King Tut Update. (Sorry it has taken so long.)

Study: King Tut slain by sword in knee
Deadly infection found in wound, experts say --ANSA, Italy

Tutankhamun was killed by a sword blow to the knee, Italian experts claim .

Two doctors from Bolzano University, longtime researchers into Italy's famed Iceman, were part of an international team that recently took another look at Egypt's most famous mummy .

The group found traces of gold leaf bearing animal symbols in the late pharaoah's right kneecap, leading them to surmise that it had fallen off Tutankhamun's raiments and lodged in a hole during mummification .

The hole in question appears to have been caused by a sword, they say .

Experts have so far been baffled by King Tut's cause of death, since his remains are in such great shape .

The new research has thrown up the hypothesis that the sword blow led to a fatal infection .

The new findings have yet to be made public because Egypt's archaeological chief Zahi Hawass is awaiting a final report, an Italian newspaper reported on Thursday .

The two Italian researchers, Eduard Egarter and Paul Gostner, have conducted several studies into Italy's 5,000-year-old Iceman mummy .

Among other things they discovered that he, too, was killed by a weapon .

Egarter and Gostner spotted an arrow-head fragment in one of the Iceman's shoulders, embarrassing Austrian scientists who had the mummy for several years and concluded he died of exposure after getting lost in the mountains .