King Tutankhamen was only 18 years old when he died mysteriously. New research has put to rest one titillating theory about his death: that it was murder.

Based on radiographs taken in 1968, a team of researchers at the University of Liverpool proposed that the young Egyptian pharaoh may have been murdered by a blow to the head. In a study published in 1971, they suggested that a small piece of bone fused with the skull was consistent with a bone that had been crushed and had healed, giving validity to the murder theory.

Fast forward to the present day: Dr. Ernst A. Rodin, spurred by his interest in Egyptology, revisited the skull radiographs used in the 1971 study.

Rodin, a professor of neurology at the University of Utah, and his colleagues concluded that any abnormal findings that were described in earlier papers could be ascribed to postmortem artifacts resulting from the mummification process and possibly from an autopsy performed on the mummy in 1925. They found no evidence for a depressed skull fracture, a posterior fossa subdural hematoma, or an injury to the cervical spine.

A CT scan could unearth additional information about King Tut's death, but that would involve further disturbing his remains, which are entombed in the Valley of the Kings.