Egypt is allowing a team of experts to use high-tech X-ray gear to try to find out if something uncommon killed the ancient boy king Tutankhamun.

The researchers will employ sophisticated, three-dimensional CT-scans as they try to discover, once and for all, just what killed the young man whose 3,000-year-old mummified corpse was found in 1922 by British archaeologists.

"We will know about any diseases he had, any kind of injuries and his real age," Egypt's chief of antiquities Zahi Hawass told the Reuters news service, as quoted in China Daily. "We will know the answer to whether he died normally or was he killed."

While I'm as curious as anyone about the outcome, I think I'd advise folks to be at least a little wary about this project.

They might at least want to wear some mosquito repellant before entering the tomb.

British Lord Carnarvon, who sponsored Tut's discoverer archaeologist Howard Carter's expedition to uncover the tomb was among the first to enter. Shortly afterward, he suffered an ignominious death from a nasty mosquito bite. He'd nicked the welt while shaving, an infection developed, and before you know it, he dropped dead from pneumonia.

Lurid accounts in newspapers at the time said Carnarvon was the first to die from the Pharaonic curse the Carter expedition had unleashed by disturbing Tutankhamun's grave and treasures.

In fact, an inscription was found on a stone jackal guarding the tomb that stated: "It is I who hinder the sand from choking the secret chamber. I am for the protection of the deceased. They who enter this sacred tomb shall swift be visited by wings of death."

The deaths started the very day Carter's workers pried open the site. The archaeologist's pet canary was swallowed by a cobra who got to the songbird, swallowing the innocent creature, perhaps signalling the fate awaiting others. According to accounts at the time, on a tomb artefact a cobra was seen perched on a pharaoh's face. From there, it could spit flames at the pharaoh's attackers.

According to one conspiracy theorist's list, of the 26 individuals present at the official opening of the tomb, six died within a decade.

Yet Howard Carter himself lived until 65, Harry Burton, the expedition photographer lived a full life, and so did Allan Gardiner, the man who deciphered many of the hieroglyphics discovered at the site. Dr D. E. Derry, who performed an autopsy on the mummy, lived until 1969.

And most of the artefacts have quite safely remained on display in Cairo, thank you. Some have made their way round the globe over the years in travelling shows.

But Tut's mummified remains have stayed undisturbed in his stone coffin, which last was opened in 1968. An X-ray taken then showed a bone chip to the skull which led some to believe he had been killed by a vicious blow. The usual suspects from the time period were thought to be a high priest or army commander, perhaps in a coup.

A three-dimensional view might allow a judgment to be made as to whether the chip or fracture were caused by a traumatic blow, said Brando Quilici, a National Geographic researcher.

That will make for good television, and National Geographic is helping to sponsor the expedition, and will film a special on the project.

Frankly, we might just be better off leaving a little mystery to history.

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