Scientists removed the 3,000-year-old mummified body of Tutankhamun from its tomb yesterday and ran it through a CT scanner to find out whether the Egyptian boy king died of natural causes - or was murdered.

Mystery has surrounded Tutankhamun's fate since a rudimentary X-ray of the mummy 36 years ago showed fragments of bone inside his skull, prompting speculation that the teenage ruler had died from a blow to the head.

Under rare cloudy skies, a mobile scanning machine was driven in a van to the Valley of the Kings and parked close to Tutankhamun's underground sepulchre for the 15-minute procedure.

The wooden box that holds the mummy was brought out from beneath a stone sarcophagus - the most that tourists ever see of the boy king's body - and carried carefully up the stone steps out of the vault.

Inside the van the insulating coverings were pulled back to reveal the blackened mummy, which was inserted into the CT machine still resting in its box, in order to protect it.

Onlookers could see the pharaoh's fingers, toes and an eerie outline of his face as the computed tomography equipment took 1,700 images.

The team of examiners included medical doctors who operated the machine, senior antiquities officials and restoration experts.

Now the painstaking work will begin to interpret the pictures, in search of answers to the questions about his royal lineage, his exact age - estimated at 17 - and the cause of his death.

Tutankhamun ruled about 3,300 years ago and is believed to be the 12th ruler of ancient Egypt's 18th dynasty. He ascended to the throne at about the age of eight and died around 1323 BC at approximately 17.

His lineage has long been in question. It is unclear if he is the son or a half-brother of Akhenaten, the "heretic" pharaoh who introduced a revolutionary form of monotheism to ancient Egypt and who was the son of Amenhotep III.

Tutankhamun was buried in a "hurried" fashion in a glitter of gold treasures, said Zahi Hawass, the director general of Egypt's Supreme Council on Antiquities. But the previous X-ray wasn’t sophisticated enough to show whether the bone fragments signified a blow to the head. The CT scan will provide a far more detailed, three-dimensional view.

Dr Hawass, who led the ten-man team that conducted the tests on Tutankhamun's mummy, said that the results of the scan will be announced later this month in Cairo.

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