Egypt's King Tutankhamun's penis may have been mummified at a 90-degree angle so as to fight a religious revolution that his father unleashed, a new study has suggested.
The anomalies during Tutankhamun's burial were that he was mummified without a heart (or a replacement artifact known as a heart scarab); and his mummy and coffins were covered in a thick layer of black liquid that seemed to have resulted in the boy-king catching fire, Fox News reported.
Egyptologist Salima Ikram, a professor at the American University in Cairo, has proposed a reason as to why they, and other Tutankhamun burial anomalies, existed.
Ikram suggested that the mummified erect penis and other burial anomalies were deliberate attempts to make him resemble Osiris, the god of the underworld, in as literal way as possible.
The erect penis evoked Osiris' regenerative powers; the black liquid made his skin color look like that of Osiris; and the lost heart recalled the story of the god being cut to pieces by his brother Seth and his heart buried.
Ikram said that making the king appear as Osiris may have helped undo a religious revolution that was brought about by Akhenaten, a pharaoh who is widely believed to be Tutankhamun's father, and who had tried to focus Egyptian religion around the worship of the Aten, the sun disc, and went as far as to destroy other gods' images.
She said that Tutankhamun could have been trying to undo the changes brought by Akhenaten, and return Egypt back to its traditional religion with its mix of gods.
The new paper in the journal tudes et Travaux.
