King Seqenenre Tao died with his hands tied and his skull broken by Hyksos weapons, and his sons finished his war

Seqenenre Tao ruled southern Egypt from Thebes while the Hyksos, a dynasty of Asian origin, held the north. A later tale, The Quarrel of Apophis and Seqenenre, describes tension with the Hyksos king Apepi. His mummy was found in the royal cache at Deir el-Bahari in 1881 and unwrapped in 1886. It had severe head wounds. A 1960s X-ray found no other injuries. Theories ranged from death in battle to murder in his sleep in a palace plot. In 2021 the radiologist Sahar Saleem and Zahi Hawass published a CT study in Frontiers in Medicine. His arms had no defensive wounds and had probably been tied at the wrists. The fractures matched five Hyksos weapons from Tell el-Dab'a and came from several attackers. The authors call it a probable ceremonial execution. Embalmers had hidden some wounds under filler. He was about 40. His brain had shifted to one side, so the body lay on that side long enough to begin decaying before it was embalmed. His son Kamose succeeded him and kept fighting. Another son, Ahmose I, completed the expulsion of the Hyksos and founded the Eighteenth Dynasty. On 3 April 2021 Seqenenre's mummy rode in the first carriage of 22 royal mummies moved through Cairo to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, where it is now.