Tutankhamun died around age 19, and this film treats his death as an unsolved case rather than settled history. It walks through the physical evidence, from Howard Carter's 1922 discovery of the tomb in the Valley of the Kings to later X-rays and forensic exams of the mummy that raised questions about a possible blow to the skull. Egyptologists and scientists lay out competing theories, murder by a rival within the royal court, a chariot accident, or illness compounded by the political chaos following the upheaval of Akhenaten's reign, and weigh the evidence for each. The film also traces the so-called curse of the pharaohs, the string of deaths and misfortunes linked to the tomb's excavators, and looks at how that legend took hold in the press. Reenactments and artifacts from the tomb, including the golden mask, illustrate the boy king's brief reign. It ends without a verdict, leaving the cause of death as a case still open after three thousand years.